I just picked up a hue yesterday to replace the frankenphone. My first impressions were ok, and turned out to be right. The initial excitement of the green faceplate and color changing screen is quickly neutralized the reason. My kool little panel is usually a small screen in other phones. Hey, it was cheap. I paid 59.95 out of pocket, I need to put easyedge on ($10 a month) for three months to get a $50 debit card, and of course I had to get a two year contract.
The phone itself has its issues. US Cellular has stripped out the browser, and stuck in their crappy easyedge.The phone does support mp3 playback with external controls, but has issues with a few of my mp3s, crashing my phone when I try to play them. They are probably actually FLAC files, with my luck. At first I had some issues with crashing and losing part of my front display, but those have seemed to vanish over time. My biggest problems are its inability to customize the text message tones, set custom ringtone profiles, and add MP3 ringtones without hacking into its system with a USB cable and BitPim (but that’s US Cellular’s fault. They suck.) It also can be a problem finding accessories in-town.
My signal strength is as good if not better than my old Motorola, and beats my brother’s Razor V3. The Camera works well if there’s light enough, and has many options, and I like the ability to assign photos to numbers. The voice control also beats my brother’s, and the bluetooth controls work well, but the distance isn’t great.
Overall, I like my phone for the price. It has the features of more expensive models, and seems to put up well to my beatings. The accessories are easy and cheap to get on eBay, and you can even get an adapter to a typical cellular headset jack. If my overall opinion needs to be reinforced, my girlfriend plans to get the same phone now.
