Motorola W233 Renew Specs, Features & Reviews

It's hard to expect very much from a $30 prepaid phone, but I was more than pleased with the performance from this phone. It is definitely the best "basic, no-nonsense" phone in T-Mobile's lineup.

Pros:
1. Excellent reception. Would be a blessing to those in fringe areas.
2. Call quality is impressive! It's crystal clear and very good.
3. Feels comfortable to use, even though it's a candybar phone.
4. Comes with an mp3 player and a micro sd slot. The mp3 player isnt anything special, but it works.
5. The included headset works really well, on both calls and mp3 usage.

Cons:
1. Keypad was a pain to use. The buttons are a little bit small, but the real problem is that they are entirely too stiff and rigid. Pressing a key makes you feel like a little kid again trying to snap lego's together.
2. The settings do not allow you to customize the left and right soft keys.

If you need a basic phone, or are looking for a reliable backup/signal puller, you can't do much better for T-Mobile. It's an excellent basic phone, and would have gotten a five star had it not been for the terrible keypad usage.

I got for $40, must say the fact that its good for environment using recycled plastics is pretty cool. The phone is not super fancy or anything but for a low-end phone it is quite nice and has memory card slot with mp3 music player. Its pretty nice.

I have owned this phone for about 6 months. Bought it just to play with it and use it for a backup as I prefer candy bar style phones. I usually buy Nokia, but this Motorola is quite a pleasant surprise.
Pros:
Green
Light weight
Crystal Clear Sound technology
Blocks out background noise great
Very good reception and voice sound is perhaps the best of all my 12 phones. No dropped calls.
Very loud when needed
Excellent speaker phone
Cons:
Wish it had a camera and it would be close to perfect for me.
MP3 is fairly good
Charger is unique to this phone and proprietary

This is a super phone for someone mainly wanting a reliable phone for phone calls with great reception and sound. Great for older folks and hearing aid compatible.

I originally bought this phone to replace a Nokia 1208 because friends of mine swear by Motorola's devices. But in every case, when I have tried their products, I am less than impressed by the performance of the phone. The Renew is not the most expensive phone out there, nor is it the cheapest (I paid $30.00). Things went wrong when it did not find the SD Micro memory card. Then it started dropping calls. Its was very sporadic at first, but soon became a more frequent annoyance. The phone went back and was replaced with a Nokia 1208 again (at $20.00).

PROS:
-Solid build.
-Loud ringers/speaker/alarm.
-Nice Keypad.

CONS:
-Battery life short.
-Call dropping.
-Call connection issues (fails to complete call).
-Media/memory card issues.

Overall it looks nice, but I will stick with either Nokia or Samsung.

I was in the market for a cheap, simple to operate phone that required a loud ear piece. This phone was gift for mom on Mother's Day.

After testing out about 15 or so phone at my local T-Mobile retail store, I discovered this little gem.

The Moto Renew has one of the loudest ear piece for T-Mobile. Both the handset ear piece and speaker phones are loud.

Other phones that were as loud or louder were the Blackberry Curves (old & new version), Moto Zine and Samsung Gravity.

The Moto Renew is a very basic phone. Only downside is the low-resolution screen. However, the dialing text is big and easy to read. The buttons are easy and simple to press.

Bottom Line: Get this phone if you are hard of hearing and can't see that well. Buy it for the price of $10.

Very good phone. Call quality better than most higher end models. Display is cheap, no camera, no bluetooth, etc., do not expect better for this type of carbon friendly phone. Battery-life is phenomenal. Excellent back-up phone.

Pros:
Uber long battery life
Music player
Changable faceplates
Lightweight
Solid feeling body
Keypad decent

Cons:
Not a flip phone
Charger doesnt fit easily into phone (you have to finesse it a little)

Overall if take this phone for what it is a base model phone you will be surprised at how nice and feature rich it is for $10
Nice touch that it is made from recycled plastics and has an eco frinedly charger. Overall a great bargain especially for a low end user, first timer owner or even tweens or teen phone since it is so inexpensive and seems like a pretty solid phone

Motorola W233 Renew is disappointing even though this is a basic phone. I have to charge it every 2 days, probably due to the bad reception. My Nokia on the other hand had excellent battery life and reception using the same carrier. If a contact has a mobile, home and work phone, you must create three separate contacts while Nokia allows multiple phones in a single contact. The W233 does not keep a log of missed calls but the Nokia does. If you call voicemail to retrieve messages, the password you enter will appear in the "Notepad" for others to see, and it is not easy to delete it.

Pros:
Loud and clear
Nice design
Lightweight and very pocketable
Only $29
Good quality

Cons:
Bad battery
Not the best reception
A contact with a mobile, home and work number must be a separate contact
No missed calls log
Notepad records passwords you enter
Bad keypad
Uses mini usb to charge inconvenient since you have to work around a plastic cover then snap the cover back on just right.