Motorola

Motorola’s new W233 Renew cell phone is one of the most eco-friendly devices currently available and the perfect gadget for Earth Day. Made from 100 percent recycled plastic, the Renew is possibly the only truly carbon neutral cell phone available in the U.S. at the moment.

The recycled plastic that is being used to make the Renew handsets comes from the big bottles made for water coolers typically found in offices. Though handheld water bottles are more numerous, Motorola says the plastic used for those isn’t as durable.

Motorola even went as far as using recycled paper and soy-based ink for the phone’s box, which is more diminutive in size. There still is a printed instruction manual inside, but aside from the charger, you get headphones and a postage-paid envelope to send back an old phone for recycling. After emptying the contents, you’re encouraged to recycle the box.

The Renew is a handset designed for general practicality rather than a package of bells and whistles. Lime green is the primary color for the obvious connection to the eco-friendly proposition of the phone, and the touch of white and black add to its tasteful look. But it also feels nice in your hand. Not too light, but not too heavy. A responsive keypad that glows blue, along with a decent 1.6” screen.

The screen has a low resolution of 128x128, so don’t expect a high level of sharpness here. Despite not having a built-in digital camera, you can view photos stored on a microSD memory card (expandable up to 2GB). The card could also store music that you can play in the included player embedded in the phone.

The only problem is that the card slot is in the back behind the battery, which means that you would have to shut down the phone, open the back, remove the battery and then remove the card to load it with content. That’s not particularly convenient, but it seems necessary given the Renew’s design and construction.

There is a mini-USB port on the right side and a 2.5mm headphone jack on the left. Because of the smaller size of the jack, you would need an adapter to use your own preferred headphones to listen to music. Unfortunately, there’s no dedicated volume control buttons on the side of the phone. This wasn’t so bad for listening to music, but when chatting with someone on the phone, I’d have to actually look at the screen to raise or lower the volume.

The Renew offers impressive call quality with its CrystalTalk feature, as well as nine hours of talk time on one battery charge. The “green” idea behind the longer battery life is that you would ideally have to charge the phone less often than other models.

This is largely true, especially if you only use the phone for a limited amount of time per day. I had the phone for a week and didn’t need to charge it once. That said, playing games (Tetris and Sudoku are the included ones) and music on the Renew can affect the battery’s performance.

Even though Motorola packed in extra features, the Renew is a pretty basic phone. There is Internet access with a Web browser, but that requires a data plan of some sort. There is no Bluetooth, which is unfortunate for those times you want to use the phone while keeping your hands free (the included earbuds do help though). All the other basic features you’d expect in a cell phone are in here.

That makes it a pretty decent offering overall, though the music player, Web browsing and games could be better. T-Mobile currently offers the Renew for $9.99 after a $50 "instant discount."