Motorola MOTORAZR V3 Cell Phone

Wonderful phone! My first "SIM free" was purchased from Lidl and cost a tad under £80. Compared to the earlier huge phones that had nickel-cadmium batteries the RAZ broke the mould. Main drawback with these is that they are attractive to thieves and my Lidl phone was in fact stolen from my car whilst I was inside having a cat-nap! (layby on the A1 Notts-Yorks border) Second drawback is that they are not waterproof. If one NEEDS a waterproof phone just for a one-off special job there is a cheap solution - a condom! I used this method when crossing the Solent in a rubber dinghy in choppy water. Fortunately it was calm the following day when I towed back the non-runner fishing boat I had bought (ferry fees for car and trailer to IOW return would have been ridiculous). OK the V3 doesn't have as much "bang" as the V3i (which I also have) but the V3i has a snag - its large external screen is easily cracked. After the V3 theft I bought a Sonim (AKA JCB toughphone) but I was not happy with this unfortunately, "sounds like you're phoning from the moon" was one comment. Next a Samsung Solid (which isn't) was tried. OK it was cheap because its window was broken, not a five minute repair as new windows seem to be as rare as Unicorns as I later discovered. Some 2mm Lexan sheet was purchased to make a decent window but I don't like the Samsungs arcane software so I shan't bother. As to arcane, the menus are too long winded (e.g. instead of viewing an incoming text directly as on the Moto, pressing "view" just pulls up a menu of options that are available for handling texts so one has to then press "view" in the menu) Another arcane thing about the Samsung is that if an incoming text arrives whilst one is typing a txt, pressing "send" sends it to the person who just sent the text! (The Moto doesn't do that) All in all I'd say that the Moto is brilliant in the way it runs. Its not clunky like also-rans but one minor drawback is that there is no torch. Some pundits reckon phones with buttons are old-hat but I still like Motos.