Are you living green? Recycling, not purchasing plastic water bottles, maybe even using cloth diapers. Why not extend that one step further with an environmentally friendly phone? Verizon Wireless offers the Motorola Citrus, a base-model Android phone that is safe for the environment while offering you all the features of the Android operating system.
Physically speaking
The Motorola Citrus has to be the lightest phone I’ve used in a while. It’s made of recycled plastic with a touchscreen and weighs about 110 grams.
The first thing I did when I lifted it out of the box was look for the keyboard. It’s pretty small and I was afraid of how typing on it was going to go, even in the horizontal position. It really wasn’t bad. The keyboard, either vertically or horizontally, was responsive. Because of the small size, I really liked the Backtrack feature. I describe it in the accompanying video, but it’s a pad on the back of the phone that allows the user to scroll and start applications. The means your fingers aren’t in the way while scrolling through items.
The Extras
Aside from the Backtrack feature, the phone offers some unique options, including software. The Treehugger application provides a stream of all environmentally friendly topics available in the news. What I found interesting was how many items come up per day. I get so busy with my life that I didn’t realized how much work was going into protecting our environment every single day. I was checking the application from time to time just to see what was going on. Without it, that’s not something I would have done.
The phone held up well in my purse. It was small, so occasionally I would lose it in there, but it held up well. Being that it’s made of plastic and incredibly light, I might invest in a case for it, but after almost two weeks in my purse, it help up just fine.
And don’t forgot!
When you purchase your new Citrus and are all done with your old phone, make sure you put it in the provided bag and send it (shipping provided) to be recycled.
If you don’t want to recycle it, you can always donate it to Verizon’s HopeLine Project, which recycles or refurbishes phones to raise funds for domestic women’s shelters. For more information, read my story about the HopeLine Project.
And now the fine print: I received a Motorola Citrus from Verizon Wireless for review and demo purposes.
