Smartphone Thoughts: Clam Shell Beauty: Motorola MPx220 Smartphone Reviewed

What’s Different About This Smartphone
Let me quickly summarize the things that differentiate this Smartphone from the pack. Earlier in the review I talked about the fast dual core processor, external miniSD slot, 1.23 Mega pixel camera and proprietary connectors for USB and charging. And this is a quad-band Smartphone.

At the beginning of the review I had mentioned that Motorola has put the external color screen to some good use. Apart from the status indicator and clock, it displays the PhotoId when an incoming call comes in. And it also acts as a viewfinder for taking self portraits with the camera.


Figure 61: PhotoId on the external screen.

The MPx220 ships with a decent voice recognition software. It can be launched by holding down the volume up button. It requires no voice training. It enables looking up contacts and dialing numbers, and also enables launching of applications. I had mixed results (partly because I have a lot of Indian names in my phonebook) but still pretty pleased with the voice recognition. Unfortunately the program does not work with Bluetooth headsets. The current version is interactive, a female voice prompts you with "Say a command", you respond with one of the choices, then it prompts you for the details, and this goes on. After a few times you find that it is easier to dial the contact manually. I wish the program had an expert mode where I could say "Call XYZ at home" or "Open Explorer". However, in spite of the interactive nature, this application does ease the dialing process while driving.


Figure 62: Voice recognition software.

Windows Mobile Smartphones use T9 predictive text entry but on this Smartphone, Motorola has decided to use its proprietary iTAP technology. iTAP performs as well as the T9 for predictive text entry. Typing a long sentence is no problem till I get to the end and have to enter a dot (.) and for some weird reason iTAP always types apostrophe (') instead of dot (.) when I press the "1" key. Also there is no easy way to enter smilies. Otherwise the superbly designed keypad complements iTAP and makes text entry easy. I have gotten used to the subtle nuances of iTAP.


Figure 63: iTAP in action. I only had to punch in 4 keys and it is suggesting the word "Remarkable". The screen shot on the right shows iTAP predicting apostrophe instead of a dot.

The MPx220 includes a File Viewer application that enables viewing of documents attached to E-Mails and documents stored on phone's memory. It supports popular document formats like PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel etc.


Figure 64: File Viewer in action. The screen shot on the right shows a section of the PDF document.

Inclusion of Voice Recognition and File Viewer applications completes the software package and makes the Smartphone handy. Ideally these should have been part of the Windows Mobile OS.

Issues…Issues…Issues
The intent of this section is not to scare potential buyers. Please keep in mind that this is the first release of the product. Orange's SPV C500 also had teething troubles and hardware limitations, like the poorly designed joypad. At the AT&T store when I was trying out the Audiovox SMT5600, it froze up on me within fifteen minutes. All I was doing was going through the menus, launching programs one by one. That said I am not giving the manufacturers an excuse for putting an untested and unfinished products in the market. Especially a company like Motorola should not be doing such a thing. So let me summarize my rants.

When it comes to being a phone first, the issue that Motorola must resolve quickly, for the phone’s success, is the microphone or the phone not transmitting the voice properly. And it would be good if the earpiece and speakerphone volume is increased by a notch. Using a headset is a nice workaround but not a solution.

The package does not include important accessory like the headset. Motorola could have chosen a better battery pack for this Smartphone. Personally I feel that the external screen should stay on all the time. And it should have been a mono screen to conserve power. And why did Motorola use a 2 inch display screen? Squeezing the 176x220 resolution to a 2 inch screen makes it sharper but makes some fonts unreadable. The Bluetooth serial profile is missing. Bluetooth implementation is not compatible with some popular GPS Navigation software applications. The 1.23 Mega pixel camera and especially the video recorder have plenty of room for improvement. But we must remember that this is a phone first and not a camera, so expectations should not be high. Enabling ClearType does not help. It makes the text totally unreadable in Pocket Internet Explorer and on the Home screen.

I found some random software problems. Occasionally the external and main display will stay on, instead of blanking out after the timeout. A reboot fixes this problem. On the topic of rebooting, the phone rebooted itself twice. Another thing I noticed is that when the battery is dangerously low, the Bluetooth radio is shut off, but the Bluetooth icon remains in the iconbar.

And on the bright side, the phone in the last three weeks has never frozen up on me. I never had to pull the battery out to soft reset the device. As a long time Smartphone user, the MPx220 has impressed me by this feat.

Conclusions
Motorola's MPx220 stands out of the Smartphone crowd because of its superb styling and clam shell design. Clam shell lovers would instantly adopt this model. Others should look at the differences between the MPx220 and candy-bar Smartphones. Quad-band, fast dual core processor, keypad/joypad and the externally accessible miniSD slot are the main advantages. As the second generation Smartphone, Motorola has got the specifications right. The Smartphone has all the ingredients to make it a successful model in the market. The only thing stopping it is a couple of fixes, which Motorola can release in the form of a firmware update.