Mobile Phones and Services

The perfect complement to Tracfone prepaid wireless service, the sleek, lightweight LG 225 offers an affordable way to stay in touch with family and friends across town and around the globe via voice communication and text messaging. And this phone offers Double Minutes for the life of the phone. That means when you add a 60, 120 or 200-minute card, or a 1 Year of Service Airtime Card (which adds 400 minutes), you'll receive double the airtime for the same low price. Packaged within a sleek, black clamshell, the 225's VGA camera lets you take color photos, show them off on your rich color display, or send them to friends via MMS. With its full-duplex speakerphone you can talk hands-free while on-the-go.

Tracfone Service
Tracfone provides nationwide prepaid wireless service using the nation's leading cellular providers to create a national footprint covering 99 percent of the U.S. population. This gives you connectivity everywhere cellular service is available. You can use your Tracfone across the U.S. and if you move, you can relocate your wireless number with just a phone call.

You can buy bundles of minutes (which must be used within a set time limit of between 90 to 365 days) from the Tracfone web site on your home PC or directly from your phone's web browser. For example, if you purchase a block of 120 minutes of airtime, you'll need to use that within 90 days of your first use. When you buy additional airtime minutes, your Tracfone service is extended automatically by another 90 days. Tracfone also offers international long distance calling to over 60 international destinations (including Argentina, Brazil, China, Mexico, most European countries, and many more), which deducts the same amount of minutes from your phone as when you make calls to destinations within the U.S.

This phone ships with a number of handy Tracfone services, including free voice mail, free caller ID, and free call waiting. And perhaps most importantly, the integrated TracFone Airtime Balance Display shows you how much airtime you've used and how much is left, so you can control your costs. You must activate your cell phone before use either by calling the Tracfone toll-free number or going to the Tracfone web site.

Phone Features
Offering quad-band connectivity for global roaming, the LG 225 clamshell phone has a stubby antenna and dual LCD screens. The internal display measures 1.5 inches and has a 128 x 128-pixel resolution and support for 65K colors. The external monochrome screen has a fixed color background, and it measures 96 x 64 pixels. It displays date, time, battery life, signal strength, and caller ID phone number (though no photo ID). You can also view the last 20 dialed/received calls for easy redialing.

The internal phonebook can hold up to 255 contact entries (in addition to 250 contacts stored on your SIM card), and each contact has fields for three phone numbers and an email address. You can assign callers to groups and pair them with a picture for photo caller ID (viewed only on the internal screen). The phone features eight speed dial entries as well as a default voicemail speed dial.

The VGA camera has three resolution options (640 x 480, 320 x 240 and 160 x 120 pixels) and it offers a 4x digital zoom, multi-shot capability (allowing you to take 9 pictures in fast succession), brightness and white balance controls, and a self timer. You'll be able to store up to 75 photos on the phone's internal memory at the lowest resolution setting, or seven photos at the highest setting.

Support for basic text messaging and multimedia messaging (MMS) are built into the 225. When used in combination with the phone's built-in camera, MMS opens up a whole new world of messaging fun. The T9 predictive text entry technology is built into the unit, which makes it easier for people to enter words and text on handsets--a plus for mobile email and text messaging users.

Other features include:

• Tracfone Airtime Balance Display shows you how much airtime you've used and how much is left
• Multi-lingual support (English, French, Spanish)
• Personal organizer (calendar with scheduler, alarm clock, notepad)
• Calculator, world clock, unit converter, tip calculator
• Preloaded games
• WAP 2.0 browser
• Full duplex speakerphone
• 8 unique ringtones with vibrate and silent modes

Vital Statistics
The LG 225 weighs 3.26 ounces and measures 1.89 x 3.36 x 0.9 inches. Its lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 3 hours of talk time, and up to 8 days of digital standby time. It runs on the 850/900/1800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE frequencies.

Customer Review:I used this phone and it is just fine.

However, when I upgraded to a new phone through Tracfone, it took me over 5 hours of 'technical support' before they finally admitted the replacement phone was defective and agreed to send me a new one.
This was 5 hours over two days and was a horrible experience. I could hear the fourth agent helping other people while he told me to wait - he did this about 8 times. He made me give him my contact information at least 3 times. He refused to read the call notes from the other agents the previous day and made me repeat the exact same steps several times after the previous agents had made me repeat the same steps several times.
It appears that tracfone will do anything to avoid helping their customers and they seem to rely on customers giving up and going away. Such rudeness and incompetence are truly breathtaking in a company that relies on their customers for their income.
If the replacement phone does not work I am going to send it back to them rather than endure another excruciating ordeal such as I have gone through this time.
I would suggest that you do not use tracfone for anything but look for a better company.

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