Motorola EM326g Review Part 2

This post is a follow-up to part 1 of my Motorola EM326g review. If you haven’t read that yet, you’ll probably want to start there by clicking on the bold link above. And, you can also click here to see if this model is available in your area.

General Phone Function

Before I get into the all the extras, I’ll go over the basics. I haven’t yet done my typical “travel the state” test that I like to do for new phone reviews, but so far it seems like the EM326g picks up a signal wherever the other recent Motorola models do.

For my wife, this phone has replaced her Motorola w376g, and that phone set the bar pretty high both in terms of signal reception and audio quality. So far, she’s been happy with the switch. I’ll also be doing some traveling in the next week, so I’ll test the reception as I explore some of the more remote areas of my state, and incorporate that information into a future update of this review.

The volume seems to be more than sufficient. In a normal setting, the highest volume levels actually hurt my ears. For me, level 2 or 3 of a possible 7 on the volume control was adequate. I would imagine that even in very noisy situations, including car travel, level 7 would be loud enough for most.

The speaker phone is similarly loud. I believe that for almost all users, you will have no problem hearing the other party when you are using this phone.

And while we’re on the subject of volume, the ringtones can also be set to a very loud setting. On some previous phones, I’ve had trouble hearing the ringer. I don’t think that will be a problem with this model. I haven’t tested any downloaded tones yet, but my experience with other phones is that the mp3 tones are a little quieter than the standard ringers.

I also haven’t had a lot of time to give the battery life a true test, as most of the time that I’ve had the phone I’ve been using it pretty intensively to test the various features. But I’ll make an educated guess here that you should get at least a couple days of use (leaving the phone turned on 24 hours a day) between charges if you are making use of things like mp3 player, games, and bluetooth, and more like 4 days, or maybe even more, if you’re using only the phone function.

So far the games seem to be the biggest drain on the battery life, especially a racing game called “Need for Speed: Carbon.” This particular game seems to require a fair amount of processing power, and therefore will run down the battery fairly quickly.

Bluetooth, however, seems to be less power-hungry than on previous models. I don’t know much about the technology, or if this is even possible, but it kind of seems to me like the EM326g has a way of detecting when bluetooth is needed, so that even when bluetooth is enabled, it draws power only when it’s in use.

Motorola EM326g keypad

Keypad and Menus

The keypad on the EM326g is flat, black, and very similar to the W-series phones from Motorola. Like on those phones, the keypad here is a single piece of plastic with slightly raised ridges to mark the separate keys. I prefer the keypad on the T301g, which has distinct, raised keys. But here again, if you’re used to one of the other recent Motorolas, you’ll be fine with the EM326’s keypad.

The directional keypad on the EM326g is also similar to the previous Moto models, though a little thinner. Here’s another instance where I prefer the squarish, raised directional pad of the T301g. I found that my fingers sometimes seemed a little too “fat” to navigate comfortably with thin circle keypad of the 326g.

One area where I noticed a definite improvement on the EM326g over the W-series Motorolas was in the speed of text input. Many users had complained about the lag time between pressing a key and seeing it appear on the screen of the W370 or, to a lesser extent, the w376g. With this new slider, the text appears on the screen instantly.

For one-handed texting, this phone does okay with a little practice. The narrower body as compared to the T301g made it a little harder for me to hold with one hand while texting, and it also seems to me that the Samsung slider is more balanced than the EM326g, which feels just a little top heavy to me while I compose messages with one hand.

For me, the menus on the Motorola line of phones have always been a little less intuitive than on some of the other brands. Specifically compared to other recent TracFone and Net10 releases, I’ve had an easier time learning the menu navigation on the Samsung and LG phones. Sometimes it just seems to me that the Motorola menus require and extra click or two that other menus do not. That being said, if you’re familiar with the menu layout for the Motorola W series, you’ll do fine with the EM326 menus.

There are also several shortcut keys that are worth mentioning here. From the home screen, the left soft key brings up the main menu and the right soft key loads the web browser. Below the soft keys are two more shortcut keys – the music key and the back key. I like these two additions to the keypad over the W-series – the music key obviously opens the music player, and the back key is nice to have right there on the keypad for when you are composing text messages or navigating the menus.

The four directions on the circular keypad also provide programmable shortcuts. Out of the box, this phone defaults to having camera, messages, contacts, and ring style as the four shortcuts, but you can change them to your liking.

Also – and this is a very big deal for many users – we can finally LOCK THE BROWSER button to prevent accidentally opening the browser and having units deducted! Many people have complained about the inability to turn off the browser key on recent TracFone models, and maybe Trac/Net10 finally heard our complaints.  This info is courtesy of my friend and TracFone expert Jim. Use the following menu navigation to lock your browser key:

Settings >Security >Lock Application >Browser

Once in the Lock Application menu you can select any application from the list to lock. After you lock an application (such as the browser), the security code will have to be entered in order to launch the application. The default security code is 1234, which also has to be entered when you go into the Lock Application feature.

That’s all I’ve got for now . My next post will cover the connectivity and some of the many extras available on this phone. When that info goes up, I’ll also post a link to it from my Motorola EM326g Review Index Page.

[NOTE: Part 3 of this review is now available.]

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General Phone Function

Before I get into the all the extras, I’ll go over the basics. I haven’t yet done my typical “travel the state” test that I like to do for new phone reviews, but so far it seems like the EM326g picks up a signal wherever the other good Motorola models do.

For my wife, this phone has replaced her Motorola w376g, and that phone set the bar pretty high both in terms of signal reception and audio quality. So far, she has not noticed a decline in performance with the switch. I’ll be doing some traveling in the next week, so I’ll test the reception as I explore some of the more remote areas of my state, and incorporate that information into a future update of this review.

The volume seems to be more than sufficient. In a normal setting, the highest volume level actually hurt my ears. For me, level 2 or 3 of a possible 7 on the volume control was adequate. I would imagine that even in very noisy situations, including car travel, level 7 would be loud enough for most.

The speaker phone is similarly loud. I believe that for almost all users, you will have no problem hearing the other party when you are using this phone.

And while we’re on the subject of volume, the ringtones can also be set to a very loud setting. On some previous phones, I’ve had trouble hearing the ringer. I don’t think that will be a problem with this model. I haven’t tested any downloaded tones yet, but my experience with other phones is that the mp3 tones are a little quieter than the standard ringers.

I also haven’t had a lot of time to give the battery life a true test, as most of the time that I’ve had the phone I’ve been using it pretty intensively to test the various features. But I’ll make an educated guess here that you should get at least a couple days of use (leaving the phone turned on 24 hours a day) between charges if you are making use of things like mp3 player, games, and bluetooth, and more like 4 days, or maybe even more, if you’re using only the phone function.

So far the games seem to be the biggest drain on the battery life, especially a racing game called “Need for Speed: Carbon.” This particular game seems to require a fair amount of processing power, and therefore will run down the battery fairly quickly.

Bluetooth, however, seems to be less power-hungry than on previous models. I don’t know much about the technology, or if this is even possible, but it kind of seems to me like the EM326g has a way of detecting when bluetooth is needed, so that even when bluetooth is enabled it’s drawing power only when it’s in use.

Keypad and Menus

The keypad on the EM326g is flat, black, and very similar to the W-series phones from Motorola. Like on those phones, the keypad here is a single piece of plastic with slightly raised ridges to mark the separate keys. I prefer the keypad on the T301g, which has distinct “chiclet” type keys. But here again, if you’re used to one of the other recent Motorolas, you’ll be fine with the EM326’s keypad.

The directional keypad on the EM326g is also similar to the previous Moto models, though a little thinner. Here’s another instance where I prefer the squarish, raised directional pad of the T301g. I found that my fingers sometimes seemed a little too “fat” to navigate comfortably with thin circle keypad of the 326g.

One area where I noticed a definite improvement on the EM326g over the W-series Motorolas was in the speed of text input. Many users had complained about the lag time between pressing a key and seeing it appear on the screen of the W370 or, to a lesser extent, the w376g. With this new slider, the text appears on the screen instantly.

For one-handed texting, this phone does okay with a little practice. The narrower body as compared to the T301g made it a little harder for me to hold with one hand while texting, and it also seems to me that the Samsung slider is more balanced than the EM326g, which feels just a little top heavy to me while I compose messages with one hand.

For me, the menus on the Motorola line of phones have always been a little less intuitive than on some of the other brands. Specifically compared to other recent TracFone and Net10 releases, I’ve had an easier time learning the menu navigation on the Samsung and LG phones. Sometimes it just seems to me that the Motorola menus require and extra click or two that other menus do not. That being said, if you’re familiar with the menu layout for the Motorola W series, you’ll do fine with the EM326 menus.

There are also several shortcut keys that are worth mentioning here. From the home screen, the left soft key brings up the main menu and the right soft key loads the web browser. Below the soft keys are two more shortcut keys – the music key and the back key. I like these two additions to the keypad over the W-series – the music key obviously opens the music player, and the back key is nice to have right there on the keypad for when you are composing text messages or navigating the menus.

The four directions on the circular keypad also provide programmable shortcuts. Out of the box, this phone defaults to having camera, messages, contacts, and ring style as the four shortcuts, but you can change them to your liking.

Also – and this is a very big deal for many users – we can finally LOCK THE BROWSER button to prevent accidentally opening the browser and having units deducted. This info is courtesy of my friend and TracFone expert Jim. Use the following menu navigation to lock your browser key:

Settings >Security >Lock Application >Browser

Once in the Lock Application menu you can select any application from the list to lock. After you lock an application (such as the browser), the security code will have to be entered in order to launch the application. The default security code is 1234, which also has to be entered when you go into the Lock Application feature.