Motorola W490 Black Mandarin

The Motorola W490 has a sleek, slender shape but is a bit on the heavy side considering it is a flip phone. The up side to it being heavy is that it is due to the sturdy construction which gives you a nice solid feel when you hold it. The phone has an external square display that holds 65,000 colours.

The phone gives you a large contact book, allowing you to hold 1000 names, each with three email addresses, six phone numbers, two street addresses, a nickname, a birthday, and a URL. The SIM card gives you an additional 250 names. You can group certain contacts and then give them a specific polyphonic ringtone out of the 42 that you can choose from.

Along with the basic essentials like different profiles, multimedia and text messaging, a calculator, a speakerphone, an alarm clock, a calendar, and a world clock, there are also some high end features like email and instant messaging, USB mass storage, Bluetooth and voice commands as well.

The phone comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera that allows you to take photos in four resolutions. You also get three quality settings, exposure metering, 8x digital zoom, four shutter sounds, five colour tones and five lighting modes. The camcorder allows you to shoot video clips with sound in three resolutions.

Bottom line: The Motorola W490 is a phone that has a sleek, simple design but offers a solid variety of features. It is great for making calls, taking photos and is extremely easy to use thanks to the fact that it is built for T-Mobile.