First look @ the ming
Phone review - Motorola A1200
My short affair with Motorola L6 ended when I fell in love with this Chinese lady who infiltrated into Indian markets – Motorola A1200 @ Motoming. This touch-screen PDA type phone is awesome looking with the transparent flip covering the big display. The flip also has the phone’s earpiece and that makes this model both a conventional flip open phone combined with PDA functionalities. Motorola has been producing these eye-pleasing models of late in V3, L6 and L7. Add ming to the list, and even though the other models will be half as thick as this one; ming is certainly a ‘love at first sight’ type phone.
Motoming is yet another typical Motorola product with style outside and substance inside. There are loads and loads of functions and features, but the phone will score just a pass mark for usability when it comes to the software. General handling like flipping open the phone, keys on the side of the phone apart from the touch-screen options are more than satisfying. The transparent flip appears to be scratch-prone, but if at all there would be any scratch it would go to this flip and not the touch-screen. This is one reason I preferred this phone instead of other PDA types like O2 and Blackberrys. The rest of the casing has this mat finish plastic, which I think can resist scratches better than other phones. Common operations like dialing can be managed without the stylus(the toothpick like thing used to operate the touch-screen!).
The common phone features are excellent. The display is big and attractive. Battery gets charged very quickly in 40-45 minutes from 0 to 100(only next to race bikes that go from 0 to 60 in seconds*) and lasts at least 48 hours on extensive usage. And the kit that comes along with the phone is very impressive - a data cable, 512 MB memory card(micro with adapter), the hands-free, additional stylus, and the obviously the phone charger. Almost all required add-ons are already available that there is no investment after the purchase of the phone, and the phone itself is under priced yet again like other good Motorola models.
On PDA type phones, it is naturally curious to know about the ‘office’ soft wares and the other PC like applications. This one comes with the opera browser for surfing and has its own email client as well. Configurations to access the net through WAP are already preset for most common operators in India**. For music, Motorola ties up with real player this time as against the itunes that was found in V3. The real player is just a basic version without any equalizer setting etc. It plays most music formats, but for the video, on a quick inspection I could see it does not play wmv type files. Connectivity to other gadgets and PC is through data cable and the bluetooth. Bluetooth is powerful and the transfer rate is quick. And when the phone interacts with the net and other devices, I am happy that this one is built on a Linux operating system, which is less susceptible to virus than the counterparts Microsoft, and the Symbian.
I was worried if the phone would handle documents like Word, powerpoint and excel. To my surprise, it opened a variety of documents including the PDF. But editing the documents is not possible, and will only be overkill to include so many features on a small phone. It is also not possible to associate file types to any application, for instance say a CSV file is same as excel but the viewer does not recognize a CSV file and also there is no option where we can ask the viewer to open the file like an excel. There is this calendar, notes and things that you can find on PC. It is also possible to sync the calendar, contacts, notes, etc with your PC through the software provided(I found it very difficult to install it and sync my phone, in fact I have not done it yet. Usability issues again; but other users have managed to do this).
Other features
It comes with a 2.0 MP camera, which is good and has 8x digital zoom and a number of shooting modes as well. There is FM and the FM receiver is built on the hands-free. Motorola adds a ‘Business card reader’ into this phone. It allows capturing business cards through the camera and just adding the details on to the address book automatically. A cool features for core business-people. It also has this voice functions like voice dial, which is handy when you have to take your stylus out for typing in something. And there is also this handwriting recognition where it just picks up the characters when you just write with your stylus.
Overall, Motorola comes up again with an attractive and ‘value-for-money’ product. For beginners of the PDA version phones, it is worth trying out this model. It has just enough features that make it a PDA and with the comfort of handling it as a phone. You should be surprised if I say this phone costs just 15k. I wanted to hold on to my L6 till later this summer when Iphones are out. But now I can wait another year when Iphones’ price will eventually drop. When you need reasons like that to justify your actions, Motoming does not appear to be a bad reason at all.
Smiles,
Vinayak
(Please do RRC)
- You know I am poor when it comes to analogy
* - When the phones with WAP have become affordable, using the WAP has not become affordable in any part of this world.