Motorola V330 (a.k.a. V551) with GPRS / EDGE & bluetooth mini-review

Motorola V330

Note! This phone works better than my previous phone but the user interface is somewhat kludgy. Once you work around its misdesigned phonebook and confusing and inconsistent menu system it does work without crashing (as my sony T610 was prone to do whenever using bluetooth). I’m willing to trade some UI uglyness for a phone that doesn’t crash once a day and the extra speed that EDGE provides. Perhaps the newer Sony Erricson (T616, etc) phones work better than the T610 I bought, but I wasn’t willing to gamble after experiancing a year of crashes and other problems with my T610.

Overall, the Motorola v330 feels snappy, with the web browser and menus responding much faster than my older T610. But how does it work as a celular EDGE/GPRS modem?
Testing in Atlanta, GA, USA where I get 5 bars of service (9th floor) using a T-Mobile VPN Internet account ($19.95 a month when bundled with a voice plan, the costs have since gone up), I have seen bursts of 20-23 KB/sec on downloads, with sustained speeds of 12-13 KB/sec. Uploading is significantly slower, with sustained speeds of 4-5KB/sec. {My previous, GPRS only (no EDGE) phone maxed out at 5.6KB/sec downloads, and 1-2KB/sec uploads, so EDGE is definately an improvement. It makes browsing the web a slow process, as opposed to a painfully slow process.}

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