Review: Motorola W755
The W755 is your normal, average, every day black flip phone, but it's covered in a rubberized material front and back for a sure grip. It's lone nod to style is the top half, which, when flipped up, rests slightly over the top of the bottom half like two overlapping tectonic plates.
The front face has two glass-covered sections: the 1.3 MP camera lens and the 1-inch external screen. Surrounding the 1-inch external screen and Motorola logo are four nearly invisible soft-touch music controls that light up and become active when the music is playing, and a Bluetooth indicator icon slash on/off control. This external Bluetooth control is unique and a great idea that I hope is more widely adopted.
Inside the W755 is a 1.9-inch screen. Its dialpad has cleanly delineated black alphanumeric keys illuminated with clean, warm, white backlighting which renders the keypad easily readable in any light. The navigation array is comprised by three concentric circles; the bulls-eye is the "select" key and the two outside rings are actually a single ring with cursor direction controls. Unfortunately, there isn't enough differentiation between the inner and outer ring sections. The direction ring seems to be comprised of two sections, which is a bit confusing and leads to accidentally tapping the "select" bulls-eye instead of the directional ring and vice versa.
On the left side are the up/down voice toggle and Motorola's multi-function smart key; it activates and deactivates the speakerphone during a call, kills or activates the music soft touch music control icons on the front flap, or locks the keypad, which is sort of a waste since the keypad is covered by the top half of the phone.
At the base of the left side is a USB jack, Motorola's usual miniUSB connector rather than the now industry standard microUSB connector. This is perfect if you're upgrading from an earlier basic Motorola phone since all your previous miniUSB accessories and chargers can still be used.
On the right side is the voice recorder/voice memo activation key and, at the base of the side, a 2.5mm headphone jack. However, you'll have to buy your own headset, mono or stereo; Verizon has stopped including free headphones with most of its models.
I am constantly annoyed with Motorola's frequent (mis)placement of the microSD slot, which with the W755, happens to be buried beneath the battery. I understand that most consumers will slip in a card and leave it there for the life of their phone, so only have to remove the battery once. But there also will be consumers who purchase a 1GB card and, in a few weeks realize they should have gone with a 4GB card, the maximum the W755 can accept. Or, there are those of us who don't want to spring for a USB cable or fuss with Bluetooth and opt instead to use a card reader to transfer data. In either event, the back cover is easy to snap on and off and the battery relatively easy to pop out and in again. But doing so is still a pain since you have to turn off the phone to swap out the card.
Considering there are plenty of Verizon flip phones as thin if not thinner than the W755 with side microSD slots, there is no technical reason I know of why Motorola can't find room on the side for the microSD slot as well.
One other minor annoyance is the lack of a Music icon key, which immediately activates the music player. But there are other methods to get your music playing (see Menus).
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Motorola W755
