But does your cell phone make breakfast?

My father recently asked me to find him a new cell phone after the old batteries on his ever reliable Ericsson T39m started to fail him. My quest was to find a tough, reliable phone with as little fancy crap as possible. He also wanted really good battery life and a quadband GSM model so that he could use it if he were travelling in Europe.

First of all, it is not an easy task to find such a phone. Most of the quad-band GSMs are loaded with extras like MP3 player and a camera or two. All of those detract from the devices' primary function as a phone, and they also drain the battery life. So for all you people out there who are shopping for parents or just don't want a bunch of crap on your phone (some workplaces don't allow camera phones), I think I found what you're looking for.


Motorola makes two models that meet the above criteria. One has Bluetooth and one does not, but apart from that they're identical. The two models are the Motorola v191 and the v195. I had a tough time finding an unlocked v195, which is the model with Bluetooth, so I got my dad the v191, which is available from PureMobile for $125 CDN (~$100 US). Looking around now, it would appear that the 195 is easily unlocked. Motorola annoyingly makes you buy software called Motorola PhoneTools (MPT) to put a custom background and MP3 ringtone on the phone. With any luck, that will be the end of my involvement. The battery on this thing is a horse so he shouldn't even have to worry about charging it very often; maybe once a week.

The more buttons there are on a gadget, the more phone calls I'm going to get from my fahter asking me to explain their function. This one is a phone. Full stop.