Motorola Dext MB200 review

Given the Motorola Dext has a 1400mAh battery life, we're a little disappointed in its performance. Measuring how well battery life performs has become increasingly difficult as phones become more connected – powering up your handset every night while you sleep has become the norm for a lot of people.

Motorola is quoting a standby time of around 320 hours for the Dext, which equates to around 13 days without needing to be charged. We gave the Dext a pretty hardcore pummelling on the first couple of days, connecting to the internet frequently, using the music player and watching videos.

Add to that the fact the phone is constantly pulling down new Happenings, and you can see why the power would run down quickly. The battery was sadly flat within 16 hours, but in our opinion that's more than enough time.

As we dialled back the usage, we managed to extend that to nearly 20 hours, which means that while you might not get away with missing a charge night, day to day usage won't be affected.

One worrying thing we noted was that on occasion the battery would get a little warm and charge down quickly – we've seen this before in other phones, and it's generally intermittent and solved by upgrades, so just keep an eye out for such an instance.

Organiser

The Motorola Dext isn't really a phone designed for organisation, although the Google Calendar function is pretty good experience. Fast synchronisation with the web means you're always up to date, and it's easy to simply drag and create new events on the phone, which can then be viewed online.

You can choose a range of alerts for upcoming events on your G-calendar, which appear in the notification bar by default for easy reminders of when you actually have to stop playing on your phone and do things in the real world.

The screen displays the information well, and you can choose a variety of views, such as day, week and month to manage your life. If you're someone who needs a calendar to use day to day for work or the like, this is a great experience, and something we've come to expect from Google.

Other software isn't so plentiful, with the calculator the only real other option in terms of organising your life. There's a rudimentary alarm clock (with a new arty-style clock instead of the stark black and white option) but that's about it (unless you count the Quick Office application).