Motorola E398 mobile phone

Motorola E398 is a candy bar styled cameraphone with an attractive blue and silver finish, and being a tri-band model means that it is a suitable handset for global roaming. Motorola say that this mobile phone doubles as a digital music player, and a particular feature of this model is that it has two speakers for playing stereo MP3, these speakers being located on either side of the phone’s display. Other significant features of the E398 are its integrated Bluetooth™ technology, GPRS and WAP data handling, MMS multimedia messaging, MPEG4 video player, TransFlash™ memory card slot, speakerphone for hands-free conversation, Java™ enabled, voice control, and a full e-mail client.

Motorola E398The large and bright active matrix TFT LCD screen gives you good viewing of the menus and pictures you can use on this phone, both indoors and out. The display has an impressive resolution of 176 x 220 pixels, and it can also reproduce up to 65,536 different colours. The high quality display comes in useful for viewing MMS messages, and the phone’s MMS capability means that you can use it to send and receive messages that contain a combination of video clips, pictures, animations, sounds, voice records, as well as text, to create a unique multimedia message. Alternatively, you might prefer to send your multimedia messages by e-mail. A further bonus with this phone is the ability to download and play video clips using its MPEG4 video player.

An integrated VGA camera is fitted into the E398, with the camera’s lens being located on the back cover of the phone. This camera is capable of taking pictures at the 3 different image qualities of 640 x 480, 320 x 240, and 160 x 120 pixels. Other features of the camera are its 4x digital zoom and its adjustable exposure settings: there are 4 preset options provided (sunny, cloudy, indoor, night), as well as an automatic exposure option. In addition, a LED flashlight is built into the back of the phone (just under the camera lens), and this is designed to assist you with the taking of pictures in poor light conditions; it can also act as a fill-in flash for portraits. However, these small LED lights usually prove to be too weak to be of much use. There is even the chance to edit your pictures to change their appearance, and the phone includes 6 image style options (colour, black & white, bluish, antique, reddish, greenish). As is fairly common, a mirror and timer are provided to assist with the taking of self-portraits.

An MP3 player is built into the E398, and this feature allows you to download new tracks, and to set up playlists of your favourite music. The phone comes with software for downloading music straight from your PC to your phone. Motorola quote a playback time of up to 275 minutes for using the MP3 player, which should be enough to listen to a fair number of tracks, but then you have to offset this against how much the standby and talk times will be reduced from heavy music use. This sort of trade off is becoming more important with the latest multipurpose mobile phones, as increasing demands are being placed on the finite power capacity, and there is a limit to what can be squeezed from the battery between charges.

The phone has a pretty reasonable internal memory capacity of 5 MB, although this might be a bit restricting for those who want to carry around lots of MP3 tracks (in addition to all those pictures, sounds and other personal data). However, these memory restrictions are eliminated by the phone’s ability to store additional files on a removable TransFlash™ memory card, and a 64 MB card is supplied with the phone. The only disadvantage is that the back cover and battery have to be removed when you need to change cards, although that is more of a minor irritation than any major problem. So you should be able to carry around your entire music collection in your pocket - if you wish to hear your favourite tracks while on the move - and there will enough storage capacity for saving video clips, photos and wallpapers, etc.

As with some of Motorola’s other models, the E398 has several light show features available to delight the user. By adjusting the sensitivity of the phone to noises and music (7 levels of sensitivity are provided) you can make the phone’s keypad, display, and the colour LEDs on the sides flash in response to the sounds - which Motorola call Rhythm Lights - and this is something that is sure to get you noticed. You can also set up the side ring lights to flash when some event occurs (called Situational Lights), which allows you to use the lights to alert you to a particular caller or phone activity.

With its integrated Java™ capability, the E398 gives you the opportunity to use a wide range of applications and games, and more of these programs may be downloaded when you want to try something else. There are 3 games preloaded in the phone, and these provide you with a full gaming experience: the gaming action will be accompanied by a combination of sound effects, light display and synchronised haptics vibration - enough to make the game a more exciting experience.

Another expected feature is the opportunity to personalise this phone by using downloadable themes: animated screensavers, wallpapers and ringtones. A good selection of polyphonic ringtones is provided for you to choose from, but the phone also comes with some MP3 real music ringtones as well. With the benefit of 2 speakers you can now experience the added impact of full stereophonic ringtones, where the sound bounces between the speakers - even more ear catching than those usual polyphonic or MP3 ringtones.

The E398 has good data handling capability, being equipped to work with GPRS technology. The effect of GPRS is that you will be able to transfer your data faster and to gain the added benefit of an “always on” connection to the network. A WAP 2.0 browser is also provided to allow you to get the most out of the mobile Internet. There are now many WAP sites supplying the needs of mobile phone users, and you should find the services and information you require somewhere among these WAP sites, whether it be news, sports, weather, traffic, entertainments, financial services, or business information. A further important tool on this phone is its onboard e-mail client, which allows you to keep up with all your e-mail correspondence while out and about, and this supports the standard e-mail protocols of POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP.

Connectivity is another key area of interest to users, and the E398 does not disappoint. The phone has integrated Bluetooth™ wireless technology, so you may transfer your MP3s, video clips, games, photos and vital data from your PC to your phone without wires. If your PC or other device does not support Bluetooth, then you can still transfer data using the standard USB data cable. Once a connection is established, you can synchronise your calendar and phonebook with your home or office PC, as well as to make use of downloading pictures and sounds between the two devices.

The phone has the usual organiser functions, such as a calendar, alarm clock, calculator, and currency converter. Also included is a picture phonebook, so that you can see who is calling.

Motorola E398 cameraphone specification

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Last updated 10th September 2009, 08:33 BST