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Motorola Motofone F3 e-ink handset

Can a phone this basic, this cheap be any good? Yes it can

Using the F3 is a straightforward affair once you've stopped looking for the menus that aren't there because this phone doesn't do what you other phones do.

motorola motofone f3 slimline cheap handset

Push 'up' or 'down' on the navigation key and you can change the ring tone - you get seven, all annoying, plus a rather supine vibrate - while 'left' and 'right' scroll through the 'menu', comprising write a text, read a text, see incoming/outgoing calls, select a (still annoying) ring tone, set the alarm, and change the time and date - that's your lot. Other keys select the phone book, start and end calls, and activate selections. The twit-proof instruction leaflet isn't really all that necessary but is nevertheless a model of clarity and conciseness.

The aforementioned phone book is stored on the SIM. So change your SIM and you lose your contacts. This was a feature of the C113 and was annoying on that too. On the subject of storing information, the F3 doesn't keep sent text messages at all - more proof that voice communication is really the raison d'être for the F3.

And then there's the screen. The Screen. It's the F3's party piece. Called a ClearVision Display (CVD) it is based on e-paper from E Ink. It's conumes an extremely small amount of power as it only needs to draw energy when the display is modified, so it will continue to show information even when switched off. The downside is that all you get is a monochrome display that looks like it belongs on an LCD desktop calculator made in 1978. It consists of only two lines of text, six characters per line.

All characters are represented in upper case apart from O and D, which would otherwise be mistaken for a zero, though all texts are sent in lower case. It all works fine if the limit of your text ambitions is "how r u", but anyone prone to penning longer SMS missives and screeds may feel a little restricted, not least by the complete lack of commas, quotation marks, @ signs, hashes etc. On incoming texts anything that can't be represented correctly comes out as a hyphen, which can be rather confusion at first glance. On the plus side, what does appear correctly on the screen is large, clear and very easy to read, and that will prove a boon to the elderly or anyone with poor eyesight.

Next page: Verdict

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