Net10 Motorola V176 Review

The Net10 Motorola V176 was one of the best deals on a prepaid flip phone. When you bought a $60 Net10 airtime card, you got a free reconditioned V176 which included 300 minutes free and sixty days of service upon activation. When you activated the 60 minute card on top of that, you got an additional 600 minutes and 120 days of service. That gave you a total of 900 minutes of airtime and 180 days (about six months) of service. At $60, that works out to just $10 a month for the first six months.

This phone is no longer available, and ther review below is for reference and comparison.

The Motorola V176 was a basic, reliable phone that has been phased for some newer models. In case it is still available in some areas, I've left the rest of the review below mostly as is:

What You Need to Know

The V176 is a lightweight phone weighing about 3 ounces.

Battery Life

The phone has a standby time of 12.5 days – almost two weeks. In reality, you may be able to go about a week before recharging it if you don’t use it much. The maximum talk time is 6 hours or 720 minutes which would cost you $72, so you probably don’t need to care about this.

It’s a Net10 phone. That means . . .

You get 10 Cents per Minute or less on all Calls

All domestic calls cost 10 cent or less per minute. (However, your effective initial rate drops to 7.5 cents per minute if you take advantage of the deal mentioned above. (At the time, Net10 only had a pay as you go plan. The monthly plans were introduced later.)

And Cheap International Calls

International calls to over 60 destinations cost 15 cents per minute. And, in fact, if you’re more comfortable in another language, the V176 is a multilingual phone. You can set it to English, Spanish, or French.

Text Messages

Text messages cost 0.5 minutes to send or receive. This is not bad. If you really send a lot of text messages, you could try some other providers which offer text messaging packs, but be aware that your overall cost could shoot up by quite a bit.

V176 Features

As a basic prepaid flip phone, the Motorola V176 has many of the expected standard features.

250-Entry Phonebook

Whether you usually call or text, you can store up to 250 contacts in the V176’s phonebook. This capacity is so-so these days, but most people still don’t make full use of this feature.

The handset has a color display and a hands-free speaker phone.

Other standard features include voicemail, Call Waiting and Caller ID.

Voicemail

Net10 voicemail is easy to set up and pretty convenient. You do get charged airtime but the whole process is pretty efficient so it’s not too bad.

Call Waiting and Caller ID

Call waiting and Caller ID are standard features that, just like with a landline phone, makes your life a little easier.

A Few Extras

Though it’s a basic phone, you can still get a few extra services for your Net10 phone such as . . .

Ringtones and Graphics

You can buy ringtones and graphics from the Net10 web site, if you’re not satisfied with the ones included on the phone.

News, Weather and Sports

If you’re really into the news, need to check weather alerts, or a big sports fan you can sign up for these data services using your airtime.

Alarm Clock

Last but not least, is the humble alarm clock. If you’ve been burned more than once by a hotel’s unreliable alarm clock, using the alarm clock as a backup can save your skin.

Motorola V176 Manual

If you want to know more, check out the Net10 Motorola V176 Manual (pdf).

Get One?

While this phone is no longer available, you can still get a good deal on a basic flip phone here.

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