362
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #62,555 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★☆☆☆
Don't Engineers Field Test Their Work?
As much as I wanted to like the Motorola T305, in the end couldn't live with its shortcomings. First of all, the good news: it actually works well enough and the sound is highly legible and the volume is very good. It paired easily with my LG enV. The phone's voice prompts were scratchy and hard to understand, but they're like that on speakerphone, so it's not the T305's fault. Once you make a connection, the other party sounds fine. And they can hear you fine, too. But that's where the party ends.
Your first problem will be charging your new toy. Guess what? It can only be charged in your car (no a.c. adapter is included.) It needs two hours for a full charge. My car shuts off power to my car's power adapter (aka cigarette lighter) when I turn off the car, so even if I were inclined to leave it plugged in for two hours, I would need to leave the car turned to "accessory on" to charge it -- and that could be a battery killer. You can buy an a.c. to 12 volt adapter at Radio Shack, but you shouldn't have to. And the manual warns you not to charge it while it's on your visor, so it becomes less functional while you drive around for two hours charging it? Huh? It will use a Motorola a.c. adapter if you have one for your Razr, etc., but otherwise, you'll have my problem.
The next engineering failure is the light. You have no way to tell if it's turned on during the day, because the shiny plastic cover over the light reflects so much ambient light you can't see it. And it's important to see it, because if it's flashing it's paired with your phone and if it's steady, it's not paired and thus non-functional. It's also important because if you leave your car for 30 minutes, the T305 shuts off automatically. There will be nothing to indicate it's off when you get back after, perhaps, 31 minutes, since the light can't be seen during the day anyway. Since the T305 claims 200 hours standby time (or on another part of their Web site 14 days -- which is it?) I have no idea why the T305 should shut off after 30 minutes away from your phone. I first tried to see the light on a cloudy, rainy day and could barely detect it. On a sunny day, even though there was no direct light shining on it, I couldn't see it without taking it off the visor and shading it with my hand. Try that in traffic!
But the light's problem doesn't stop there. At night it's highly visible, an annoying blue pulse, right above your line of sight. Totally unacceptable. My wife asked me to turn it off, and she was in the passenger seat.
So, still trying to make this work, I figured I would just leave it turned off all the time until I heard the phone ring. Well, that's a no-go also. The on-off switch is incredibly tiny and hard to find -- it's the same color as the case and is flush with the case and non-tactile.You are required to hold it down until the light comes on (which you can't see anyway) and then it has to connect with your phone. By that time your call's gone to voicemail or just gone, period.
What really puzzles me is this is the second generation of this device Motorola produced. What must the first have been like?
It may be that all of the issues I've described are unimportant to you in light of the fact the T305 actually sounds rather good. For that I give it a couple of stars. But the T305 is like an attractive spouse with a million bad habits. My marriage to the T305 quickly ended in divorce.
April 2007 · Cell Phones and Accessories