Motorola E398

Posted by T3 Online on Wed 31 Oct 2007

The Miss Piggy of mobiles - colourful and a bit porky

It's loud, it's proud and it's, er, pink. Yup, from the keypad backlight to the menus, T-Mobile's new "fun" phone has been emblazoned with the company's inimitable colours.

However, while that may not be to everyone's taste, when the pink menus and backlight are turned off, you could almost confuse this for a sophisticated handset. It's a bit of a lump, but there's a lot going on in there. Especially noteworthy are the twin speakers. Their "3D sound" gimmick is just that, but it is loud. The vibrate alert also chips in to give the impression of an earth-shaking sub - well, it had us fooled.

The phone supports MP3 playback, but it would have been nice if it also supported T-Mobile's iTunes-esque Ear Phones service. It doesn't, although you do get a generous 64MB "TransFlash" memory card included to save tracks to (along with photos, games and video). As well as being the only memory format to sound like a gender- realignment procedure, TransFlash is also teeny - about half the size of a SIM.

The downside is that the card's a fiddly bugger to prise from behind the battery. The designers say it's only meant to be moved when you change phones or want a bigger card (128MB tops at the mo), but it's a pain if you swap frequently.

Elsewhere, given its fun billing, this handset is well featured, with Bluetooth and USB syncing, a 0.3-megapixel camera (with a photo light, but not video) and a large colour display lifted straight from the V600. It's a case of pay less, get more. Shame they couldn't have made it smaller.