Motorola Adventure V750 Review

Introduction:

The sleek Motorola Adventure V750 compliments the rough and tumble Casio G’zOne Boulder in Verizon’s revamped Push to Talk lineup, but don’t be fooled by appearances. The Adventure manages to meet military specifications for shock, vibration, dust, solar radiation, extreme temperatures and altitude while remaining relatively svelte and fashionable. The EVDO Rev. A device uses Verizon’s second generation PTT service and sports a 2-megapixel camera, media player with external controls and microSD expansion up to 8GB.

Included in the box you’ll find:

Design:

The Adventure is influenced heavily by the RAZR line; it is relatively thin though wide, with a pronounced hump at the bottom of the phone. Frankly, we increasingly find ourselves wondering if Motorola’s design team is even trying anymore.



You can compare the Motorola Adventure V750 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Though the design is familiar, it is one of the more appealing RAZR rehashes we’ve seen. The outer housing is silver with a black interior that extends to the hump. Scarlet accents are found around the front display and on the side buttons, and the battery door is gray and textured with nubs. The entire phone is constructed of plastic, but for the most part the phone feels very solidly built. The battery door, however, is flimsy and often does not seat properly.

The external display is on the large side at 1.6” and 120x160px, and below it are three media controls for play/pause, fast-forward and rewind. The 2.0 megapixel camera is above the screen, and all of this is set in a carbon fiber-esque trim that is ringed in scarlet. On the left side of the phone is the volume rocker and textured PTT button, which is colored scarlet with what appears to be an LED light, but in reality is just a black vertical strip in the middle of the key. The PTT button has more travel and is easier to use than the others, but they all feel just fine when pressed. The microUSB charging/data port is on the bottom of the left side. To the right is the Voice Command and Smart Key, with the 2.5mm headphone jack near the bottom. The hump at the bottom is angled slightly toward the user and houses the speaker. When viewed straight on it somewhat resembles the upcoming Camaro’s grill.


Opening the flip reveals the 2.2” inner QVGA display, set in a nubbed black housing. As is normal for Motorola, both screens are only 65K colors which cause them to lack depth and clarity, and wash out in direct sunlight. The keypad keys are all circular and raised slightly so navigating them by feel is fairly simple. They are very soft when pressed, but give a slight click as reassurance. The directional pad is a scarlet ring with a black OK button in the middle. To each side are three buttons arranged vertically; to the left is the soft key, Camera/Video and Send and to the right are the soft key, Clear and End. There is good spacing between all the keys, and like the trim on the front they are printed on faux carbon fiber.

Despite its plastic construction the Adventure feels like a solid phone. We’d have qualms putting it through the same punishment we did the Boulder, but don’t doubt that it could stand up to the everyday wear and tear most users would subject it to. Even though the design screams RAZR, the scarlet and carbon fiber accents give the phone a nice look and we don’t dislike it as much as other RAZR variants.

Software and User Interface:

Interface

Unfortunately the Adventure runs the standard Verizon “red bar” UI, though Moto has skinned it to a small extent. The default Vapor theme is very smooth and has cool effects as long as you only go one level deep into any menu. The rest of the themes are just variations on the UI and don’t do anything for us. The user can set shortcuts for all four d-pad directions, and choose to show or hide the shortcuts on the main display. That is the extent of customization on the phone. The phonebook can hold 1000 entries with five numbers and two email addresses each. VoiceSignal is used for voice dialing.

On the media front the Adventure has support for VCast TV and Music with Rhapsody, and the user can sideload their own music and video content on microSD cards up to 8GB. With the speaker being at the bottom of the phone, watching videos is a bit strange especially in widescreen mode. Users can download games, BREW applications and ringtones from Verizon’s content deck. The Adventure supports VZNavigator and Field Force Manager GPS solutions.

The 2.0 megapixelcamera took disappointing pictures. Colors were usually exaggerated, lines were blurred and especially in artificial lighting images were washed out and grainy. The options available are Resolution, Self Timer, Brightness, White Balance and Color Effects. The camcorder can record at either 176x144 or 320x240, but the higher resolution can only be used for videos 15 seconds and under.



Push-to-Talk

Verizon has had PTT for years now, but poor performance and no interoperability with Nextel has led to Verizon all but writing off the technology. Though the coverage may be spotty, Nextel’s PTT simply worked and worked fast. Call setup times were under a second, which VZW (or Sprint, with Ready Link) could never come within spitting distance of.

Sprint recently launched QChat, which brings CDMA PTT over Rev. A and most importantly is interoperable with Nextel. We came away quite impressed with their offering when we reviewed the Sanyo PRO series. Though VZW has ducked questions of how their new PTT service works, it does indeed run over Rev. A and we have to think it is closely related to QChat. Unlike Sprint’s service which only works in Rev. A coverage, VZW allows PTT over any data connection, even 1x. When PTT coverage is available, the signal indicator switches from white on black to black on white.


When in EVDO coverage (the phone doesn’t differentiate from Rev. A and Rev. 0) the service generally works well enough. Call setup times are usually under a second, but we did notice delays up to 5s at times which we never experienced with Sprint’s service. Once the call was connected communication was lightning fast. On 1x, however, the service was as terrible as always. We experienced call setup times of up to 30s, as well as outright failures. After setup there was a noticeable delay in communication, and more than one time we were connected but got no audio on either phone. At its worst there were 15s delays in communication after setup.

Furthermore, we have four review units (two Boulders, two Adventures) and are testing in a blanketed Rev. A location. At times any of the four phones may drop to 1x or no PTT coverage while some or all of the others remain in EVDO or PTT coverage. There has been no discernable pattern with this in either the phone models or individual units. We have even been in EVDO coverage but not had PTT available for one reason or another. Sprint’s coverage may be somewhat limited due to their Rev. A requirement, but it makes for a better and more stable product for the end user.

VZW maintains a separate PTT contact list from the regular phone book, which allows them to show presence indicators so you know if your contact is available or not. If a PTT number is stored in the regular phonebook you can still contact them via PTT, but there is no indication that they are PTT capable like on Sprint phones.

Unlike Casio, Motorola got the ergonomics of the PTT button down; it is larger than the other buttons and located just where you would expect it, on the middle of the left hand side. Then again, as the inventors of iDEN you’d expect Motorola to know a thing or two about PTT.
Overall we feel that it’s time for VZW to give up PTT. The new service works better than the original, but only when you are in Rev. A coverage and even then it is still not as good as iDEN or Direct Connect on Sprint. What ultimately dooms the service is its inability to talk with Nextel phones. Individual Nextel subscribers may be leaving in droves, but its PTT service it is still an industry standard and there are too many businesses that rely on Direct Connect as their primary means of communication. The bottom line is that VZW simply offers an inferior product.

Performance:

The Motorola performed well, and voice quality was very good on both ends. Callers said that we sounded much better than we did on the Boulder, and that our voice was clear and more natural sounding. On our end volume was good and the caller sounded much fuller than they did on the Boulder. Reception was generally good, we never had an issue with voice calls being completed (the same cannot be said for PTT, but we’ve covered that) and even though our signal indicator fluctuated from time to time performance didn’t seem to suffer for it. The battery is rated at a stellar 5.5 hours of talk time and 540 hours of standby time, but in our testing we were able to beat the rated talk time by nearly an hour.

Conclusion:

Of Verizon’s two new PTT phones we came away more impressed with the overall performance of the Adventure. Though it may not be as durable as the Boulder, it has a better design and more importantly better phone and excellent battery performance. The phone can’t be held accountable for the poor PTT performance, but then again when you have so many options why would you choose a phone based on an ill-performing feature? Similar to our recommendation of the Boulder to those who will beat their phones up, we would recommend the Adventure to those who aren’t quite as rough on phones and are looking for a more stylish alternative. Just don’t buy it for the PTT.