Nextel Motorola i860

Long the darling of contractors and companies with large field forces thanks to its integrated push-to-talk feature, Nextel has often sacrificed portability and style for functionality when it comes to its phones. The new Nextel Motorola i860 makes a stab at grabbing a less blue-collar audience with this 4.7-ounce handset, which, incidentally, is also the company's first camera phone. It's not cheap, but should be a welcome addition for people who crave push-to-talk and a camera.

With its embedded external speaker and the metallic blue accents on its shiny black body, the i860 actually reminds us of Motorola's Talkabout line of two-way radios. Of course, the i860 certainly feels a lot more luxurious than those advanced walkie-talkies. Its sturdy, solid hinge closes with a pleasing snap and it comes loaded with a generous assortment of features.

Those features include a fairly large 1.4-inch external display, which can be easily read with or without backlighting. Although the icons are a bit small, the 4,000-color screen is just right for picture caller ID. And the interior display is even better. Measuring 2.3 inches diagonally, it supports 262,000 colors and is clear and bright with great contrast, just perfect for displaying photos.

That's where the built-in camera comes in. The camera lens and a tiny flash are positioned above the screen, near the hinge, and they take pictures in resolutions of up to 640 x 480, or up to 10 seconds of video footage with sound. While megapixel resolution is fast becoming standard on camera phones, the i860's pics are adequate and help conserve the device's 2.5MB of memory; you can also upload photos (although not video) to Nextel's Web site, send them to other i860 users, or e-mail them.

While you can't yet "push-to-share" your photos, the i860 lets you share contact information with its Direct Send feature. Just keep in mind that it only works with other i860 phones. The unit can store up to 600 contacts, and navigating them is fairly painless due to intuitive, icon-driven menus.

When it comes to making calls, the Nextel i860 performs quite well, delivering clear reception and solid voice quality when we tested it throughout the New York area. However, an excess of buttons made it sometimes hard to know where to press, particularly for the Web functions.

Nextel offers both e-mail connectivity and Web browsing with its Nextel Online package, which costs approximately $10 to $15 per month. We found that accessing e-mail and the included content services was fairly seamless, if not lightning-fast. A multiplicity of confirmation screens and the need to enter a separate menu for even the most common punctuation marks slowed us down somewhat, and pages also took some time to load. However, the fact that individual lines of e-mail text scrolled across the screen on their own also made it a bit easier to read longer messages.

In addition to its connectivity options, the i860 comes with all the goodies that are now standard on advanced phones: speakerphone, multiple ringtones, vibrate mode, voice dialing, voice memos, a calculator, and basic scheduling capabilities. One big omission is Bluetooth, which many users have come to expect on a phone in this price range.

The Nextel i860 delivered approximately 3 hours of talk time and 2 days of standby time. While that's pretty standard, Motorola deserves a bit of extra credit for one of the nicest AC adapters we've ever seen. The oval adapter includes fold-down prongs and a unique recessed track you can loop the cord around, along with a little rubberized plug that fits into the back and keeps the cord from unwinding.

Overall, the Nextel Motorola i860 is a good choice for users who want push-to-talk without giving up a built-in camera.