Motorola Adventure V750

Are you fed up with cell phones that have cramped keypads, small screens, muffled speaker phones, and short battery life? If you want a phone that feels like a phone first, the Motorola Adventure V750 on Verizon Wireless is for you. One of the first handsets to use Verizon's new push to talk (PTT) system, the ruggedized V750 is one of the easiest to use phones I've tested this year. It does a lot more than make voice calls, but it's also likely to be a hit among those who want a basic and straightforward phone. The simplicity starts with the design.

The 3.9 ounce V750 is a broad flip phone (4 by 2 by 0.7 inches HWD) with a grippy, textured back. It's billed to be ruggedized against shock, dust, and vibration, though the back panel flew off when I chucked it at a wall it's no G'zOne Boulder that's for sure.

On the front there's a big, clear 1.6-inch 120 by 160 pixel color display with three music control buttons, and a 2 megapixel camera. Flip open the V750 to find Verizon's best keypad, bar none. The round buttons are very clearly marked and widely spaced. On the main 2.2 inch, 320 by 240 pixel color screen inside, numbers and menu options look big and bright.

And the V750 comes set to a simplified menu system that's even easier to navigate than Verizon's standard, already easy menus. The V750's finest feature is the speaker phone: It's Verizon's best. Located on the bottom of the handset, it's very loud, but never distorts voices. The ear piece is also of decent volume, though it does sound a little bit muddy. Transmissions, both through the handset microphone and the speaker phone, sound terrific, with almost no background noise coming through.

Reception is in the average range. The V750 uses the excellent Nuance VoiceSignal voice dialing suite and works with both 2.5mm wired headsets and Bluetooth headsets. Ringtones are really loud, thanks to that delightful speakerphone. Vibrating alerts are short but sharp. And battery life was excellent, at over 5 hours of talk time.