Motorola Barrage – rugged folder type 3G phone

For:

Motorola Barrage has tough design. It comes with 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, 3G support and push-to-talk. The call and photo quality is decent.

Against:

The 3G connection speed is slow. The video and music playback quality are not good.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Motorola Barrage is based on CDMA2000 1X technology that supports dual-band of
CDMA2000 1X 1900/800. The Barrage phone has 256MB internal memory and micro-SD expansion slot that supports up to 16GB cards. This phone has folder-type rugged design. It is weather-, shock- and dust-proof phone. The supported ring-tone formats are MIDI, MP3 and AAC.

1.6-inch external display has a resolution of 120×160 pixels. In addition, the 2.2-inch internal display has 176×220 pixels resolution and 18-bit colors. Motorola Barrage has 2-megapixel camera that has features of still image capture and video recorder. The still image resolution formats are 1600×1200, 1280×960, 640×480 and 320×240. The camera has 8x digital zoom and self-timer delay function of 10 seconds, 5 seconds and 3 seconds. The special effects include Black & White, Negative, Antique and Normal.

The additional features are Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, WAP 2.0 Web browser, E-911 compliant and TTY compatible. The messaging features of Motorola Barrage include Voice messages, Voice mail, Email, Instant messages, Picture Messages, Multimedia messages (MMS) and Text messages (SMS).

Motorola Barrage supports the digital audio of formats: WMV (sound), eAAC+, AAC+, AAC, WAV and MP3. Supported video playback formats are WMV, H.263 video and AMR audio, MPEG4 and H.264.

Motorola Barrage has 1170mAH lithium ion battery that has a life of 383 minutes of talk time. The Barrage has two connectors: 1×2.55mm headset jack- sub-mini phone and 1×micro-USB. Accessories supplied inside the package are wall charger, battery, headset and user manual.

Razzle Dazzle:

Motorola Barrage is 3.78 inches tall, 2.09 inches wide and 0.96 inch deep and it weighs around 4.2 ounces. The Barrage has angular body. The phone gives a sturdy, solid and comfortable feel while taking in the hand. There are rubber patches on the plastic skin at front, rear and edges. Also, the phone does not have a heavy weight in spite of its strong construction.

Inside Dope:

Motorola has a great history of manufacturing cell phones. Now, the company has launched rugged handset, Motorola Barrage for Verizon Wireless. It is flip-design phone covered with tough plastic and rubber sidings. The rugged phone by Motorola offers decent call quality and functional feature set. The Barrage costs around $179 without any contract, it is also available with a 2 year contract from Verizon Wireless. This will cost you $129 along with a $50 mail-in rebate. Motorola Barrage handset does not have an attractive design but it is enough strong to handle shocks. We tested this by throwing the phone around and even put in inside the water. The handset could withstand all this. If you need a rugged handset that offers functional features, then we will recommend new Motorola Barrage. However, there were a few disappointments on the phone. Its 3G connection was a bit slow. Music and video quality too were unimpressive. We don’t think the latter is too important in a phone like this. We just want to say that you if you buying the Motorola Barrage for music and video playback, you need to look elsewhere.

Design

There is dedicated music controls located beneath the external display on the lid. It is nice to use the music player without opening the phone. The camera lens is located above the display. Push-to-talk (PTT) button and volume rocker sits on the left spine and are raised above the surface. You can easily reach both the buttons while making a call. Charger/micro-USB port is located below. You can find the 2.5mm headset jack, handset lock/speakerphone button and voice dialing control on the right spine. The antenna is forming a small loop on the top.

The battery cover is protected with a locking mechanism, which makes Motorola Barrage a waterproof phone. It is easy to open the battery lock with a coin or sharp fingernail. You will find the micro-SD card slot behind the battery cover, which protects the memory card from water and moisture.

Display

1.6-inch external display supports 65,000 colors. The external display is vibrant and bright. It shows photo caller ID, signal strength, wallpaper, battery life and date/time. You can change the wallpaper on the external display.

2.2-inch internal display has a resolution of 176×220 pixels that supports 65,000 colors. It does not match the 262,000 hue display screen, but still it is sufficient for Motorola Barrage. Brightness, menu and dial font size, and backlight time can be changed. There are three selections of menu interface.

Navigation Array and Keyboard

Motorola Barrage has comfortable and spacious navigation array. It has Talk button, End/power key, camera shortcut, clear button, two soft keys and four-way toggle with central OK button. The toggle keys are tactile and have dedicated shortcuts. The keypad buttons has bright backlight and has large numbers on them. We could text and dial accurately and quickly.

Phonebook and PIM features

Motorola Barrage can store 1000 contacts in its phone book and each entry can save two email addresses, five phone-numbers, notes and street address. You can divide all the contacts into groups and pair them with one ring-tone and a photo for photo caller ID. There is a separate phonebook for PTT numbers and these can also be paired into groups.

The basic features are world clock, notepad, stopwatch, alarm clock, calendar, multimedia and text messaging, 10 polyphonic ring-tones and calculator. The advanced features of Motorola Barrage includes voice recorder, voice commands, Web-based POP3 accounts, instant messaging, GPS Support, PC sync, dial-up modem, USB Mass Storage and Bluetooth with stereo and object transfer profiles. Verizon also provides its PTT network service and VZ Navigator for GPS.

Camera

Motorola Barrage has 2-megapixel camera that works for still image capture and video recorder. It takes pictures in five different resolutions with small size photo for caller ID. The Barrage does not have a flash and camera shutter. You can use the external display on the lid for self-portrait. The camera has the features of three shutter sounds with a silent option, digital zoom, nine fun frames, three color effects, five white-balance settings, brightness control and self-timer.

The camcorder can record the videos in two different resolutions 176×144 pixels and 320×240 pixels. The video editing options are small. You can record video clips up to one minute for multimedia messages and of larger length in standard mode.

You can send the video clips and captured photos via memory card, USB cable, Bluetooth and MMS. You can also save them to phone’s internal memory or micro-SD card. We captured some still photographs and recorded some video clips from the camera for testing. The photo quality was fine and colors were natural with a bit of image noise. The video quality was average.

Media Player

Motorola Barrage has a media player that supports repeat and shuffle modes. The Barrage phone supports V Cast Music with Rhapsody and V Cast streaming video content. There is an airplane mode also available in the media player.

Applications and Personalization

Motorola Barrage has pre-loaded Bing search application, but it does not have any games. It supports the BREW platform instead of Java. You can customize the phone with a selection of clock formats, banners, display themes and wallpapers. Additional ring-tones and more options are available through Verizon via WAP 2.0 browser.

Call Quality

We made few calls through dual-band based Motorola Barrage via Verizon Wirleess. The overall call quality was decent. We received natural, clear and loud volume with good signal strength at our end. The callers also received good sound quality and even they did not feel that we were calling through a cell phone. The speakerphone call quality was also good, but volume was a bit low.

The 3G connection speed is not fast on Motorola Barrage. We downloaded a 3MB music file via V Cast in two minutes, which is longer than that of other Verizon’s phones. V Cast video took some seconds for loading. The streaming video quality was average. The video clips seemed to be frozen or paused. The music playback quality was also not good from the speakers. However, the music quality was good when tested with the  headset.

Battery Life

Motorola Barrage has a battery life of 6.38 hours of talk time and 22.25 days of idle standby time. The digital SAR of the Barrage is 1.25 watts per kg as per FCC.

Verdict:

Motorola Barrage is a tough and rugged folder-type handset for the Verizon customers. It delivers good call quality and functional feature set. Buy it if you are looking for a rugged phone.