It makes calls, too?

It is easy to lose sight of the core functionality of the Mozart in amongst the noise and excitement of the devices’ “smarter” capabilities. Apparently it also makes phone calls. Who knew, right?

It took me nearly a week before I had the opportunity to use the phone as, well, a phone. It doesn’t help that the Mozart had a special “Live! Two weeks only!” SIM card in it so it had a number that no one else knew about apart from my wife. Given that the bulk of my phone calls are with either my wife or my parents (who live interstate), this is probably less of an issue for me compared to some of the other reviewers.

The phone is fiddly to answer. You have to first swipe the lock screen up and decide whether to answer or to dismiss. If you push the answer button (which is narrow and impossible for my fingers to correctly tap first go – seriously, not once did I manage it) it unlocks the screen and you have to tap another button before you can answer it. If you want to put the person on speaker phone, you have to press another tiny button, which pops up another menu for you to choose the speaker option. Not impossible, not entirely unfriendly, just … fiddly.

Contrast that with the iPhone. When someone rings, you swipe to answer. You can answer the phone in one action, whether the screen is locked or not. Also, the menu for things like speaker phone automatically comes up so you don’t have to hunt around for it. On the downside, you need to have read the manual to know which hardware button to push to divert the call to voicemail.

If you’re wondering about my obsession with speaker phone, it’s because my wife often calls me from the car using the speaker phone so that our 4 year old son in the back seat can join in the conversation. I figure if she does it, other people do, too.

Call quality is just fine and, like the iPhone, it supports the 3G feature of being able to use data while on a voice call. This is a very useful feature when someone calls asking you to look up something. I’m not sure how much of this has to do with the Telstra network specifically but, as I’ve stated previously, the Telstra network has been flawless during the review period.

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