I have owned numerous cellular phones over the last few years, as I am sure most people have, and while none have been especially brilliant, some have most definitely been useless. The only problem I have ever had with my cell phones has been with the cell battery. The battery has either died or it just would not last long enough and I would need to buy and carry a replacement battery.
I always use my cell phone regularly, both for my career and for personal use, so having another battery is often worthwhile but having to replace a faulty or damaged battery is so annoying. My latest phone is working well but I would like a replacement battery for those times when I am on the road.
Cell Phone Batteries
These are the details of my current phone (yes, I know it is a bit outdated, I really should find a new cellular phone):
Motorola Slvr L2
Positives:
The Motorola Slvr L2 has an appealing design with improved controls, and it offers a generous feature set, including Bluetooth, a speakerphone, and world phone support. Business users should appreciate the lack of a camera as well.
Negatives:
The Motorola Slvr L2 has a washed-out display, small keypad buttons, unintuitive volume controls, and no EDGE support. Also, calls placed over a Bluetooth headset were uneven.
Facts:
Some design quirks aside, the Motorola Slvr L2 is an appealing low-end addition to the Slvr family.
Note: This product is part of the Motorola Slvr series. .
Just when you think you’ve seen enough slim cell phones, Motorola pulls another trim handset out of its sleeve with the new Motorola Slvr L2 for Cingular. Similar in size and shape to Cingular’s Slvr L7 and L6, the L2 offers the same trendy, thin profile that returned Motorola to cell phone glory after the debut of the Razr V3 a year and a half ago. On the features side, Cingular is positioning the L2 as the lower-end alternative to the other Slvrs in its stable. Although it has Bluetooth, a speakerphone, and world phone support, it comes with none of the higher-end entertainment and memory features found in its predecessors. And more interestingly, aside from a few BlackBerrys, it’s one of the few Bluetooth-equipped mobiles on the market without a digital camera. That’s good news for professionals who want a stylish cell phone with work-friendly features but who are prohibited from carrying a camera phone into their workplace. Costing $116 with a two-year contract or $206 without, the Motorola Slvr L2 carries a fair price tag for what it offers. At the moment, it’s available solely through Cingular’s B2B sales.
Like its predecessors, the Motorola Slvr L2 is slim and sexy.
As with all of Motorola’s stylecentric phones, the Slvr L2’s main draw is its eye-catching design. At less than 0.5 inch thick, the compact, lightweight (4.4 by 1.9 by 0.4 inches; 3.3 ounces) L2 casts the same thin profile that’s won the other Slvr handsets such acclaim. Adorned in basic silver, its display takes many cues from the Slvr L6. At 1.75 inches diagonally (128×160 pixels) and with support for 65,000 colors, the display is serviceable for most functions, but it appears slightly washed out and pales in comparison with 262,000-color screens. As with the L6, you can change the backlighting time and the brightness, but you can’t alter the contrast or the font size. Also, be warned that the glossy display smudges easily. The L2 is comfortable to carry, but flip-phone lovers may find the flat design somewhat awkward.
The navigation controls and the keypad buttons are similar to those on the L6, but Motorola makes some slight but important improvements to the L2 that earn it a few more points in our book. Both the navigation array and the keypad controls are slightly raised above the surface of the phone, allowing for a more tactile and user-friendly feel. The five-way toggle is easier to grasp, and we like that instead of activating the Web browser, the OK button opens the menu. You also get two soft keys, a dedicated menu button, and the traditional Talk and End/power keys. The last two controls are quite large, but the black soft keys blend in with the display border. While there’s still no dedicated Back button, the toggle can act as a shortcut to four user-defined functions.
As mentioned previously, we liked that the keypad buttons are raised above the surface of the phone. We had fewer misdials, and thanks to the bright backlighting, we could dial in dim conditions easily. On the downside, however, the keys are no bigger than the already tiny keys on the L6, and they have an equally cheap plastic feel to them. We weren’t comfortable banging out long text messages on this phone. On the right spine is a voice-dialing control, while the right spine has a single volume control. Unlike a volume rocker, which lets you turn the volume both up and down, this button only increased the volume. As a result, you must go all the way up before it cycles back to the lowest level. It’s a curious and frustrating arrangement, and we can’t imagine why Motorola opted for it.
Save for the lack of a camera–a smart move on Moto’s part–the L2’s respectable feature set doesn’t differ greatly from that of its sibling, the L6. Although you don’t get access to Motorola’s Screen3 technology, the 500-contact phone book is adequate, and there’s room in each entry for six phone numbers, an e-mail address, a postal address, and a birth date; the SIM card holds an additional 250 names. You can assign contacts to caller groups or assign them to any of 24 polyphonic ring tones. You can pair them with a picture as well, but you’ll have to be resourceful, since there’s no camera. Other features include a vibrate mode; MP3 ring-tone support; a calculator; a date book; an alarm clock; 10MB of flash memory; and text, multimedia, and instant messaging. On the business side, the L2 promises full Bluetooth, e-mail support, PC syncing, voice dialing, and a mini-USB port. You get a speakerphone, but you can’t activate it until you make a call.
You can personalize the Motorola Slvr L2 with a variety of wallpaper, menu styles, color schemes, screensavers, and alert tones. If you want more ring tones or other options, you can purchase them from Cingular over the WAP 2.0 Web browser. The L2 supports video playback and has access to a multimedia album–odd additions to a phone without a camera. Java (J2ME) support is included, but only demo versions of three games (BlockBreaker Deluxe, Tetris, and Texas Hold ‘em) are integrated.
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS) Motorola Slvr L2 world phone in San Francisco. Call quality was good overall. Volume was loud, and we could understand callers without any trouble. They reported the same conditions. Our only real complaints were that sound quality was a bit hollow at times and that callers had more trouble understanding us when using the otherwise acceptable speakerphone. We paired the L2 successfully with the Plantronics Explorer 320 Bluetooth headset but noticed more static when using it. As expected, Web browsing over GPRS speeds was slow. EDGE support would have been nice.
The Slvr L2 has a promised standby time of 14.4 days and, in our tests, met its rated talk time of 5.8 hours. According to FCC radiation tests, the L2 has a digital SAR rating of 1.54 watts per kilogram.
Overall, we like the feature set on the attractive Motorola Slvr L2, and the exclusion of the camera should fill a growing need for business-friendly devices that can still be allowed in defense plants, courtrooms, and government offices. We think it has a future, as it presents a solid lower-end option for Slvr lovers.
So for now the true question is do I spend the money buying a new Motorola Slvr L2 cellular phone battery or do I just buy a new phone with a better performing battery? Replacement batteries are fairly cheap but a new phone would be good too. I must make a decision…