Mafam M2 UHF Walkie Talkie with GSM Phone

Also Labelled “Landrover” on the front, although I suspect it has nothing to do with the real Land Rover car company.

I've been looking around for a standby phone I can use as an emergency phone in the car. As an Amateur Radio operator, I was intrigued by combining a UHF radio and a GSM phone in the same package. If you are out of phone coverage, it would be useful to be able to use either the PMR frequencies to converse with non licenced friends or the UHF amateur band as appropriate.

As this is an emergency phone, it should be rugged, but internet or email access is not a priority.

I bought this from Ebay as it seemed to fit the requirements and was a very good price.

Physically it is a well constructed, rugged phone with a handy LED flashlight. There is a large battery which achieved approx one week standby time, this can also be used as a power bank to charge another device via the USB socket on the bottom. This, as well as the power charging input are behind a water resistant flap.

The phone is dual SIM capable and has a micro SD slot for saving photos to and includes a broadcast VHF FM radio receiver. The PMR antenna also extends to act as an FM radio antenna.

The whole phone sits in ones hand nicely, and feels comfortable in use.

However, the software it runs does rather let it down. it is NOT Android based, it feels like a previous generation phone OS, the on screen text feels like Chinese English and does not really make sense in places. As a phone, it is usable to make and receive calls, I have not tested how sensitive it is yet.

But my biggest grumble is that the UHF radio does not or is extremely difficult to change frequency for. It has some frequencies programmed in already, but they are not useful for the UK. It would appear possible to change the Rx / Tx and offset / channel spacing, but saving them seems not to work!

As with a lot of cheapish Chinese made stuff, there is no manufacturer contact details available, and on the internet, this device is sold by a variety of sellers under different names, LandRover being one, but I'm quite sure thet JLR in the UK does not have anything to do with them and I'm quite sure they would not be agreeing to the branding either.

It seems that Mafam is the closest to the manufacturers name, but I'm not sure.

Reasonable hardware let down by crappy phone OS, a real shame as a good firmware update would solve many issues.

Would I buy another? Probably not, but if the UHF radio issue was solved by a firmware update (or even just good instructions in NATIVE English), I'd probably buy one then.

Hint to MAFAM is anyone reads this, work with me and I will help you rewrite the instructions in an understandable way, your product is let down by firmware which could be improved fairly easily and the lack of instructions. This means you are loosing Sales == losing profit!