Motorola V551 / V330 / V547 / V555 / V557

And how long the battery lasts in this case?

I took it off the charger on Sunday morning around 11:00am. It's now Wednesday at 9:30am and I am getting 2 out of 3 bars on the battery meter. I drive about an hour a day in my car with moderate talk time. I expect that I'll need to put it on the charger tonight before I go to bed.

Yeah... It still seems to me more convenient to charge it every night, than to keep in mind to turn the "find me" feature on every time I get into the car. But I will try though... Thanks!

I look at it like this . . .

Before Wireless Bluetooth Technology we had to get into our car and physically attach a wire/cable to the phone to have it integrate with the car kit. With Bluetooth, I simply hit a shortcut key on my phone when I get into the car and it "wirelessly attaches" to my car.

Shortcut key?! It's interesting... Could you explain how you do that? I created a shortcut for "find me", but in order to use it I still need to go to settings > tools > shortcuts > shortcut name... Is it the way you do it?

I set it up so that to activate the "Find Me" feature I simply push the Menu Button Once and then I press "5". It's much easier than navigating all thru the Menus to get there.

To set it up, go to the "Find Me" feature, and press and *hold* the Menu Button. It will recognize that you want to assign a Shortcut to it and walk you thru the process.

Godd luck with it.

You all make it sound like the engineering that goes behind power consumption is an easy thing. Keep in mind that enabling Bluetooth is activating a whole other RF transmitter/receiver on top of the one that the phone is already using for normal voice communication. I do agree that the battery life of the V551 is subpar compared to other Motorola phones, but high power consumption when using Bluetooth has to be expected. My old Sony Ericsson T610 had great battery life, until I enabled bluetooth. Hopefully, in the near future when we start seeing devices with Bluetooth 2.0, power consumption will have improved over its predecessor. Also, battery capacity technology has been improving over the years. Until then, I like the idea of setti...
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Your point is well taken.

I'm fine with the Shortcut and having to activate it when I get into the car. But, Motorola has done a poor job letting users know how much power Bluetooth uses. The specs that they provide are not accurate.

Do you know if it is possible to program the vioce activation button on the side of the phone to do this short cut? That would be easier than opening the phone, pressing menu and then the short cut key.

Thanks!
Austin, TX

I'm not aware of a way to do that, but would love to know if it is possible.

The only problem is that a Message comes up asking if it's OK to turn Bluetooth Power on Temporarily. You need to answer by hitting the "yes" Soft Key, and then it finds the device in the car.

If anybody knows a way to do this via the Voice button on the side of the phone with one touch, please post a solution.

Thanks!

This is another alternative...rather than shortcutting "Find me", shortcut Bluetooth Power on and Bluetooth power off. Advantage, you can turn do the shortcut on your way to the car. Two keys, power on, then close flip. Rather than have to monitor your phone and ack the "yes".

Disadvantage, you have to remember to shortcut the bluetooth power off when you leave the car, or else BATTERY DRAIN.

So far this has worked for me with relative ease.

You can reprogram the "smart key" (left side bottom button) to do whatever you want.

--menu
--settings
--personalize
--home screen
--home keys
--select the key you'd like to reprogram and select
---in our case SMART KEY
and select the application you'd like to use i.e. Bluetooth

Granted it doesn't do what we really want it to do (listen up Moto...Hello Moto) but it's a way we can lengthen battery life. On a side note, my HP iPAQ 2215 has Bluetooth and when I leave it on, my battery life is cut by a third. Kind of like leaving your headlights on in the car...you learn to turn them off.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with rspike. You (FoneLink) has missed the point of our conversation. And the point is that the consumer needs to know the real battery life not the fake numbers we are provided with. And the humongous "Bluetooth power consumption" should be mentioned as well as the ways to work around it. Do you really believe that the battery will be still alive if you will keep the phone on for 9 days without even touching it and with Bluetooth off? I know it won't. But specifications say: 225 hours... Why? 😕

I did not miss the point of your conversation and I do understand why you feel that you have been mislead. All I am trying to do is point out the fact that power consumption in these types of devices is not some quantitative measurement that can be consistently repeated from one application to the next. When the engineers at Moto are preparing the specification sheets for a phone, they need to make it as attractive as possible - it doesn't take a marketing genius to figure that out. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are making up figures for the battery life, but you still need to look at the circumstances. I have little doubt that the engineers at Moto know how to create perfect test conditions where a 9 day standby battery life c...
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You can also create the above mentioned shortcut to take you to the "POWER ON or OFF" screen... this eliminates a lot of extra steps. Just to that that screen through the normal menu and then create your shortcut.