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
Nicely Done Moto!
This may be the best Motorola phone yet. I bought this phone after returning a terrible LG8100 phone, and I am so glad that I did. Here are my pros and cons:
Pros:
Excellent call quality!!!
Excellent reception
Excellent call volume
Intuitive and easy to use menu system
Bright and crisp internal screen
Customizable buttons
Very polished look
Cons:
No speakerphone
Weak vibrating alert
Camera could be better
Might be a little big for some people
The call quality and reception on this phone are outstanding! If all this phone could do was make phone calls, it would still be worth it. But of course the phone does much more than just make excellent calls. It is an easy to use phone that can be personalized to your preferences, but yet looks very sleek and professional. The battery life on the phone is good, but like all color screen/camera phones it could be better. I would have been nice to include a speaker phone, but the addition of Bluetooth technology makes up for that. Overall, I highly recommend this phone.
Ed. note: This phone does have speakerphone
Generally Excellent Product
Very power-efficient IF you are in an EV-DO area. I recommend this phone over the LG 8100, but if you're in an area that's not well covered by Verizon's EV-DO service then get NEITHER phone.
Cons:
Charge either lasts very long or very short, unpredictable.
Difficult if even possible to import ringtones from anywhere beyond Verizon's online store.
Occasional, unpredictable "flakiness" apparently from memory corruption. Corruption has very negative effect on video camera functioning & ability to retrieve saved videos.
Poor placement of camera's external button; easy to accidentally turn the camera function on.
Uses expensive TransFlash memory for memory expansion card slot.
No holster in box.
Holster not removable from rotatable belt clip.
Vibrate mode too weak..
Camera "flash" stays on until you turn it off (OK when in video mode but not in still camera) & is only menu-driven.
Slow BREW/Get It Now downloading.
No "You have an incoming call" in pretty female voice ringtone like my T730 did :(
LCDs work poorly as camera viewfinders.
Need to open the flip to turn on & manually turn off built-in speakerphone.
Pros:
Has memory expansion card slot.
Battery cover doesn't loosen up as much as previous models did.
GREAT reception in digital areas.
Excellent sound from earpiece.
Very good built-in speakerphone.
Crystal clear, loud ringers.
EXCELLENT SPEECH RECOGNITION in Voice-Activated Controls & Dialing.
Beautiful outer & inner backlit LCD displays.
Backward compatibility with Motorola cellular CE-port accessories from the past few years!
Better fitting charger/CE port contacts compared to previous Motorola models.
Fast & smooth running BREW/Get It Now applications.
Stereo MP3 player & FM radio sound.
4X digital zoom & sound recording in video mode.
Camera has photo "style" settings incl. B & W & sepia.
Speakerphone can be set to turn itself off automatically.
Alarm clock loud enough to wake you up!
Data can be synchronized with Macs (phone supported by Apple in iSync).
What a mixed bag...
I waited and waited for a next gen Bluetooth phone from Moto (some of us old farts tend to stick with a decent brand for comfort and consistency of features) so I could sync contacts with my Mac. The 710 seemed like a hodge-podge. Well the 815 is a brother to the hodge.
It's got a bunch of nice features, and a bunch of near nice features and a bunch of forgotten features. As has been mentioned earlier on this thread, it's a bit bigger than some of us would like but I think one could over look that if Moto hadn't overlooked some very BASIC features we've come to expect as std, namely decent vibrate..hello Moto engineers?!
Pros:
-Packed with many current goodies mentioned in other threads.
-Pairs easily with Macintosh thru iSync.
-Excellent reception and transmitting
Cons:
-Horrendous battery life. (see forums)-Near undetectable vibrate --
-No way to customize skins w/o risking voiding your warranty and screwing up your fone; fairly lame skins on board
-Poor color fidelity, worse than the LG (at least in the viewfinder)
-Low res graphics
-Disabled Bluetooth OBEX...i.e. No way to swap files with computers/other fones. (Verzion says this is coming..ya, we'll see about that.)
Best Phone Ever!!!
Simply said, this is the best phone I have ever owned. I have owned phones and had service from Nextel, Sprint, Cingular, T-mobile, and Verizon. This is the best of the best. 3 months ago I had the v710 w/ Verizon, and was very unhappy, so much so that I ended up leaving Verizon. The e815 takes every problem that I had with the v710, and fixed it. The biggest, most notable difference is the quality of the camera. It is unbelievable how clear the camera is, I have never seen such a clear, crisp camera on a cell phone.
Pros:
Great Camera
Nice Looking Casing
Great Screen Resolution
Great Sound Quality
Perfect features
Excellent Bluetooth Support
Cons:
A little big and bulky, but no real problem
No holster included with phone
Bay Area -Battery Caution
Excellent Phone ...But consider this:
I had the phone for 2 weeks and had to return it because the battery life in the Standby Mode was only about one day. Upon investigation I found that the problem is that the phone is equipped with an EVDO function which is not currently available in the Bay area and perhaps all of Northern California. The phone continually searches for this setting and wears down the battery in the process. Unfortunately the Verizon representatives failed to disclose the critical glitch.
Hopefully the problem will be fixed in the near future.
You know what this is, right?
The Motorola E815, I have come to conclude, is nothing more than the prelude to the RAZR.
I am almost 100% sure that motorola just took this phone, stripped the internals, and put em in a different outer shell.
Pros: Cons:
*Bigger outer screen *Bigger than Razr,
than Razr but still small
*more talk time than razr
*more antenna=better
signal than razr
*customizeable skins
I thought this was the greatest phone ever, UNTIL.........
...I tried playing the mp3's through my new $200 stereo bluetooth headset with ski helmet (Motorola S805). You can plug in an external mp3 player into this pair of headphones, and sounds great with it, but why is this even necessary?
After hours of calling Verizon and Motorola tech support, I got nowhere because they had no idea about the problem, so I ended up figuring it out all by myself.
Apparently, none of the Verizon phones support A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) so I am still attached to this phone via wires !!!!!
I thought Bluetooth was supposed to eliminate wires, but this phone will not let go! You must purchase a certain Plantronics headset that PLUGS IN to the phone! It has 2 earbuds (which I can't stand with stereo headphones) and a microphone with a button to answer an incoming call. Again, YOU ARE STILL ATTACHED TO THIS PHONE WITH WIRES !
Although I did purchase an additional Bluetooth (Motorola H500) headset to use the phone, and it works great on phonecalls, I am still very upset about the fact that I still have to be attached to something with wires.
There are some good and bad things about this phone.
Pros:
>Nice big clear display (in a dark room).
>Good reception.
>Bluetooth seems to be working good (to talk anyway).
>Removable storage.
>3 minutes of video per shoot (the default setting is 15 seconds).
>MP3 player (cool, but plays through speakerphone or wired earbuds only).
>Camera takes pretty decent shots.
>Camera flash.
Cons:
>Phone is not A2DP compatible, so don't expect to use Bluetooth stereo headphones with the mp3 player.
>Cannot use Vibrate and Ring at same time.
>Vibrate is very light(just like everyone said).
>Phone display does not tell day of week.
>Internal display very difficult to see in daylight.
>No random play setting on mp3 player.
>Video is a little choppy and only shoots at 176 pixels wide.
>Video is in new .3G2 format which I cannot find a converter that works correctly.
Niceee
Hey I'm the kind of guy who thinks of "new every 2" as every 2 months.. Ive had dozens of phones.. the phone before this one was the 710 and i have to tell you it blew ass. this phone is great. Ive had it for a few days and theres no problems.. battery lasts forever,vcast is cool, SO much memory no need to buy a card. its rugged I enjoy it and I'm going to keep this phone for a long time
Pro's: Sturdy, Great battery,Nice camera,Nice big screen and buttons,Bluetooth
Cons: The side buttons are easly hit and you find yourself with pix of ur pocket, phone didnt come with a clip.
Switching to 8100 after Issues with E815
It seems I have found more users (based on the reviews here) switched to the 8100 from the E815, and not the opposite.
I've had the phone switched 3 times, that makes for 4 handsets. One had terrible battery, one had bad speakerphone, one had bad camera. Between all of them, I had one or more components that were good.
The phone began to freeze up and reset on the 2nd handset. This lasted until the latest phone in my hand. Terrible! I can't stand it when I receive a text mesasge or go to make a phone call and the phone dies out. Moto needs to fix the issue!
Notes on review: I only discuss features i've used and cared about.
*No interset in EV-DO
*No interset in recording videos
*No interest in GetItNow/Online
Pros of E815:
1. Customizable OS, and all buttons.
2. Good bluetooth operability with headset.
3. Good battery life
4. Ringtons from MP3 files
5. Good phonebook
6. Hackable
7. Speakerphone stays on when phone is closed
Cons of E815:
1. Random freeze/reset issue (no fix)
2. Terrible build quality, hinges loosens 2 weeks into usage
3. Bad vibrate
4. Crippled bluetooth
5. Inside/Outside screen is the same
Only problem the Echo!
The only problem I have had with the E815 is the Echo in the earpiece. When the volume is on 4 or 5 it won't do it but on 6 or 7 it always echo's. This one has really good reception. I have taken it to Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and I live in the Tampa area and I get full signal almost everywhere. Granted the vibration is low, vitaminwater is full of sh**!
