Hands-on with Motorola's green "Renew" phone

I have to say, it's been years since I bothered to test a handset as basic as the Renew. Then again, it's not every day I get to review a cell phone made out of recycled water bottles.

Announced during CES and available now on T-Mobile ($9.99 with a two-year contract, or $59.99 without), the three-ounce Renew is not exactly, how shall I say … packed with features.

No Bluetooth. No GPS. No video player. No camera. Wi-Fi? Please. Oh, by the way—2002 called, and it wants its 1.6-inch, 128 by 128-pixel display back. 

That said, you'll be hard-pressed to find a greener handset than the Renew, starting with its brown cardboard package (made from post-consumer recycled paper) and ending with its plastic, green-and-black casing, which is both molded out of recycled water bottles—there's a first—and also "entirely recyclable," according to Motorola. 

And while the Renew's features are indeed basic—just a bare-bones WAP browser and MP3 player, a few low-tech games, a basic calendar and address book—Motorola clearly took pains to get the basics right.

Example: Call quality on the CrystalTalk-enabled Renew is notably impressive, with callers sounding loud—way loud, actually, especially over the speakerphone—and clear. I didn't notice any echoing or drop-outs during my tests, although your mileage may vary depending on local coverage (and I've certainly heard my share of complaints from T-Mobile subscribers). Moto promises a whopping nine hours of talk time on a single charge, and yes—the Renew works with T-Mobile's MyFaves plan (good for unlimited calling to any five friends).

I was also surprised to find a microSD slot for memory expansion behind the Renew's battery, good for storing MP3s for playback over the music player (a wired stereo headset with a 2.5mm jack comes in the box). Again, don't expect an equalizer or album art, but there are shuffle and repeat modes available, and you can play tunes in the background while you perform other phone functions (a deceptively simple trick missing on many of the pricier "multimedia" phones I've tested).

Now, that's not to say everything's rosy with the Renew. Its sound is loud and clear, all right, but it tends toward the tinny side, and I was bummed by the lack of a physical, dedicated volume rocker on the side of the phone (you must used the four-way navigational pad to tweak the volume, which can be awkward when the handset is pressed against your ear). Meanwhile, Web browsing over the GPRS-only data connection is painfully slow. And yes, T-Mobile offers several cheaper (as in, free) phones with sharper displays and more features.

That said, the Renew is a statement phone as well as a basic one—indeed, Motorola promises to invest in renewable-energy sources to compensate for the carbon emissions involved in building and distributing the handset. (There's even a postage-paid envelope in the box for sending your old phone to a recycling center.) If you're looking for the equivalent of a hybrid car in the world of cell phones, well ... this is it.