Motorola Talkabout Reviews

It is impossible to download a map in MotorolaTalkabout for use offline, so that you can send your GPS coordinates to the other user (as advertised).

If it allows you to do it at all, it’s such a tiny map area that it’s useless. Support had me uninstall and reinstall MotorolaTalkabout . It worked once and then went straight back to the way it was before.

This does NOT deliver on its promise, or justify the price of the radios.

Bought 4 and was unable to even download a map let alone use it to navigate or communicate. Could not do this at home let alone in the field. Concept is very cool but does not appear to perform and will be returning the devices.

On both the iPhone app and running MotorolaTalkabout on Mac, maps won’t load in the slightest with a high speed Wi-Fi connection. The loading bar just keeps spinning and spinning. This is the primary reason I bought these radios and it’s false advertising to claim offline maps as a feature of the radio/app when it obviously doesn’t work.

I spent the past 8 months talking with the customer service team trying to get the offline maps to work. They just “resolved my case” because they know the problem is not something they can address.

Let me save you time - Stop trying to download offline maps because it’s a waste of time. Don’t get these radios based on the ability to locate your partner.

Cannot even create an account. Receiving “request failed” notice but no reason as to why.

Maps haven’t worked for a long time. I understand a small downtime for updates but at this point, Motorola is lying and cheating their customers.

T803 failed to pair with iPhone

There is absolutely zero legitimate reason MotorolaTalkabout needs you to make an account, phone number, and "activate". Completely eliminates any trust in it as an off-grid app because it could just decide at any time to "log you out" and render it inoperable.

There’s nothing that tells you that you should create an account to get a full feature set and then after you’re done with setup you realize you can’t use offline maps… Jank.

So, the difference between this walkie talkie and the others is the Bluetooth to have access to the maps and text. The maps simply don’t work, online offline, nothing seems to work…
That was the feature I wanted, making this walkie talkie not working for my needs.

Everything about the application, and the T800 Series Motorola radio are garbage, including the customer service.

The application is and has been nothing but half baked builds, never has it been useable without a ton of bugs that Motorola never cared to fix. All about profit and don’t give a *** about quality.

Just bought 4 of these for an upcoming trip. Huge disappointment that the map download does not work. Just get a spinning gear. That is the main value add of this type of app and the T800 series. Probably better to get fully waterproof radios than waste your time trying to get MotorolaTalkabout to work.

There are no maps on-line. Also could not download anything for off line use. The map screen is just a black canvas. Old school gps used to be this way and we made it work but that was 20 years ago. Get it together Motorola.

With an active data connection, MotorolaTalkabout and the t800s work great. Unfortunately, most of the time I want to use these where there is no cell signal. In this case, the poor support for offline maps makes them nearly useless. The maps download incredibly slowly, even on a very fast Wi-Fi connection (so slowly that you really need to know where you are going to be within a few miles well beforehand) and then even after they download, they may not display when you are in the field because MotorolaTalkabout is very buggy. Without the map overlay, all you get is “the other person is in that direction… maybe”. If these issues were fixed, I would buy a dozen of these radios!

My feedback is not about usage of MotorolaTalkabout and the radio. But instead about non-usage.

I never opened talkabout app in the last few months. Yet it drained battery on my iPhone just in a few hours. Yes, according to battery stats background activity of talkabout app was responsible for 80% of battery drain while staying dormant

First, the good: pairing is easy and MotorolaTalkabout is pretty self explanatory. I love that that settings for the radio can be configured from MotorolaTalkabout and then populated to other radios via the "leader/member" feature.
I tested the messaging features using two iPhones and two radios and it works pretty well.

Now the bad: MotorolaTalkabout will allow you to attach a selfie or chosen avatar to your profile just like any other chat/messaging app and you can choose your own profile name...but that data doesn't seem to go anywhere. The natural assumption would be that your avatar and name would automatically propagate to other members in your group if your phone has data (cellular/wifi, etc) when you add them but none of that happens. You still have to manually enter their names when adding members to your group, and take photos (or choose them from your photo stream). So what's the point of adding your own photo to your profile? Nothing, it seems.

Also, the downloading of offline maps is terribly slow, even when connected to wifi. I'll concede that "beggars can't be choosers," and [so far] Motorola seems to be offering these maps for free where other apps might require a subscription fee. But it is surprisingly slow.

I'll say that the pros outweigh the cons but I hope Motorola will continue to support and develop MotorolaTalkabout because it still needs some work.

I recently purchased the Talkabout Motorola 800 and I downloaded MotorolaTalkabout Talkabout on my iPhone running 16.2 and unfortunately when I try to I said license agreement is disabled can somebody give me tips how can I put MotorolaTalkabout to work on my iPhone so that I would be able to pair the Bluetooth

1) In Shout all 4 predefined messages should be editable.
2) In Shout My Tracks should be available.
3) In Shout Offline Maps should be available.
4) In Shout you should be able to change the ID Name to Profile Name.
5) Inability to turn off Dual Watch in Radio Settings.
6) In Maps when saving Pins, GPS coordinates should be automatically part of the label.
7) In Shout you should be able to individual delete messages. Not just the whole conversation.

People continue to say they are unable to pair the two way radio, though it connected instantaneously. Controls are able to be changed very quickly through MotorolaTalkabout , and there are some other fun extra features as well. Speaking this is the first if not one of the first radios to be able to have this feature, it’s really good.

Some reviews talked about the slow map downloading which has seemed to be fixed, my offline maps were downloaded pretty fast. The pairing was also super fast. Couldn’t wait to test this in the wild.