Motorola V365 push-to-talk clamshell

The hefty clamshell serves up calling features like push-to-talk, Bluetooth, a speakerphone and conference calling. But are all the features worth the girth?

Design

Like many push-to-talk phones, the Motorola V365 is quite bulky and hefty at 1.1 inches thick and 3.9 ounces; luckily, it wraps all that girth in a rubberized, fingertip-friendly, shell. Just keep in mind that unlike Motorola's i580, the V365 isn't ruggedized, so don't expect the rubber finish to protect the handset against water or tumbles onto a hard surface. The V365 includes a disappointing monochrome external screen and a decent two-inch color internal display that suffer from a slight screen-door effect. The clamshell also boasts a VGA camera that takes tolerable shots, but nothing stellar (which is to be expected from this sort of camera). Unfortunately, the camera doesn't provide many customization options besides zoom and brightness.

Calling - Good

Call quality on the V365 was surprisingly mediocre; our friends sounded tinny and we encountered a bit of static, despite the fact that our reception rarely dipped below three bars. However, the flip phone does score a few points with its array of calling features, including push-to-talk, Bluetooth and voice tagging. The V365 also packs in a loud speaker phone that startled us in our quiet office, along with conference calling for up to five people. We were also able to maneuver between calls and separate one call from the rest, but that required a bit of menu digging. The clamshell's phonebook was rather uninteresting and bland, with space for only one number per entry, but it does support while-you-type-searching, eliminating the tedious task of drilling through a sea of names to find a contact. The V365 impressed us with its seven hours of talk time; however, that is still two hours shy of what Cingular claims.

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