Day One living with the rockin’ Motorola E398.

Out of the box, the Motorola E398 is a great looking phone. At first glance, it’s very reminiscent of the Sony-Ericsson T610 (and it’s multiple successors). Both have a straight-forward design that you almost immediately know how to use. They’re “candy-bars,” as opposed to “flip” phones…

Look and Feel:

Out of the box, the Motorola E398 is a great looking phone. At first glance, it’s very reminiscent of the Sony-Ericsson T610 (and it’s multiple successors). Both have a straight-forward design that you almost immediately know how to use. They’re “candy-bars,” as opposed to “flip” phones.

This version of the E398 that I’ve been testing has a rubberized black finish with brushed aluminum (or looks-like-aluminum) sides, both bearing the Motorola trademarks of “M” and “Motorola” respectively. It’s a good solid feel in your hand, and the texture of the rubber somehow helps with that substantiality. It’s a very rich feeling for a fairly modest price.

The buttons on the front are the typical number keys, control stick, pick-up, hang-up, back, select, and option keys. On the left side you have volume up and down and a button for voice activation (for contacts you have programmed as voices in your address book for auto-dialing). On the right side you have a camera button, conveniently placed for landscape digital camera shots. On both sides you also have little “grills” that are backlit with a number of different led colors—which I’ll discuss further later. The grills also have speakers behind them—stereo speakers! At the top of the phone there is a stereo headphone input covered by a little rubber cover, but it’s a 3/32nd”, not your standard 1/8th” jack, so your normal headphones won’t work on the E398 without an inexpensive adapter. E398s come with headphones that work with this headphone input. Finally, at the bottom you have the standard Motorola power / data interface.

Setting Up with the Mac

Tip:

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The E398 is outfitted with bluetooth, making it an ideal phone to use with a Mac. If you’ve never setup a cell phone to work with your mac before, you’re in for a treat. Wirelessly syncing your bluetooth phone adds a whole new level of functionality: maintaining up-to-date contact and schedule information between your Mac and phone; dialing calls from your Mac address book; caller id pop-ups on your Mac; using the phone as a wireless modem; and sending digital photos and songs between the two devices.

Because this functionality can differ among devices, it’s important to know which phone does what before you buy it. That’s pretty much Mac ‘n’ Cell’s mission—telling you what works, what doesn’t, and sometimes even step-by-step “hacks” to make it work.

Currently, the E398 does not allow for dialing from the Mac, or caller-id popups out of the box. Everything else should be fully functional.

You can setup the phone easily with your Mac via bluetooth:

• Click the bluetooth icon in your menu bar, to the left of your clock and wifi signal. Make sure that bluetooth is powered “On.”



• In that same drop-down menu, select “Set up Bluetooth Device…” and you will get a pop-up setup wizard.



• Before clicking continue in the dialog box, on the phone, select your phone’s preferences, Settings / Connections / Bluetooth Link / Setup. From here you will have three options: Find Me, Power, and Name. Note what the name of the phone is (or select it to change it) because this is the name of the phone that your Mac will be looking for. Select Find Me and the phone will respond with “Discoverable: 60 seconds.”

• Now go back to the setup wizard on your Mac and click select. Then choose “Mobile Phone” from the list and click Continue.
  

• The next screen you’ll see will be your Mac searching the airwaves for your phone. You should see the spinning status monitor and hopefully the name of your phone. After it has found your phone, click on your phone’s name and click Continue.



• Next, the Mac will attempt to “pair” with your cell phone. To do this securely, the Mac will send a six digit number to your phone, that you’ll be required to verify on the phone—your phone will likely beep to notify you that you need to pair with your Mac and then as you for the six digits. Simply type those numbers into the phones keypad, select okay, and the two devices should be paired. After you have done so, the Continue button should turn blue to allow you to continue with the setup process.



• On the next screen, you will be able to select how you would like the phone to work with your Mac. The first is syncing your contact and calendar information; second is additional functionality with your Address Book (as noted above, this functionality is not available with the E398); third is using your phone as a wireless modem. In general, you will want to select the sub-option of “Use a direct, higher speed connection…”



• After you click continue, you will have the chance to add your wireless service provider’s dial-up data settings.



Depending on your wireless carrier, your dial-settings will differ, but those details are more specific than I want to get right now. To find that information, read this post at macosxhints.com for Cingular, and this post for T-Mobile.

• After adding your dial-up settings, you should get a final screen from the wizard summarizing all you have just accomplished. After clicking Quit, iSync should launch.



• Setting up iSync is very straight forward. Before moving ahead, however, you should decide whether you want all your Address Book’s contact information in your phone. While all that info in your phone may be useful to have wherever you are, it can also be cumbersome when searching for a phone number. Personally, I created a Group in Address Book, specifically for the contacts I want on my cell phone.



• In iSync, click on the new E398 phone (in the picture, it’s Motorola E398). The first option you have will be to erase all the contact info on the phone or to merge the two (not shown in pic below). Unless you have vital contact info on the phone, I always recommend wiping the info on the phone and replacing it with the info on your Mac. If you took my advice about creating a cell-phone-specific Group list in Address Book, choose it from the the drop down list under “Contacts” in iSync. If you want contacts’ emails to show up on your phone, uncheck “Only synchronize contacts with phone numbers.” Under Calendars, choose the calendars you’d like to show up on your phone, and how far in the future you’d like your eventsto be sync’d.

After you’re done with these few settings, check “Turn on Motorola E398 synchronization” and then the Sync Devices button in the top right corner of the window, and your Mac should do the rest.



Day Two of the test of the Motorola E398 will discuss more of my personal experiences and Day Three will sum up my feelings about the phone. So check back soon…