| Review of the Motorola i833 |
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The i833 is functionally identical to the i830, which I reviewed previously. However, that was a mini-review, while this represents a full review. I actually bought an i833 Pininfarina to replace my old i730, and so I will mostly dedicate this review to comparing the performance of the i833 to that of the old i730 (with firmware version 09).
The Motorola i833 is available on Telus Mike Last Updated: 24-Jul-2005 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
The i833 Baby Phat is probably electrically
identical to the i833 Pininfarina, and so anything I say about this model
(with the exception of physical attributes) most surely will apply to the
Baby Phat version too.
As for my old i730, I’m not sure if it has deteriorated in the 1-and-a-half
years that I’ve owned it, but it was always an excellent performer and it never
suffered from any of the maladies that seemed to have afflicted other i730
models.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: I spent quite a bit of time
wandering around the various parts of Square One where the Mike signal gets weak
(and there are surprisingly few of them). Two such locations were the lower
level of Sears and in the connecting hall between the underground section of the
mall (between Sears and Zellers) and the main hall. Only Telus Mike seems to be
able to hold up without dropping a connection through that hallway, but it does get quite
weak.
I tested my old i730 and the new i833 in the same areas, both with their
antennas down and with their antennas up. The i830 was known for exhibiting a
distinct drop in performance when the antenna was put down, but I found no such
problem with the i833. It performed almost as good either way. As for how well
it held up against the i730, I’d have to say that it was ever so slightly poorer
in this regard, but the difference was so tiny that only a back-to-back test
revealed anything worthwhile.
Over-the-road Performance: Like virtually all other
iDEN phones, the i833 has excellent over-the-road performance here in the
Toronto area. In some respects it seems to be superior to my old i730, in that
the i833 produces slightly less noticeable handoffs. The handoffs on the i730
were already fairly tame, and so the i833 is very impressive in this regard. You
can barely detect most handoffs on the i833 when using the phone on the highway
(where handoffs would be the most common due to the number sites you pass in
such a short time).
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: This is one area where the i833
seems to be much better than my old i730. While the sound quality of that phone
was never really an issue, it wasn’t quite as good as it could have been. The
i833 sounds much better-balanced on the built-in earpiece, and slightly better
on the headset. It still doesn’t match the tonal quality of some top-end
GSM phones (such as my Nokia 6310i), but the shortfall is relatively minor.
Sound Reproduction: This aspect (which is the ability
to render the voice of the caller with the fewest number of distortions or
colorizations) is also noticeably better on the new i833 than on my old i730.
However, I remember thinking that the i730 sounded at least that good back when
I’d first tested one (prior to buying my own). That might simply be that my
expectations have changed since that time, but it might also point to a certain
degree of deterioration on the i730. I can’t be sure which.
A problem that was endemic to the i730 was a tinkling sound that could be heard
in the audio, especially when the volume was cranked to level 7. The i833
doesn’t suffer from that at all, but it does seem to have a bit more
run-of-the-mill hiss. I’ve also noticed some transmitter interference on the
built-in earpiece (which on iDEN sounds like faint pfffft-pfffft sounds) that
wasn’t present in the i730. Overall however, the sonic experience of the i833 is
more pleasant than that of my old i730.
Outgoing sound quality is pretty good, and the noise-cancellation ability of the
internal microphone is phenomenal (as I noted originally about the i730). It can
make the background noise virtually disappear without any degradation to the
audio it does allow through. However, the overall quality could be a bit better,
and I’ve certainly heard better on other iDEN phones, such as the
i265.
Earpiece Volume: The earpiece volume is definitely
higher on the i833 than it was on my old i730. I get approximately the same
volume from the i833 set at level 6 as I did from the i730 set to level 7. Oddly
the reverse is true of the audio fed to a headset. The i730 was approximately 1
notch louder than the i833 is. It seems as though the Motorola engineers have
decided to balance the two volume levels a bit better in this phone, because I’d
always found the earbud was noticeably louder than the earpiece of the i730.
They seem approximately equal on the i833.
Speakerphone: All iDEN phones have fairly
impressive speakerphone features, with one minor exception. All of them seem to
cut out in response to various sounds in the room, but for the most part they
are well-behaved. The speakerphone on the i833 doesn’t differ too much from that
of the i730, but it seems to be clearer and better-balanced. It can produce more
than enough volume to hear in moderately noisy conditions and the microphone
sensitivity and clarity is among the best out there.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: Absolutely no issue here. Like the
i730 before it there are ringtones on the i833 (in particular Ringer 3) that are
so loud that you can hear them clear across the other side of a crowded food
court. I place high importance on a good solid ringer. The i833 (like the i730)
has a few musical ringtones, though the Pininfarina model has songs chosen to
suit the race car theme. The phone supports WAV file ringtones, but the overall
sound quality of them isn’t anywhere near as nice as the MP3 tones found on some
GSM and CDMA models (even other Motorolas). However, I don’t use my ringing
phone to listen to songs, so I don’t really care how they sound so long as they
work.
Keypad Design: The keypad of the i833 Pininfarina
is stylish, but its keys are mostly flush-mounted and difficult to discern
without looking at them. Their tactile feel is a little mushy, but overall I
haven’t had too much trouble using the keypad. Just the same, if I were in charge of
designing the keypad I would have made the keys more distinct-feeling, and I
would have made the tactile feel crisper.
On the other hand, the buttons on the left side of the phone (for volume and
push-to-talk), as well as the bottoms on the top (which serve various purposes,
such as answering and dialing the phone while it is closed) have a lighter and
more friendly feel to those on the i730. They are also physically larger than
those itty-bitty little buttons on the i830.
Display: The color display of the i833 is identical
to the one used in the i730, the i830, and the i265. There really isn’t much
else I can say about that I haven't said before, and so here’s my summary of the
i730’s display (reworded for this review):
The color screen has fairly good
color purity and surprisingly good clarity in bright sunlight and outdoor
conditions. The latter is one of the big drawbacks of many color screens, and
while I won’t say that the i833’s is a match for a monochrome screen outdoors,
it certainly comes as close as I’ve seen on any other color phone.
The real disappointment with the screen is its relatively small size and low
resolution, which seems a bit small for the phone (though not as much so as with
the larger i730). Fortunately you can select from any of 3 well-chosen font
sizes. The phone also features a small external screen that uses a standard
monochrome LCD display with blue backlighting, but the text is a bit small
(actually a little bit smaller than on the i730).
Sadly, like most Motorola models, spacing of phone numbers isn’t included. If
you receive a call from 905-555-5123, it shows up on the display as 19055555123,
which is very difficult to read. The same applies to phone numbers stored in the
phonebook, and it has been a long-time gripe of mine concerning virtually all
Motorola models, regardless of underlying cellular technology. It isn’t a huge
problem, especially if most of your calls come from people already in your
phonebook. If you aren’t familiar with the incoming number anyway, spacing it
out probably won’t help much.
Battery Life: This is certainly one of the sore
points of this phone. The slim lithium-ion battery that comes with the i833
provides talk and standby times that are well below what we’ve come to expect
these days. However, the battery will provide an honest 48 hours of raw
standby and it should provide up to 24 hours of use with a moderate amount of
talking. For really heavy talkers however, you would be well advised to have
frequent access to a home or automotive charger. At present there is no
high-capacity battery door available for the i833 Pininfarina model, so you
can’t use the high-capacity battery available for the i830. Perhaps in the
future Motorola will provide the necessary battery door.
Conclusions
I really like this phone and I’m definitely keeping it as a replacement for the
i730. I don’t normally say anything about styling one way or another, but I
believe the i833 is quite a handsome design. It’s also very well-built phone,
with really top-notch fit-and-finish and a solid hinge that is miles ahead of
any other iDEN model I’ve thus far tested. I wish it had the same volume level
to the earbud as my i730 and I wish there weren’t any transmitter inference (as
minor as it is). Besides that (and the usual gripes about Motorola’s user
interface) it’s definitely well worth moving up from the i730 for.
I can’t say if it will hold up to wear-and-tear as well as the i730, but when I
first got that phone I had my doubts it would last. However, the i730 survived
falls from waist height onto concrete with nary a scratch. The same may be true
of the i833. However, it looks like mars on the handsome body would be more
noticeable on the i833.
But the reason I have an i833 isn’t really so much the phone as it is the
network. Here in Southern Ontario at least, the Mike network is one of the most
stable and reliable around. The i833 just happens to be the best combination of
size, features, and performance of the current iDEN models sold by Telus (from
my point of view).
