V265 Views
Close the phone with a solid, satisfying clap, and you'll see the small but serviceable monochrome external LCD. Rectangular in shape, the display gives you the time, signal strength, a battery-life indicator, and caller-ID info (where available). Just above the LCD is the Motorola V265's VGA camera lens, complete with a small fish-eye mirror for self-portraits. Sitting on the left edge of the phone are volume-up/down controls and a dedicated speakerphone button
Flipping open the phone, we were disappointed by the smallish, 1.5-inch-diagonal internal display. The 65,000-color screen looked a little soft and washed out, and it's tough to read in direct sunlight. On the plus side, the V265's raised keypad does a solid job, even if the keys felt a bit small to our fingers. The backlighting too was dim. The five-way navigational keypad gives you shortcuts to messaging, Verizon's Get It Now service, and Web browsing, while a dedicated camera button lies just to the left. You also get dedicated camera and menu controls, two soft keys, and a Clear button.
The V265 boasts a solid camera with 640x480, 320x240, and 160x120 resolution. You can apply one of four color styles to your pictures (standard color, black and white, antique, or negative), and you can adjust for sunny, cloudy, indoor, or nighttime lighting conditions. There's also a timer for group shots and a 4X digital zoom. The phone's picture quality was pretty good for a VGA camera. Images looked a little soft, but we were pleased with the vibrant colors and the lack of noise. The pictures we took in dark conditions looked a bit grainy, but that's not unusual for a submegapixel camera phone. When you're done snapping photos, you can store them in the phone's 4MB of shared memory, send them to buddies via MMS and e-mail, or share them on Verizon's PixPlace service. The V265 doesn't have a video recorder, but that's not a surprise for a midrange phone.
Personalization options for the V265 are excellent. You can choose from the Moto, Silver, Midnight, Jade, Tangy, or Solar color schemes; pick an image in the photo library or any of the 11 preloaded wallpaper designs; alter the screensaver (again, using the 11 images or a photo); or change the main menu items from icons to a list view. We didn't get any games on our review phone, but you can download BREW-compliant titles along with applications and ring tones from the Get It Now service.
V265 Images
