| Mini-Review of the Audiovox 8930 |
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The Audiovox 8930 is a CDMA clamshell model that also includes a 1.3 Megapixel camera. Aside from being able to take still photographs it will also record mini-videos. As most you know I don’t review cameras any longer, but I will touch on this later in the review simply because of the high Megapixel rating of this model.
The Audiovox 8930 is available on Bell Mobility Last Updated: 12-Jul-2005 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: The RF sensitivity of the 8930
proved to be quite good, though oddly the phone lost service the first time it
was taken into the Hall of Shame over Square One. When I saw that I initially
assumed that the phone had poor RF qualities, but I then went back to an area
where the signal was strong and I dragged a call into a known weak area. The
8930 performed admirably and it blew away my old Startac that I use a reference
phone.
I can’t say if the dropping of service was a one-off anomaly or a common trait
of this phone, but once you are in a call the 8930 not only holds on to it for
dear life, it also does so with very little drama. In this regard the phone is a
solid performer.
Over-the-road Performance: As this was only a
mini-review I wasn’t able to take the phone on a drive with me. I was therefore
unable to judge the over-the-road performance. However, I have found that there
is often a correlation between the way a phone handles extremely weak signals
and how it performs on the move. Given the 8930’s excellent handling of low
signals I would consider it quite likely that it also works well in a moving
car.
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: Sadly the tonal balance of the 8930
is like every other Audiovox CDMA phone I’ve tested to date. It’s a little bit
tinny and very peaky through the built-in earpiece, though through my Samsung
earbud it sounded gorgeous. That too is a common trait of Audiovox models,
indicating that they use excellent circuitry, but provide god-awful speakers in
their earpieces.
If you commonly use your phone with headsets then you might be able overlook the
poor tonal balance of the native phone earpiece. However, this is one aspect of
the phone that rates very poorly.
Sound Reproduction: Also like most other Audiovox
phones I’ve tested, the sound reproduction of the 8930 is very good. It
reproduces most nuances of speech exceptionally well (especially when heard
through a good-quality headset).
Earpiece Volume: Poor tonal quality aside, the
maximum volume of the internal earpiece is great. Even the faintest of callers
can be turned up loud enough to hear in noisy environments. Sadly this doesn’t
hold true of headset output, which gets only mediocre maximum volume. This is
unfortunate, given the overall excellent sound quality of the headset output.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: In a word, pathetic. Like so many
modern phones the 8930 has only musical ringtones that are just so faint that
hearing this phone ring in a noisy environment is simply out of the question.
I’ve got nothing against musical ringtones (which work well in mixed company and
with low ambient noise), but all phones should at least be equipped with one
ringtone that is LOUD.
Keypad Design: The keys on the 8930 are flush to
the backplane, but overall they offer excellent feel. It was difficult to use
the keypad without looking at it, but all of the keys have excellent tactile
feedback. On the phone that I tested, all the keys worked consistently. The
4-way cursor button was a bit of a pest to use, but compared to some other
models I’ve tested over the last year or two it was actually not bad. The
consistent feel and quality of the keypad certainly helps.
Display: The display looks terrific indoors, and it
is well suited to displaying photographs and videos. However, like many color
displays it was virtually impossible to see in direct sunlight. Color displays
aren’t very good at being seen outdoors anyway, and it seems that the better the
display looks inside, the worse it works outside. Only you can decide which of
these qualities best fits your requirements.
Camera: I don’t normally comment on cameras any
longer, but the 1.3 Megapixel rating of this one prompted me to check out the
quality. As I suspected however, the limiting factor in cell phone cameras isn’t
really the number of pixels in the photograph, but rather the poor quality of
the lenses. In the case of the lens in the 8930 however, I found it to have
excellent consistency and very few optical distortions, but it just didn’t have
the ability to render an image that was sharp enough to make use of the
resolution.
In other words, the level of detail in the image WAS NOT much different from
what you’d get in a good-quality 640 x 480 photograph (which has only 0.3
Megapixels). The bottom line is that the 1.3 Megapixel rating is more of a
marketing tool that a useful improvement in image quality. You AREN’T going to
use this thing to take serious photographs, and the size of the resulting images
only makes the photographs bigger for no reason.
Conclusions
I came away from the 8930 with pretty much the same mixed feelings I’ve had when
I tested other Audiovox CDMA phones. It excelled at some things and was horrible
at others. Unfortunately the things it did poorly at (in particular the tonal
balance of the internal earpiece) were things that I personally rate very highly
in a phone. The sound coming out of the earpiece was simply OFFENSIVE to my ears
and for that reason alone I would never consider buying this phone.
However, for those who aren’t so picky there is much to love about this
particular model. It has excellent RF sensitivity, super-loud earpiece volume,
excellent sound when used with a headset, and a gorgeous-looking display (at
least when used indoors). This is just one of those models that is well-suited
for some people, and ill-suited for others. I therefore can’t make any solid
recommendations other than to caution you to ask yourself which features are
most important to you. Buy this phone only if the things it does poorly are of
little concern to you.
