Motorola's newest addition to its anemic smartphone portfolio brings Bluetooth, improved screens and better battery life to the mix: Jørgen Sundgot investigates the MPx220.
Review summary of the Motorola MPx220:
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 Release: December 2004. Price: $250.
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Full review of the Motorola MPx220:
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It's been almost a year since Motorola's first Windows Mobile smartphone, the MPx200, came to market. Anticipation for the MPx220 has been great, given its improved specifications and use of Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition for Smartphone, which has a leg or three up on Smartphone 2002 which powered the MPx200. Despite its improvements, however, the MPx220 retains some of the flaws of its predecessor - so do the pros outweigh the cons?
 | The quad-band antenna hump on top of the MPx220 mars its looks
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Not the best of first impressions
Lovingly nicknamed 'Quasimodo' in-house due to its bulging, quad-band "intenna", the MPx220 is - although comparably a tad large - sleek and modestly attractive when closed, providing pertinent information to owners through its minute external colour display. Sadly, however, users must press a key to activate said display, thus defeating the entire purpose of push-based alerts in a spectacular display of stupidity.
Following in the footsteps of the external display, the front half of the MPx220 also includes a mostly useless flash placed adjacent to a 1.2 Megapixel camera. Despite its high resolution, the camera produces ghastly results with poor colour balance and hazing, and its unlimited, low-quality video recording also fails to impress.
Obviously, misery craves company, and as such it will come as no surprise that except for doubling as an utterly crap viewfinder for the aforementioned camera, users cannot perform any useful functions by means of the external buttons and display in a closed state.
Matters fortunately improve a wee bit on the inside, however. The internal display, albeit somewhat small at 2", is crisp, clear and adequately bright; yet its viewing angle is rather poor and only marginally improved over that of the MPx200. The keypad has undergone a transformation for the better and now offers excellent tactile feedback, yet audible feedback remains too loud for discrete in-meeting tapping.
Also disappointing, the directional keypad remains too large, causing unnecessary strain with frequent use. A strong blue, photo sensor-activated backlight raises the impression somewhat, as does a nice implementation of iTap for predictive text - only to be sabotaged by a distinct inability to keep up with rapid multi-tap text input.
Can you hear me now?
Quite the all-rounder in the connectivity department, the MPx220 offers several improvements over the MPx200. Quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz and GPRS Class 10 support is joined by the inclusion of a select number of useful Bluetooth profiles, as well as an Infrared port for the legacy-inclined - all with range and reception proving sufficient, but nothing more.
 | A clever photo sensor activates the keypad backlight in poor lighting
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Lacking a cradle, the MPx220 offers USB connectivity courtesy of an included cable, which unlike that provided with the MPx200 is no longer mini-USB on the device side: a step backwards, although at the very least USB charging remains. We're also pleased to see the MPx220 including a standard 2.5 mm handsfree kit jack, but found volume levels to be too low for comfortable use under mildly noisy conditions. Sadly, the same applies to the earpiece and speaker mode.
Having undergone a specifications upgrade, the MPx220 now boasts 32 MB of user available non-volatile memory and 23 MB of RAM as well as a 200 MHz TI OMAP 1611 processor. A miniSD Card expansion slot offers further memory expansion, whilst a 1,000 mAh Lithium Ion battery contributes to significantly better battery life than the MPx200. Pleasantly surprising, it appears moderately active users can get away with charging the MPx220 every third day.
On the application side, Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition for Smartphone offers a number of improvements over Smartphone 2002, which powered the MPx200. Of particular note is the greatly enhanced reformatting capabilities of Pocket Internet Explorer, improved messaging and Bluetooth support, whilst superb features such as predictive dialing, the utterly customizeable home screen and blazing synchronization speeds remain unchanged. Still, flaws also remain, such as the horrid mess that is the Settings menu, and Windows Media Player remains at version 9 as opposed to the recently-released 10.
Motorola wisely decided to include a file viewer for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, as well as Adobe Acrobat (PDF) documents, and a file manager and J2ME MIDP 2.0 runtime are also welcome additions to the application line-up. Less successful is the speaker-independent voice command and dialing software, which only worked properly under quiet conditions and displayed a distinct distaste for non-English names.
Availability
The Motorola MPx220 is at the time of writing available in select European markets and North America, selling in the $250 USD range with subscription.
Price and availability
The Motorola MPx220 will start selling for $250 () in December 2004.
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