Tracfone Motorola W260g

Compact Flip Phone With Crystal Talk Noise Reduction

The Tracfone Motorola W260g is a basic compact flip phone. It was meant to replace Tracfone's reliable but now somewhat dowdy-looking Motorola V170. The main attractions of this new phone are its simple attractive looks and Motorola's Crystal Talk noise-reduction technology.

The Basics

Size and Weight

The Motorola W260g measures 3.74 x 1.77 x 0.67 inches and weighs 3.17 ounces - a nice, compact device.

As a basic though attractive phone it doesn't have some of the bells and whistles of fancier phones, but it does last long.

Long Battery life

The included Lithium-ion battery allows you to talk for up to 6.5 hours. More importantly, you can go up to a whopping 18 days before you have to recharge it! This Standby Time is more important than the Talk Time as you're probably not going to use a prepaid phone for 6 hours at a time. However, even though the Standby Time may be a little exaggerated, with normal use, you can probably go a week or two without having to charge the phone.

The phone doesn't come with much extra in the way of accessories.

Accessories

The only accessories included are the battery, the AC charger, and the SIM card. These aren't really accessories since you can't use the phone without them. You can order a universal accessory kit from Tracfone to get a wired hands-free headset and a car charger.

Being a Tracfone the airtime rates are what are charged for any Tracfone.

Crystal Talk Voice Enhancement

The W260g features Motorola's noise reduction and volume enhancement technology. Basically, it means you should be able to hear phone conversations in noisy areas more clearly. When it introduced Crystal Talk, Motorola demonstrated the technology by showing people making calls in very noisy areas and still being able to understand what was being said. You may not have to use your Tracfone in the middle of a racetrack, but being able to understand the person on the other line more clearly saves you time. And with prepaid cell phones, airtime equals money.

Other features, though quite basic might also save you some airtime, such as:

Time saving features

While some of these features are basic, they save airtime and money.

Voicemail

You can check your voicemail from a landline, and even if you check it from your cell phone, Tracfone's voice mail system has been streamlined -- you basically go straight to the message -- such that it usually only costs you one or two units to check a couple of short messages.

Call Waiting and Caller ID

You can switch between calls. You can check the Tracfone Motorola W260g manual to see how to use these and other features. As for Caller ID, it's always good to know who's calling so you can decide whether to take the call.

Miscellaneous Features

Handsfree Speaker

One use of the handsfree speaker phone is wishing someone Happy Anniversary all together. It's more fun and, I suppose, can even save you airtime.

Vibration Alert

It's polite to set your ringer to "Vibrate" in certain locations. However, unless it's absolutely necessary, you can set it to "Vibrate and THEN ring". Most of the time you can get to it before it rings, but it still makes sure you don't miss the call because you didn't feel it vibrating.

Phone Book with up to 500 Entries

The newer phones must have more memory, in general, so they all tend to support a higher number of phone book entries. The Tracfone Motorola W260g lets you add up to 500 entries in its phone book. Of course, you still have to find them, but it does make the Caller ID more useful. When you do set it to ring, you have a choice of . . .

35 Ringtones

You should be able to find one you like. You won't find the latest hits here though you might be able to download one for a fee.

Alarm Clock

The alarm clock is good to have if you don't want to rely on a clock radio or the hotel's automated system.

And now for one nitpick.

USB Function Disabled

As with all such Tracfones, this USB capable phone has it's USB function disabled. I have to admit I find this irritating.

Tracfone does this to its camera phones so you can't simply download the pictures to your computer but instead have to use up airtime to send them via a picture message.

But the Tracfone Motorola W260g does not have a camera, so I'm not sure what the rationale is for disabling it's USB function. Maybe it's to prevent you uploading your own ringtones. Who knows?

If nothing else, it would be nice if you could upload your contacts from your computer into the phone, but I guess you can't. (You maybe might be able to upload contacts onto the SIM card, but I have no idea if you actually can.)

Anyhoo, that's really the only negative comment I have about this phone which otherwise looks like a winner.

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