Ah - my first cell phone from 2000. $400 and at the time I think was worth it. It needs a better picture... hopefully I can get to it before the end of Friday.

Ahead of its time

• Accepted external MicroSD card (I got extra 128 MB for $50).
• Any mp3 less than 30 seconds could be made a ringtone.
• Text messages/call histories were not arbitrarily limited to a certain #.
• Flashlight button!
• Extra loud speakerphone.
• File structure not a huge deal because small memory, but it allowed me to use it!

This was my phone until about 2007 when I got a Motorola K1M KRazr. After six months of frustration with that phone, I re-bought a V710 from eBay, and it remained my phone until I got the Samsung Convoy 2 in 2014.

This Convoy 2 (as said above) was the best rated clamshell style phone in 2014. I paid too much for it - at $240 it was more expensive than half the smartphones available at the time.

The Convoy 2 was better than the V710 in only a handful of ways. Battery life was remarkable; it could go a week of normal use between charges, or two weeks if rarely used. The camera was significantly better, as was the main screen. It was ruggedized, though this didn't mean much because my V710s never broke. Both phones were capable of browsing the internet, but the Convoy 2 did it at 3G, and with a higher resolution.

Where the Convoy 2 fell short was in call clarity and text message retainment. For call clarity, voices were compressed and the speakerphone was not quite loud enough. For messaging, there was an arbitrary limit of 100 messages which made things really difficult during times of group texts when people are texting back and forth ten times a minute.

Finally, in 2019 I gave up on having a "good" clamshell phone and bought a Motorola Z4. Story details are on that page.