Motorola YUVA W270

general outlook

Good-looking handset
Music player is loud and clear
FM radio has recording option

Keypad is difficult to use
FM radio reception not too great
Specifications

The W270 is quite a stylish phone for the entry level segment. Its shiny, reflective black exterior looks quite cool. Beneath the cool exterior lies a subtle alert in the form of 3 icons. A green icon that flashes when a call comes in or if you have a missed call, a blue icon for messages, and an orange icon for battery status. The W270 has a small 1.6 inch display that looks even smaller considering the empty space around it. Its resolution is 128 x 128 pixels with 65K colors.

While the keypad is large with a 5 way nav-pad and dedicated keys for the music player and FM radio, it also proved the biggest problem. For some strange reason, the keypad is so much slower than my fingers. To elaborate – I could type faster than the phone could process. And even then it gave me more errors than I care to talk about. The space key didn’t seem to function half the time. As you can imagine, messaging was a real b*tch! Of course, I'm willing to give Motorola the benefit of the doubt that the issue is only with this particular piece.

On one side of the W270 is a 2.5mm handsfree socket and on the other side is where you’ll find the standard miniUSB connector that doubles for PC connectivity as well as the charger. Just above is a dedicated key that will take you right to the multimedia menu. The volume keys are also on the same side. Unfortunately, the handset doesn’t come with a hot-swap slot for the microSD card, so you will have to remove the battery.

Performance
The W270 is an entry-level handset with a few tweaks. It has a stereo FM radio, but lots of entry-level handsets (including Motorola's own W220) has it too. The pickup is just about okay. You can expect some static in a few places if you’re a daily commuter. The music player is actually quite good. It lacks options for music control, but the sound quality is better than average.
Other features include the usual – alarm clock, stopwatch, calculator and a calendar to save tasks or appointments. Thankfully the ringer and speaker phone are quite loud so you’ll always hear the alarm or phone even if you’re in another room.