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Vodafone 225 (Mobile phone)

Vodafone 225 is a mobile phone aimed for the people who want to spent the tiniest possible amount of money for such device. It have beautiful stylish design, it is small, ultralight and easy to use. It is very cheap, but offers 65k color screen, polyphonic ringtones, big phonebook and games. It works good enough for talking, plus it is small enough to put in any pocket. The low price shows during the usage, but if one wants something for phone conversations, this can be Vodafone 225.

Package

Vodafone 225 phone package contents - phone, charger and manual. The phone comes in stylish red box, sized 130 X 105 X 75 mm. The box was put in blue sliding cover, where the importer logo put next to the Vodafone logo was printed, along with picture of the phone, the model (VF 225), manufacturer (VTE), country of origin (China) and the importer identification data, address and phone. It also have short text, saying that the phone is coded and can only work with SIM cards of the importer, who is also a phone operator. Inside the box are the phone itself, the battery, the charger and the user manual. The device itself is big 105 X 46 X 13 mm. It have black front and back panels and light silver body. In the front of the phone is the earpiece at the top. Under it on the right is the model number - 225, under which is the display. Under the display is the logo and text vodafone. The keyboard is placed under the logo and is made of plastic, making cool clicking sound when pressing the keys. The manual is descriptive, yet small and easy to read. It consists of 28 color pages, in red covers. The manual have sections for Notice, where it is written:

Copyright © 2007 ZTE CORPORATION
All Rights Reserved
Your Vodafone 225 is made exclusively for Vodafone by ZTE CORPORATION.

So it seems that Vodafone outsourced the production of the phone to the chinese ZTE Corporation. In the manual are also Important safety precautions - from page three to page fourteen. Your Phone is on pages fifteen to twenty-six and have very detailed description of everything important that the user shall know about the phone, its Interface Icons, Battery, How to insert the SIM card, How to Charge the battery, Power on/ off Your Phone, Display information, Menu Tree, Writing Text, How do I add people to my Contacts, How to make and receive calls, How to Send and Receive Text Messages and Menu Functions. On page twenty-seven is Declaration of RoHS Compliance and on page twenty-eight is the Disposal of your old appliance text. The charger is small and light, with 1.8 meters long cable. The battery is almost square in shape with dimensions 39 X 38 X 6 mm. It is 670 mAh and also very light. All the parts in the package are safely put in nylons.

Installation

Vodafone 225 phone - back view with removed panel and battery. Installation of the phone requires removal of the back panel, with the use of screwdriver or finger nail. This panel is very easy to remove and can be done in less than two seconds after some training. Under the panel is exposed the phone battery nest and the SIM card nest. Remove the battery if it is inside, put the SIM card in the card nest with the cut part to left and the connectors to down. Then place the battery with the connectors oriented to left and down, until it clicks. Finally, close the back panel. Now the phone is ready for use. Turning on is done by holding the red (End/Power) key for approximately three seconds. Red vodaphone logo and text appears and the phone is ready to go. Unlike the Nokia N-Gage, this phone can be fully used without SIM card as well. But then it will be only usable for tools and the games built-in, but not for other goals. It is not possible to put the SIM card without removing the battery, which adds extra effort when switching or removing cards.

Usage

Usage of the phone is as easy as every other phone. To dial a number, enter the digits with the Alpha numeric keys and press the green (Send) key. The 4-way navigation keys can be used for fast access of menu items when in standby mode. Up is for History, Down is for Contacts, Left is for Profiles and Right is for Alarm. Pressing the Right soft key, brings the Messaging menu. On the standby screen on the top left corner is shown the network coverage signal strength. On the top right corner is the icon for battery charge status. The top of the screen is also used to show the other Interface Icons - Call diverting, Keypad locked, Roaming, New message. Silent profile is activated and Alarm clock set. These icons are not state of art, but colorful enough and easy distinguishable. The default screen have blue wallpaper with jumping dolphin, which can be changed to only one alternative - gray picture with some spot, but it does not look good on this phone. The blue picture at least have some gradients and theme. The output picture from the display is very good. The pixels are not easy to differentiate and see, unlike on the Nokia 1208, where everyone can see the separate pixels. Usage of the phone for talking can be hard. The output sound is low and not easy to hear, even at the loudest set speaker volume, so it is better be used at quiet places. There is no loudspeaker, neither vibration, so in meeting it is useless for receiving messages, without watching it, or setting discrete alarms. The phone have only ten built-in ring tones, most of them not very interesting to listen. The Alpha numeric keypad have no cyrillic letters, which makes it very hard and painful to enter text or names in bulgarian or russian languages. It have automatic word complete function, which requires some time to get used to, but can be useful when writing messages. The keys show some light, when the display is lit, but does not indicate anything when the screen is off. I particularly like the Toshibo V9+i feature, where the keys are always light, even if little. The tiny light from the keys makes the device very easy to find in dark rooms or at the night, despite the fact that the screen is off.

Vodafone 225 phone - main menu with the icons shown. Pressing the center navigation key or the Left soft key, brings the main menu of the phone. The main menu is properly organized, and have nine options. At the center is the Messaging submenu, which comes the first option like on the other phones. Every menu item have nice icon, which animates with two or three frames, when the selection box moves over it. The items can be also selected directly by pressing the corresponding number on the Alpha numeric keypad, just like on Symbian. Above the messaging icon is the Call Menu. Right to the Call Menu is the Tools, where only four tools are available. They are Calculator - very simple one, World clock - with only the biggest cities for the time zones, but can be useful for checking what time is it in the other places of the worlds. The Calendar tool is only that - calendar, without the possibility to add remarks, events, alarms or notifications to the dates. The last tool is the Conversion, which allows only currency conversions. Every currency needs to be predefined in Exchange rate submenu, before Conversion, making the tool clumsy. Left to the Messaging icon is the Profiles icon, where only four options are available - Normal, Meeting, Outdoor and Silent. To the right of the Messaging icon is the Alarm menu, where alarms can be set for once, Daily, Weekly or Workday alarm. The alarms can also be listed, cleared or the restdays of the week defined from the menus given to the user. On the bottom left part on the menu screen is the SIM Toolkit menu, which gets replaced with the phone operator menu, when a SIM card is inserted. Down to the central icon is the Contacts icon, which works only with SIM card. The Settings menu, placed at the bottom right, also possible to invoke with the 9wxyz key, have options for Phone, Display, Clock, Call, Fixed dialling number, Service dialling number, Network, Security and the last Factory settings. The restoration to Factory settings is useful when selling the phone, or something wrong went with the settings and the user wants to start over. I found myself using the Clock settings very often, because the phone battery discharges very fast, even without talking and I often forget to recharge it. If it is discharged for longer period, the clock resets and have to be manually set again.

Games

The phone is not aimed for gaming, but the producers put two games in it, so the people without spare SIM card for it, can play them without the need to use the phone for anything else. The Games icon, represented by nice drawn dice, is put on the top left corner on the main menu and also can be selected by pressing 1 on the keyboard. The phone screen is nice to watch for gaming and the easy clickable keys are another plus, when playing with the phone.

Tetris

Vodafone 225 phone - the game Tetris after some play. The well know russian game is the first option presented for playing with the phone. The game idea originates from the mid 1980-ies, after which it rapidly took over the world with its simplicity, but competitiveness. It have so many clones, remakes and derivatives, that it is hard to list them all. The game have been implemented for all kind of electronic devices and even on buildings like skyscrapers. The implementation on this phone is not that ambitious, but it have some good work put in it. From the game menu there is Help option, where the keys used are described, but nothing about playing the game is written, assuming that anyone knows it. In the Set lines option, the player can choose how many lines to have at the beginning of the game - Zero, Two, Four, Six, Eight or Ten. Starting with ten lines is fun, but for novice players it is recommended to play the default - without any lines (Zero). The game playfield grid is 10X17, placed on the left of the screen, while on the right is the next figure falling shown, the Level, the Score and the Record. The screen and the playfileds are with nice purple frame. Each particular figure have its own color, making the game much easier to play, also more enjoyable. The motion blur on the lower levels is not seen, but on the higher, it can be annoying. It is easy to cheat in this game though. Simply press the button 3def to raise the level to 9 then press again to loop it to level 0. The best score is kept in the Record of the game and is saved even after removal of the battery for a short period of time. If left without pressing any key for a figure fall down, the screen goes dark, but in this game this should not happen often. There is no sound in the whole game. With the game Tetris, the phone have at least something to tinker with for longer period of time and even try to beat some record.

Push box

Vodafone 225 phone - the game Push box on Level 24. Another classic game idea is implemented on the phone. This time it is a remake of the classic game BoxWorld. This is harder to implement game, requiring more skills, time and effort. The game Help says that all boxes should be pushed into destination within required steps, which is not very clear, but the goal is also widely known and easy to understand. There is option to Load game or a New game can be started from any stage, asked at the beginning. Unlike my implementations of BoxWorld for Amiga, Apple MacOS X and Microsoft Windows, where 455 mindboggling levels are available for play, the phone version have only 24 levels. Any of these levels can be selected at the beginning. The graphics are good with many colors, but there is no animation for the character move or the boxes push. Also some which can make the game harder is the lack of indication if a box is at correct place or not. In a continuous game, this is not a problem, but when the player plays it in the morning and then wants to continue at the evening, he may have forgotten which box was put where and what was under the boxes. But the levels are small and there is no problem staring from the beginning. The widest possible level is twelve bricks, while the height is up to eight bricks. The whole game is again in purple frame. On the bottom are the Level, Total steps and Step numbers in red font. The difficulty of the stages varies from easy to normal, but with such small dimensions, hard levels are not easy to put. The stages can be rolled back and forth with the 1 and 3def keys, so it can be pretty fast previewed. Again there is no sound. Here are solutions for level 1, level 2, level 3, level 4, level 5, level 6, level 7, level 8, level 9, level 10, level 11, level 12, level 13, level 14, level 15, level 16, level 17, level 18, level 19, level 20, level 21, level 22, level 23 and level 24. .

Conclusion

Vodafone 225 is very cheap solution and it shows during its usage. Nevertheless, it can work as a spare phone, but for main phone intended for daily usage, it is not very recommended. The games presented in it are not for long entertainment and the options are not what is to be expected for a phone released in 2007.


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