Motorola E815 / E816 Hollywood
Phone Scoop Review
Oct 11, 2005 by Eric Lin
In-depth review of Motorola's first EV-DO phone for North America, the E815 for Verizon. read review ›
User Reviews
Average Ratings
Best Phone I have had yet
I am very happy with this phone. I had 3 Moto V710's and had problems with all 3 of them. So far I have yet to find any problems with this phone.
Pro's
Excellent Reception
Excellent Battery Life
Good Speaker Phone
Full Signal Strength all the time
Con's
none
I relly enjoy being able to look at the clock on this phone when it is closed and not having to hit a button to display it like I had to on the V710. You can also close the phone when the speaker phone is on too.
I highly recommend this phone.
Fantastic Phone and Greatly Improved Update
I am experiencing one of those "grass is greener on the other side" type of moments right now.
Reception is so great I get instant connection. The messaging is SMS to allow for instant text messages. Haven't tested everywhere, but I had enough convincing just from seeing *full* bars in my house....this is unheard of.
The screen is gorgeous inside. The outside display is good and much bigger than a normal screen, but they could have made it crisper looking, however, they wanted to make an affordable phone which I understand.
The camera is ok. The 4X digital zoom is handy. From what I see so far, the battery seems to be doing very well which impresses me. I have been playing streaming video and making calls and it still hasn't dropped a bar. The home screen and menu screen are really nice because they are FULLY customizable. The speaker phone is very loud and crisp.
Phone book is really nice with big numbers and names and the pictures that show up right next to it. If you have say 3 numbers for 1 person, they will show up 3 times unfortunately. I think motorola did this so it would be able to pull up that person when you voice dial. Voice dialing allows you to contact anyone in your phone book just by dialing them with your voice. Cool part is that the technology is so advanced that it doesn't require any pre-voice recognition/ no required setup.
Blue tooth is crippled as usual so if you are unhappy, then invest in a PDA. I purchased the logitech freedom which got great reviews for $38 so shop around. The transflash slot in this phone is a dream come true to me. If 40mb of internal storage wasn't enough, then how about being able to add up to 256mb of transflash.
P.S. Every product I write a review on means I recommend it fully and have tested it to the fullest and have compared it with everything else out there to have enough experience to comment. If you have any questions or anything just contact me at pharmachesst@netscape.net
Surprisingly Good Phone.
For all the bad things I have heard about this phone and the problems people were having, I am surprised that I liked it so much. Like everyone else has said, the reception is better then any other phone I have ever had. There were very few areas that I had less then 4 or 5 lines. Now on the other hand, I was not too impressed with the call quality. Like others have said, it does sound digital and I have noticed static here and there. The battery life is very impressive also. I've never had a phone that can go 3 or 4 days without charging with normal phone use (including calls, internet, camera and texting). Another annoyance I found was the phone book and how it lists each number for the same entry individually. This is a small annoyance, though. The camera is pretty good... though, I have seen other 1.3 megapixal cameras do a better job, for example, the Samsung A950. As others have stated, the vibrate is extremely weak, but for me that is not a major problem. The ringers are very loud and will definitely grab your attention. Even though the phone looks big, it really isn't. I came from an Audiovox 9900 and the 815 is slightly longer, but thinner, so I haven't minded it. The phone feels comfortable in your hard and is not annoying to talk on for a couple hours straight, like I have noticed with the 9900. Plain and simple, give this phone a try, it is cheaper then the brand new Samsungs and LGs and in my opinion much better.
I love this phone
So i picked this phone up about 2 weeks ago, and so far im very impressed...
camera is great, the reception is perfect...its just as good as my v265 which was amazing on reception...the software is pretty good contrare to what others say...the only bug im seeing is sometimes i'll go to watch a video i recorded and it will restart the phone...no biggie to me...if you want a great phone with some great tools...
i tried the samsuck a950...not impressed..internal antennas are no good
I will be keeping my e815
GOOD MOTO (Finally!)
MOTOROLAS first GOOD phone since Star-Tac!
Pros;
Good Screen
Good Sound
Speaker when closed
AWESOME reception
Barely Freezes, and when it does will automaticly Re-Start.
GREAT battery life
CONS;
Charging Port (OH NO, MOTO!)
Camera on LG is way better!
Weird MOTO Stuff (Like Contacts not in order sometimes,)
Still the 710 like scraches on hinge
Buttons still scrach inside
Antenna stick up too much
Big Phone
WAY better than 8100 but the E-815 and 9800 are the two best!!
Very good Phone
After being a avid LG fan for the time I've used Verizon I decided to try the E815. I work as a cell phone technician and usually don't have a lot of good things to say about Moto products but this one is very good.
Pro's
-Loud speaker on flip, the 710 I had issues with how I hold the phone.
-Microphone picks up well, same thing as the 710 I had issues with how I hold the phone.
-Great signal strength, has better signal strength thank the 6000 that I had prior.
-Voice recognition is very good.
con's
-Same Moto charging port (I don't use a car cord while talking so not much of an issue.)
-Verizon making it so I can't use mp3's as ringtones very easily.
Overall the best non PDA phone that I have yet to use I had been planning on just testing it out and then going to the LG 8100, but I'm very happy with this one and plan on keeping it.
E815 better than VX-8100 for me
I had a chance to actually use both the E815 and the VX-8100 with Verizon. I decided to stick with the E815.
VX-8100
- Has a better hinge than the E815. Feels more solid.
- Has poor reception compared to the E815
- Does it have a speakerphone? I looked through the manual, and found nothing even though it's supposed to be there. If it's there, it's hard to find.
- Better form factor than the E815. More compact.
- Has crippled Bluetooth: Doesn't work with iSync for Mac out of the box. There may be some ways to hack it, but this requires more than 0 effort.
- If the earpiece isn't perfectly aligned over my ear, I had trouble hearing, even with the volume turned way up.
E815
- Seems to be more configurable than the 8100.
- Bluetooth support is more complete. I can sync phone numbers, addresses with my Mac without hacking. There seem to be better hacking options for the E815.
- A little on the bulky side, but this is a plus for folks like me with big hands.
- Excellent Reception.
- The battery life sucks, allegedly due to the fact that the phone is wasting power looking for the new EVDO network which isn't working yet in San Francisco. Supposedly this will be fixed when the EVDO network is launched here.
- I like the user interface better on the E815. This might be simply because I used the E815 longer and got more used to it, but I think there is more to it than that.
The E815 had much better reception than the 8100 in my area. I don't think this is necessarily because the 8100 has bad reception, but rather that the E815 has above average reception.
I chose to stick with the E815 for two main reasons:
- Synching with my Mac 'just works' over bluetooth
- The reception is way better
- The earpiece problem with the 8100 was too much of an issue
If a smaller phone with a solid feel is more important to you than above average reception and iSync for Mac, than you might prefer the 8100.
Motorola E815
This is about my experience with the new Motorola E815.
Cell phone users have different points of view. This is mine and not meant by any means to be the final word.
I divided my research into three areas:
1. The best cell phone coverage and potential audio/reception quality.
2. The best economics.
3. The best technology/features.
Verizon seemed to be the winner in the first two categories. I get excellent reception with the Motorola E815 and Verizon on the Metro in Washington DC underground.
Now for cell phone technology. I am not a big fan of cell phone cameras. I have an 11 megapixel Fuji S2. No cellphone camera can even come close. Have enough A/V equipment so streaming videos on my cell phone just don't do anything for me. Don't care about games or messaging. On the other hand, most of the newer phones now include functions once reserved for hand held computers: calculators, alarm clocks, contact organizers, calendars, etc. This is a major step forward from the cell phones we had when we signed our last contract 2 years ago.
Some of the features I consider most important in a phone are speaker phone, voice activation, and blue tooth.
The speakerphone is good. Motorola tried to use speak independent voice activation instead of voice trained. The phone seems to have an affinity to a southern accent. It certainly does not like non-American names or pronunciation. I would prefer voice trained at least as an option with independent as default.
As time goes on bluetooth will become the rule and not the exception. This allows the cellphone to integrate with laptops, handhelds, ear pieces, car systems, keyboards, etc. Other phone companies hav lots of offerings. Verizon has 2 and they cripple their phones. I successfully paired my Ipaq 2215 and Motorola E815 for dialing but could not download or upload contact information with bluetooth. Hope they learn from their mistakes and allow their antisocial phones to integrate into our techie world.
would have given it a five but.....
There is a couple things which make this great phone imperfect.
Pros
a very good screen inside and out
pretty good call reception
very good video for a phone
good camera after you take the picture
the keys have a good feeling
Cons
very big and a bit heavy
when I was recording video it would pause for half a second but it only happens once in a million
Its wierd before you take the picture the camera has a lot of noise but after you take it the noise goes away I don't if it's just my phone...
Other than those small cons I really love it.
What a Great Phone
I've been using cell phones for almost 20 years. Since my Timeport, this is without a doubt the best phone I've used. I had tried a Razr previously and hated the new user interface and the fact that the ringer style would change while the phone was in your pocket( I missed a lot of calls that way).
So, I tried the 815. What a difference the phone works flawlessly the reception is great and the keypad feels wonderful.
THIS IS A GREAT PHONE.
