| Review of the Motorola i850 |
 |
The i850 is one of the newer breed of iDEN phones that possesses the
greatly-improved audio performance that I first encountered on the
i580. The i850 is a low-end iDEN model,
while the i580 is a high-end phone, but both have similar audio and RF
characteristics. Careful with the numbers however, as it is easy to
confused 580 with 850. Last Updated: 18-Oct-2006 |
Before reading this review, please read
Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: Testing Motorola iDEN phones for RF
sensitivity has become a bit boring. All of the iDEN models I’ve tested over the
last few years have had virtually identical RF capabilities. The differences
between each have been so small in fact, that it’s probably just a matter of
individual states-of-tune for each of the phones I tested. This is contrary to
what you’ll read in various forums, where people make it sound like one iDEN
phone is markedly better or worse than another. While this may happen with
specific examples of a model, I haven’t found any evidence to suggest that on a
model-by-model basis there is any difference at all.
Over-the-road Performance: The same goes for this
aspect of the phone’s performance. All iDEN phones have excellent over-the-road
performance, though the newer generation seems to handle it just a little bit
better. The i850 performs almost identically to the i580 is real-world testing,
which is to say exceptionally well.
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: Like the i580, the new i850 has
excellent tonal balance that is light years better than what we’d been seeing on
previous generation iDEN models. That isn’t to say that older models, such as
the i730, i830,
and i833 were poor, but by comparison to the
newer generation of phones they sound decidedly tinny. In fact, the newer iDEN
phones sound so well-balanced that it’s difficult to think of a phone on any
technology that actually sounds better. The recently-tested
Motorola PEBL is the only that springs to
mind, but even there the difference isn’t all that great.
Sound Reproduction: Again, the newer generation of
iDEN phones moves a step ahead of previous generations by providing sound
reproduction that it about as good as it gets. Nuances of speech are accurately
reproduced by the i850 and it’s certainly among the top 10 best-sounding phones
around. The GSM PEBL is a bit better, but that might be because the 13 kilobit
CODED using on GSM is just a little better-sounding than the 8 kilobit CODEC
used on iDEN.
One aspect of the i850 that beats the i580 however is the much lower hiss
levels. The i580 suffers from a rather annoying amount of background hiss, while
the i850 produces much less of it for any given volume setting.
Earpiece Volume: The volume is good, but it’s
slightly lower than on the i580. I had to set the volume on my i580 to 6 and the
volume on the i850 to 7 in order hear exactly the same levels coming out of each
earpiece. It was suggested that the i580 might appear to have more hiss due to
its higher earpiece output, but I tested the i580 and i850 with their volumes
set to 6 and 7 respectively and I could still hear more hiss in the i580.
Outgoing Audio: Like the i580 and the
i730/i830/i833 before it, the i850 has damned good outgoing audio, even when
there is lots of background noise. Most of the recent iDEN models have
incredibly good noise cancellation abilities that don’t seem to distort the
desired audio in any way. You’d be surprised just how noisy the background can
be when using the i850 and still have your callers think you are in a quiet
location.
Speakerphone: This aspect of iDEN models is always
great, but unfortunately the i850 still uses the old rear-mounted single
speaker. It certainly generates as much volume as the speakerphone in i580, but
it does so with far more sympathetic vibrations in the phone and a little less
clarity. However, it uses Motorola’s revised duplex scheme that doesn’t have the
failing of earlier generations of iDEN models. That is to say, the audio doesn’t
cut out at the slightest provocation and the speakerphone feature is very
useable, even in surprisingly noisy locations.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: This is never a problem for an iDEN
phone and that includes the i850. The ringers use the speakerphone sounder and
as a result the ringtones are very loud. A number of the native ringers are
quite loud, and you’d be surprised just how loud a well-chosen MP3 sound will
be. I have one on my i580 that was recorded from a Panasonic cordless phone
ringer and it is incredibly audible in even the noisiest of locations.
Keypad Design: I had mixed feelings about the
keypad design. On one hand it has nice soft-feel keys that were easy to press
and provided a decent level of tactile feedback. On the other hand it was a
flush design that meant I couldn’t actually feel the location of the keys. That
lack of feel meant that I had to look at the keypad to use it correctly.
Display: The i850 seems to have an identical 176 x
220 pixel color display as the i580 (with 18-bit color depth). However, the
backlight on the i850 wasn’t quite as bright as on my i580, nor was it quite as
white. Nonetheless, the display was still reasonably bright and could still be
seen outdoors.
Icing on the Cake
Camera: The i850 includes only a 640 x 480 VGA
camera that really isn’t suitable for much else than taking Picture ID
photographs or so sending to other phones via MMS. The overall quality of the
pictures was fine, but at such a low resolution there wasn’t really much detail
in the images anyway.
Talk-Around: This feature goes under quite a few
names, depending on which iDEN network you might be on, but Telus refers to it
as this. Talk-Around is an off-network digital walkie-talkie that can be used
even when there is no network coverage. Barry & I tested this mode (with me
using the i580 at my end) when he was driving home from picking up the i850 from
me.
We were able to keep in contact as he drove up highway 403 toward the 401 to a
distance of just short of 3 km. However, that was with an earthen berm in our
way that would have severely cut down the range. Motorola claims that
Talk-Around is good for up 13 km in line-of-sight situations.
The overall quality of the conversation is excellent, no doubt because
Talk-Around using the AMBE+ CODEC. Because the communication is digital, it
doesn’t suffer from crackling and hiss the way FRS radios do (even when they are
still quite close to one another). The audio remained virtually perfect until
almost the last second.
Features not found in the i850: To cap off the
comparison to the i580, I should note that the i850 does not contain the
following features: It has no Bluetooth, no MP3 player, no external memory card,
no LED light for the camera, and the i850 is NOT Mil-Spec. It also has less data
storage space for Java applets. That’s not a huge list of things, and the
missing items aren’t really necessary for someone looking for a phone AS A
PHONE.
Conclusions
If I didn’t already own the i580, and if I hadn’t become so accustomed to having
an MP3 player on my phone, I’d probably give serious thought to getting an i850.
The overall sound quality and tonal balance (and lesser amount of hiss than the
i580) make it the perfect iDEN phone for someone looking for a non-ruggedized
model that doesn’t have a bunch of bells and whistles.
