Hardware review: Motorola F3

Michael
5 April 2007

I saw an article on the Motorola F3 at http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/03/29/review_motorola_motofone_f3/ and decided to get one for myself.

It's the most basic phone I've used - calls, texts, alarm clock and nothing else.

It's very cheap.

The display is both good and bad - it's large and very easily readable, but "text" is limited to a 11 segment calculator style display. The large text and limited display means you can only view about 1 word of a text message at a time. Once it matures to a pixellated display, the technology is clearly the way forward.

The user interface is pretty simple - feels more like a watch or a calculator than a phone. At times it's almost too minimal, and it's not obvious what to do next to achieve the desired result.

The build quality feels pretty good. It's the first budget phone I've used with a decent look. It's very slim, and I've not compared the weights, but feels alot lighter than my Nokia 1101.

I've only made a few calls, but quality seems extremely good so far.

There appears to be no storage on the phone whatsoever.

Even the packaging was cheap - I bought it from phones4u, and it came in a cheap cardboard tune with phones4u branding on. They're insisting on selling it with a SIM, but it came unlocked.