Most of you wouldn't call this phone a gadget, but I've decided to put this review in for those of us who don't need complicated and advanced cell phones, and only need them to make occasional calls and maybe play a quick game. So, the Motorola C168 is a phone which is very good in those fields, but wouldn't count as a gadget anyway.
Motorola C168
The Appeal
The Motorola C168 makes a pretty good first impression, since it looks pretty good. I'm glad the Motorola engineers have chosen not to incorporate any "shouting" design and chosen an elegant and attractive design. It's pretty thin and sleek, and is very comfortable to hold. The materials are of good quality, I'd say. They're very smooth and look very durable. It's not metal though, it's plastic of course. It has a black front which is glossed and looks shiny. Therefore, the screen, when turned off, looks much more bigger than it is. The gloss could be annoying though; it's easily covered with finger-prints and oil.The sides of the phone are interesting. Unlike other phones, the bottom is not plagued with metal holes, but is clean and sleek. There are only two small holes: one for the charger and one for the earpieces. Yes, you're right: something's missing and we'll get to that later.
The Buttons
The keypad is very well made. The keys are solid and have a stable feeling. They are pretty small though, so those of you with large hands and fingers will have trouble typing numbers and letters. The fake joystick is less better. It's not a joystick actually, it's an OK/Menu key with 4 keys surrounding it, so it's sometimes hard to get used to the feeling if you're used to Joystick phones. The OK/Menu button is made of poor quality metal, which has a somewhat cheap feeling.It has no buttons for volume, which I don't miss since it doesn't have any musical capabilities.
Speaker & Speech Quality
The speech quality is surprising. At least from your side, the phone gives very good results for its price. Unfortunately, there is no speaker-phone, that is you can't talk without the phone clinging to your ear. Its speaker is capable of playing .midi files, which it plays with a quite impressive quality. My guess the speaker has been taken from a higher class Motorola Cell Phone and put in the C168. It's very good and can be set to be very loud, and it's a shame you can't use it to actually talk, but only to hear the ring tones.
Radio
Yes! Quite surprisingly, this phone has an in built radio, which is a really great feature in a cell phone. Morever, the Radio interface is made well and you can minimize the radio interface and continue with your activities while listening to your favorite station. The Radio relays on the ear piece included with the phone, to serve as an antenna. The Radio reception is truly exceptional and it manages to receive a more-or-less clear signal even while being in an elevator. The Radio quality is good; the earpieces supplied, although having no brand at all, provides more than average quality. The volume cannot be set too high, though. And while it's not too low, sometimes it's truly annoying you can't raise the volume more than that. The Radio interface itself is very comfortable; it's graphic, and has 9 presets which you can tag with names and easily navigate through the stations using the keypad. It allows searching both manually and automatically for radio signals. It doesn't support RDS and automatic radio station naming & tagging though.The radio can be minimized, and the name of the station or its frequency would be displayed in the corner of the screen. If you receive a call, the radio would be silenced, and after you have finished the call, it would resume playing. The radio, while being minimized, does not seem to slow the phone at all.
Interface & Screen
That's the biggest turn-off in this phone - It features the old Motorola interface, which is quite horrible in my opinion. It has no clear labeling and arranging of functions and the most important things are far from your reach, deep in the menus. The plus is you can choose to create shortcuts, but still the interface is annoying. Another example of a flaw is the annoying thing Motorola did: they decided that the menu button is menu-only. Meaning, that if you're used to click on the menu to "OK" or enter a sub-menu, forget about it. Now, you have to get used to always click the top left button to confirm, which proves to be very annoying. The screen itself is horrible; it's of very poor quality, and presents a very little amount of colors. It's not sharp at all and not made for graphics.
Performance
The overall performance is not good. While surfing between menus, it reacts pretty quick, but when it gets to more complicated issues... It sucks. The most annoying example of this is typing SMSs. You have to navigate through the letters in each button very slowly, because if you push it too quick, it will not bear the speed and continue switching letters slowly, which means confusion and choosing the wrong letter. The biggest issue with its performance is while trying to surf the WAP internet. It simply cannot hold. When you click a link and then a button, it freezes for about a minute, and then starts blinking and performing the various operations you requested it to do a minute ago. Sometimes it will freeze forever and you'll have to actually push out the battery physically so it'll work. There is no way you can surf the internet there and it's obvious that the internet feature has been tailored to an uncapable processor, which doesn't hold the load.
Connectivity
There is no actual connectivity. It does not have a USB plug, because it has about 2 MB internal storage with no option for expansion. It does not have InfraRed, nevermind BlueTooth. The only forms of connectivity supported are MMS & Emails through your provider.
Buttom line
The C168 is a basic phone for people who don't want more than that. It has no media capabilities, but it's of very good quality and you get a lot for what you pay. It also has a radio, which is a cool feature if you're on the go. Although being cheap, it does not look so and features an elegant outside appeal which doesn't embarrass its owner.
