The Motorola A1200 Ming is a Linux based handheld -- handheld, because
it's not really just a phone. It's a handheld computer that happens to
have a phone. It's Motorola's customized Linux, and it has a
touchscreen interface that changes depending on the application
currently in use.
Quad Band Cell
Mp3 Player, Video Player
GPRS Wireless Internet
Bluetooth
Personal Information Manager
Business Card Capture
2 Megapixel Still Camera and Video Recorder
FM Radio
Touchscreen Interface
Document Reader
Hardware it doesn't have: WiFi, GPS, Camera Flash
I've read many places that Motorola has absolutely no plans to release
the A1200 outside of the Asian market, but you can easily find the
A1200 on ebay. I also saw a Verizon vendor stand in the mall that had
one unit, but none in stock. I advise against getting it from the
carriers, because while it will cost less, it will also have many
features locked out. Carriers usually lock phones so only SIM cards
that they branded will work on the phone. Additionally, many carriers
lock features out of the web browser, bluetooth, and media players. So,
I bought an unlocked one on ebay, and my package came with:
The OS is Motorola's customized version of linux called EZX. It looks
very similar to any of the smartphone interfaces, but the A1200 has a
touchcreen as its main input. There are two front buttons, and a small
8-way joystick that also pushes in. On the right side are the camera
and voice recognition buttons. On the left side are the up/down and
select buttons. The select button usually does the same as pushing the
joystick in. As these buttons change depending on the mode, I'll
explain the buttons better as I cover the different functions. Youtube
has quite a few A1200 Videos showing off the handheld in action.
After using the MPX200 with ActiveSync, the A1200's sync system
(Motorola PhoneTools) for WinXP is rather disappointing. Let me
illustrate how ActiveSync is better than PhoneTools.
The bugs and annoyances in PhoneTools are just completely and utterly
unacceptable. PhoneTools should be just as transparent as ActiveSync.
When plugged in via USB, WinXP recognizes the A1200 as a mass storage
device without needing any drivers installed. WinXP will mount the USDC
as the device. In other words, just like plugging in a USB key, you can
just plug this in to get instant access to your USDC. You can then just
drag and drop files. I haven't had much luck yet with the bluetooth
functions yet.
Ubuntu Edgy automatically recognizes the phone as a microSD slot and you can easily mount the A1200
when connected via USB. Don't try to mount it with a fs type specified,
or you may have to reformat the card like I did (even the phone stopped
reading it). Who would think that merely mounting it would bork the
partition? Anyways, you would think a Linux smartphone would have
better Linux support, but I haven't yet been able to mount the system
memory to sync in Linux, and Evolution with multiSync doesn't notice
it. I haven't tried connecting via bluetooth as this handheld is the
only bluetooth device I have. I'm going to be getting a dongle soon for
my PC, so I'll post my results then.
When plugged in via USB, Ubuntu Edgy recognizes the USDC on the phone
as a usbdisk, and will automount the phone. You can then just drag and
drop files. I have tried out some bluetooth functions, but it's pretty
nasty. So far, I haven't found any simple way to transfer files through
the bluetooth -- and no, hitting scan, then dragging and dropping files
left and right, after selecting a phone, and then clicking send is NOT
a simple solution. The system should be much more transparent, and I'm
working towards a solution.
Currently, I do not have a Mac. I had an old iMac that ran OS8, but it
finally bit the dust during Summer 2006 and I disposed of it. I have no
intention of looking into A1200 Mac compatibility, so you will have to
find that information elsewhere.
Apparently, I have been linked to by a mac user's forum, and you can find more details on A1200 Mac reviews at philmug.ph.
The phone is quad band (850/900/1800/1900 mHz), and as long as you get
yours unlocked (or unlock it), you can use it all over the planet. The
call quality is typical for any quad band phone. The unit will notify
you of how many voicemails have been left. Ringtones can be polyphonic
(MIDI) or MP3s. A regular MP3 of a few minutes can even be a ringtone.
I personally have tried the H700 headset and I have put my results in my Motorola A1200 Ming and Motorola H700 Bluetooth headset review.
The results were quite good, but I don't like the H700 itself. I've
read confirmations for the A1200 working well with various headsets:
Samsung WEP200, Jabra BT250v, Plantronics 510.
The Bluetooth spec is JSR-82 so supposedly this will work with Bemused. Bemused allows you to use the A1200 as a remote for your desktop PC over Bluetooth. This will be very nice with MythTV. If it does work, but I'll have to post those results after I get a Bluetooth dongle.
Unfortunately, the A1200 does not
have Wifi (802.11a/b/g/n). Supposedly, the A1200 does support EDGE, but
I haven't tried, as my understanding is that Cingular doesn't use EDGE.
At the moment, I'm not too happy with any broadband over cell
technologies, but that's for another article. The browser is some sort
of customized version of Opera. I haven't extensively tested javascript
and CSS support, but it does seem to support some, and it also supports
cookies.
As my phone came from China, all of the default internet connections
were for Chinese service providers. Since this phone is pretty fast,
the internet on it is tolerable (whereas mMode on my old LG410 was
unbearable). It's not broadband, but it's acceptable for low bandwidth
transmissions. My mobile homepage takes maybe one or two seconds to open, but it's not littered with images. You'll probably want to add a GPRS network.
I've also read about being able to use a Bluetooth receiver on a
computer as a router, but I can't check how usable this really is until
I get the dongle.
This phone does have an internal FM Radio. It does sound very good and
the controls are digital. However, you must have the earphones plugged
in to use the FM Radio (it will drop out of radio mode if you unplug
them), as it uses the wires as an antenna. I never really use this,
because I'm typically using the MP3 player.
The camera has a resolution of 1600x1200 (2 megapixels) which is the
highest resolution of most camera phones. Anyone who knows anything
about photography knows that digital zoom is worthless, so I leave that
off. There is no optical zoom, but there is a macro/landscape focus.
The idea is that when you're photographing anything more than a foot
away, use the landscape mode. With macro mode, you can photograph
things up close. Macro mode is also used for the business card capture.
There is no flash. The pictures are taken in JPG format. The video
recording is in 3gP, and is too low resolution to be used for anything
outside of viewing on the phone itself. While this is the best camera
phone I've seen, it's still not enough to replace a single-task camera
entirely, but it is usually a nice feature. I say usually, because most
courthouses, and many government buildings do not allow cameras inside,
and as a law student, that presents an obvious problem.
Controlling the camera is incredibly simple. Even if the clamshell is
closed, just hit the camera button on the left side of the phone to
switch to camera mode. Then hit the camera button again to capture a
photo. If you left it in video recorder mode, it will capture video
instead of stills. You can set it so it saves the images and video to
your USDC instead of the phone's memory.
The business card capture uses the camera. Hold the phone a few inches
away from the card with the camera on macro mode focused at the card.
The card will be digitized using an ocr-text conversion to create a
business contact. It's semi-accurate and expedites the process of
inputting information, but it's not failsafe, and some business cards
are just too artsy for it to detect the text well. I typically don't
use it, as I type my contacts into a computer and then sync, because
it's so much faster and has a 100% accuracy.
The phone uses RealPlayer and supports most popular formats. My concern
was MP3 support, and it does have it. The phone does apparently support
forward lock DRM, but a little explanation is in order (as I hate DRM
and would never support it). If I have a regular MP3 (downloaded from
one of my DJ sites, or ripped myself), I can transfer the MP3 to and
from the phone without any problem. The phone doesn't have some
translator that wrecks my non-DRM files. The DRM only applies if the
file you're importing to the phone has DRM. I don't know all of the
details on what commercially supports this, but I did gloss over the
DRM section in the developer's manual. DRM aside, the music portion of
the media player easily supports AAC(+), MP3, RealAudio, MIDI, and WAV.
RealPlayer also supports many video formats, particularly MPEG-4,
MPEG-3, H.263, 3gP, and RealVideo. However, the issue with simply
importing your DivX is that you'll really want to downsample the video.
Most respectable DivX video is 720x480 (or so) while this screen only
displays 320x240. This means you're carrying around a lot of wasted
space. I have Acala 3gP converter (WinXP) and it will convert a 700 mb
movie (legal of course) to about 75 mb in 3gP. Video is nicely
watchable, but it's a small screen. On the MPX200, the problem with
video was that the processor couldn't handle it displaying that much
data, so it would be like watching one frame every few seconds.
There are however, two limitations on your media. The first is your
microSD card (USDC) size. The phone comes with a 128 mb USDC, and that
fills up incredibly fast. The max size for the USDC is 2gb which is
much more respectable, but still limiting. Most phones don't support
anything higher than 2gb and my understanding is that this is a
technical issue with the addressing, not some stupid licensing limit.
The second limitation is that playlists are capped at 50 files. There
are firmware updates available on the web, and there are fixes for
this, but they're not for the Feint of Mind (tm). I haven't yet really
had a problem with the second issue, as I still only have a 128 mb USDC.
The media player will not play into mono headsets without the voice recognition hack.
The media player works fine in stereo headsets (the included headset is
stereo). Also, RealPlayer's playlisting is rather annoying. It should
scan your phone on boot and whenever disconnecting from a computer, but
instead, files must be manually added to the library. Listening to
music sounds great, and when the clamshell is closed, you can use the
buttons on the left side to change the song and the volume.
Rather than using pre-recorded voice tags for various callers, the
A1200 has a voice recognition system. Unfortunately, it's not very
accurate. Press the VR button on the right side (either the clamshell
must be open, or a headset must be connected), and then it asks you for
a command or name. I have some 300 contacts, and the only one it picks
accurately is my friend Sean (which, amusingly, is a completely
non-phonetic name). The VR hack is used to get the media player to play in mono headsets. The VR cannot be used as dictation software (yet anyways).
There is a document viewer that supports GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, PDF, TXT,
DOC, XLS, PPT, and HTML. There is also a basic paint program (that can
be used to edit your photos), and there is also a note-taking program
(a basic text editor). Additionally, there is a world clock with preset
city locations, and an alarm that can be used to set two different
notification times. There's also a voice recorder for personal voice
notes. The phone came with what appears to be a Chinese-English
translator, and also an extreme snowboarding game. The snowboarding
game doesn't compare to Amped on Xbox, or any other snowboarding game
for that matter. It's pretty embarassing, and I never play it. MSN
Messenger is also included (not that I'd use it -- I personally use gaim for instant messenging and only know a few people on MSN). However, the language defaults to Chinese, and you might want to change the MSN language to English.
You can also visit motorolafans for free A1200 games.
I have tried out a bunch of games for the A1200 (from there and other
sites), but the problem I see all too often is that most games only
support a tiny portion of the screen, as they're really designed for a
different phone and are miscategorized. Another major common problem is
lack of touchscreen support. What that translates to is using the
joystick, which is horrible for gaming. When looking through many java
midlet archives, a lot of programs will still list in A1200 categories
when they suffer from both of the above mentioned problems. I have a
running list of free A1200 games
that support fullscreen and the touchscreen. There are many more games
around, but even if they're ports of great classics like Bobble,
Lemmings, Ghosts & Goblins, and Zelda, having shoddy controls makes
the game nearly unplayable.
I personally think this is the best phone on the market.
It's by far the smallest handheld I've seen, and most smartphones can't
compare to the feature set. I've read much criticism of smartphones and
how "Americans want cell phones that only do one thing -- make calls",
but that's rubbish perpetuated by the ignorant and uninformed. Once you
have a multi-feature handheld, you absolutely cannot go back. The only
features that put the A1200 short of being the One Handheld to Rule
Them All (tm) are:
it's not really just a phone. It's a handheld computer that happens to
have a phone. It's Motorola's customized Linux, and it has a
touchscreen interface that changes depending on the application
currently in use.
..:: Feature Summary
Quad Band Cell
Mp3 Player, Video Player
GPRS Wireless Internet
Bluetooth
Personal Information Manager
Business Card Capture
2 Megapixel Still Camera and Video Recorder
FM Radio
Touchscreen Interface
Document Reader
Hardware it doesn't have: WiFi, GPS, Camera Flash
..:: Package Contents
I've read many places that Motorola has absolutely no plans to release
the A1200 outside of the Asian market, but you can easily find the
A1200 on ebay. I also saw a Verizon vendor stand in the mall that had
one unit, but none in stock. I advise against getting it from the
carriers, because while it will cost less, it will also have many
features locked out. Carriers usually lock phones so only SIM cards
that they branded will work on the phone. Additionally, many carriers
lock features out of the web browser, bluetooth, and media players. So,
I bought an unlocked one on ebay, and my package came with:
- the phone: A clamshell with a substantive weight (122 g) but
it's not overbearing. It doesn't feel cheap at all (a lot of the
Samsung and Sony phones do feel cheap). The top half of the clamshell
is clear, and the ear speaker is actually in the clear plastic. If you
look closely, you can see two wires embedded into the plastic running
from the body to the speaker. The screen itself is a touchscreen, and
it comes with a thin protective sheet on it. I haven't had a problem
leaving mine on after 5 months now. The dimensions are 95.7 x 51.7 x
21.5 mm, which puts it roughly the size of a RAZR. The unit is
available in a lacquered red or white, or a flat black. - the battery: I don't really know what the manufacturer's
estimate is on battery life. Those estimates are never accurate anyways
as they never reflect normal usage. I typically get 3 or 4 days before
I must plug it in to recharge, and I use my phone for many things
during the day besides regular call usage (calendar, music, games,
studying on the go). I leave Bluetooth off always (because I have
nothing to connect it to), and I leave GRPS off when I'm not on the
internet. I don't have a home line either, so this receives all my
calls. This is much nicer than the MPX200, which had serious battery
life issues (not charging daily meant dead battery). - a pair of motorola 2.5mm headphones (earbud style): The
2.5mm headphones sound very nice (I'm not an audiophile though). Note
that your regular headphones have a typically 3.5mm jack. To use your
regular ones, you'll need a 2.5mm-3.5mm adapter, but then you have the
problem with terminals not connecting nicely (you can only plug it in
partially or the sound cuts out) and you have a weird flimsy thing
sticking out the side of your phone, so I just stick with the motorola
headphones. I've read that the terminal connection problem doesn't
happen if you get a jack with 3 black rings instead of 2, so if you're
looking around, make sure it has the third ring. - a usb-4pin cable: This is a standard USB cable that comes
with most digital cameras. This is one of the nicest things about
motorola smartphones. They charge using a standard 4pin USB port, so
you can charge off of your laptop (or PC) as well as any AC wall
outlet, and you don't need to upgrade all of your cables whenever you
upgrade a phone. - 2 stylus: Having the extra stylus is nice, as one is bound
to get lost. The stylus does fit nicely into the phone shell, and it
sort of clips into place. It does telescope so you can add an extra
inch or so to it (~3" closed, ~4" open). It is made of some sort of
brushed aluminum, and the tip is plastic. - an AC adapter: This is a regular AC adapter for wall outlets, and it connects to the phone through the 4pin USB port.
- a 128mb USDC: it's 128 mb of removable storage. It could be larger, but it's a start.
- a USDC->SD adapter: This is so you can plug the USDC into regular SD slots.
- a manual: As my A1200 is directly imported from China, the
manual is in Chinese and English. There is also an A1200i which is an
international version of the phone. By default, the A1200i comes with
many more language packs installed, particularly for many European
languages, but I haven't seen the A1200i available anywhere.
..:: Operating System and User Interface
The OS is Motorola's customized version of linux called EZX. It looks
very similar to any of the smartphone interfaces, but the A1200 has a
touchcreen as its main input. There are two front buttons, and a small
8-way joystick that also pushes in. On the right side are the camera
and voice recognition buttons. On the left side are the up/down and
select buttons. The select button usually does the same as pushing the
joystick in. As these buttons change depending on the mode, I'll
explain the buttons better as I cover the different functions. Youtube
has quite a few A1200 Videos showing off the handheld in action.
..:: Windows Compatibility
After using the MPX200 with ActiveSync, the A1200's sync system
(Motorola PhoneTools) for WinXP is rather disappointing. Let me
illustrate how ActiveSync is better than PhoneTools.
| ActiveSync | PhoneTools | |
|---|---|---|
| Sync Process | Plug phone (USB) and it automatically syncs. | Plug phone in, open up PhoneTools, and select Sync (no autosyncing available) |
| Conflicts | Allows you to prioritize handheld, prioritize Outlook, or ask on conflicts | Also allows you to make the three selections, but it's broken. No matter what I selected, the handheld would end up with duplicates of all tasks. Any changed events/contacts would now be entirely duplicated events/contacts. |
| Sync Aspects | Email, Tasks, Contacts, Events | Tasks, Contacts, Events, Not Email |
The bugs and annoyances in PhoneTools are just completely and utterly
unacceptable. PhoneTools should be just as transparent as ActiveSync.
When plugged in via USB, WinXP recognizes the A1200 as a mass storage
device without needing any drivers installed. WinXP will mount the USDC
as the device. In other words, just like plugging in a USB key, you can
just plug this in to get instant access to your USDC. You can then just
drag and drop files. I haven't had much luck yet with the bluetooth
functions yet.
..:: Linux Compatibility
Ubuntu Edgy automatically recognizes the phone as a microSD slot and you can easily mount the A1200
when connected via USB. Don't try to mount it with a fs type specified,
or you may have to reformat the card like I did (even the phone stopped
reading it). Who would think that merely mounting it would bork the
partition? Anyways, you would think a Linux smartphone would have
better Linux support, but I haven't yet been able to mount the system
memory to sync in Linux, and Evolution with multiSync doesn't notice
it. I haven't tried connecting via bluetooth as this handheld is the
only bluetooth device I have. I'm going to be getting a dongle soon for
my PC, so I'll post my results then.
When plugged in via USB, Ubuntu Edgy recognizes the USDC on the phone
as a usbdisk, and will automount the phone. You can then just drag and
drop files. I have tried out some bluetooth functions, but it's pretty
nasty. So far, I haven't found any simple way to transfer files through
the bluetooth -- and no, hitting scan, then dragging and dropping files
left and right, after selecting a phone, and then clicking send is NOT
a simple solution. The system should be much more transparent, and I'm
working towards a solution.
..:: Mac Compatibility
Currently, I do not have a Mac. I had an old iMac that ran OS8, but it
finally bit the dust during Summer 2006 and I disposed of it. I have no
intention of looking into A1200 Mac compatibility, so you will have to
find that information elsewhere.
Apparently, I have been linked to by a mac user's forum, and you can find more details on A1200 Mac reviews at philmug.ph.
..:: Phone Calls
The phone is quad band (850/900/1800/1900 mHz), and as long as you get
yours unlocked (or unlock it), you can use it all over the planet. The
call quality is typical for any quad band phone. The unit will notify
you of how many voicemails have been left. Ringtones can be polyphonic
(MIDI) or MP3s. A regular MP3 of a few minutes can even be a ringtone.
..:: Bluetooth Compatibility
I personally have tried the H700 headset and I have put my results in my Motorola A1200 Ming and Motorola H700 Bluetooth headset review.
The results were quite good, but I don't like the H700 itself. I've
read confirmations for the A1200 working well with various headsets:
Samsung WEP200, Jabra BT250v, Plantronics 510.
The Bluetooth spec is JSR-82 so supposedly this will work with Bemused. Bemused allows you to use the A1200 as a remote for your desktop PC over Bluetooth. This will be very nice with MythTV. If it does work, but I'll have to post those results after I get a Bluetooth dongle.
..:: Wireless Internet
Unfortunately, the A1200 does not
have Wifi (802.11a/b/g/n). Supposedly, the A1200 does support EDGE, but
I haven't tried, as my understanding is that Cingular doesn't use EDGE.
At the moment, I'm not too happy with any broadband over cell
technologies, but that's for another article. The browser is some sort
of customized version of Opera. I haven't extensively tested javascript
and CSS support, but it does seem to support some, and it also supports
cookies.
As my phone came from China, all of the default internet connections
were for Chinese service providers. Since this phone is pretty fast,
the internet on it is tolerable (whereas mMode on my old LG410 was
unbearable). It's not broadband, but it's acceptable for low bandwidth
transmissions. My mobile homepage takes maybe one or two seconds to open, but it's not littered with images. You'll probably want to add a GPRS network.
I've also read about being able to use a Bluetooth receiver on a
computer as a router, but I can't check how usable this really is until
I get the dongle.
..:: FM Radio
This phone does have an internal FM Radio. It does sound very good and
the controls are digital. However, you must have the earphones plugged
in to use the FM Radio (it will drop out of radio mode if you unplug
them), as it uses the wires as an antenna. I never really use this,
because I'm typically using the MP3 player.
..:: Camera
The camera has a resolution of 1600x1200 (2 megapixels) which is the
highest resolution of most camera phones. Anyone who knows anything
about photography knows that digital zoom is worthless, so I leave that
off. There is no optical zoom, but there is a macro/landscape focus.
The idea is that when you're photographing anything more than a foot
away, use the landscape mode. With macro mode, you can photograph
things up close. Macro mode is also used for the business card capture.
There is no flash. The pictures are taken in JPG format. The video
recording is in 3gP, and is too low resolution to be used for anything
outside of viewing on the phone itself. While this is the best camera
phone I've seen, it's still not enough to replace a single-task camera
entirely, but it is usually a nice feature. I say usually, because most
courthouses, and many government buildings do not allow cameras inside,
and as a law student, that presents an obvious problem.
Controlling the camera is incredibly simple. Even if the clamshell is
closed, just hit the camera button on the left side of the phone to
switch to camera mode. Then hit the camera button again to capture a
photo. If you left it in video recorder mode, it will capture video
instead of stills. You can set it so it saves the images and video to
your USDC instead of the phone's memory.
..:: Business Card Capture
The business card capture uses the camera. Hold the phone a few inches
away from the card with the camera on macro mode focused at the card.
The card will be digitized using an ocr-text conversion to create a
business contact. It's semi-accurate and expedites the process of
inputting information, but it's not failsafe, and some business cards
are just too artsy for it to detect the text well. I typically don't
use it, as I type my contacts into a computer and then sync, because
it's so much faster and has a 100% accuracy.
..:: Media Player
The phone uses RealPlayer and supports most popular formats. My concern
was MP3 support, and it does have it. The phone does apparently support
forward lock DRM, but a little explanation is in order (as I hate DRM
and would never support it). If I have a regular MP3 (downloaded from
one of my DJ sites, or ripped myself), I can transfer the MP3 to and
from the phone without any problem. The phone doesn't have some
translator that wrecks my non-DRM files. The DRM only applies if the
file you're importing to the phone has DRM. I don't know all of the
details on what commercially supports this, but I did gloss over the
DRM section in the developer's manual. DRM aside, the music portion of
the media player easily supports AAC(+), MP3, RealAudio, MIDI, and WAV.
RealPlayer also supports many video formats, particularly MPEG-4,
MPEG-3, H.263, 3gP, and RealVideo. However, the issue with simply
importing your DivX is that you'll really want to downsample the video.
Most respectable DivX video is 720x480 (or so) while this screen only
displays 320x240. This means you're carrying around a lot of wasted
space. I have Acala 3gP converter (WinXP) and it will convert a 700 mb
movie (legal of course) to about 75 mb in 3gP. Video is nicely
watchable, but it's a small screen. On the MPX200, the problem with
video was that the processor couldn't handle it displaying that much
data, so it would be like watching one frame every few seconds.
There are however, two limitations on your media. The first is your
microSD card (USDC) size. The phone comes with a 128 mb USDC, and that
fills up incredibly fast. The max size for the USDC is 2gb which is
much more respectable, but still limiting. Most phones don't support
anything higher than 2gb and my understanding is that this is a
technical issue with the addressing, not some stupid licensing limit.
The second limitation is that playlists are capped at 50 files. There
are firmware updates available on the web, and there are fixes for
this, but they're not for the Feint of Mind (tm). I haven't yet really
had a problem with the second issue, as I still only have a 128 mb USDC.
The media player will not play into mono headsets without the voice recognition hack.
The media player works fine in stereo headsets (the included headset is
stereo). Also, RealPlayer's playlisting is rather annoying. It should
scan your phone on boot and whenever disconnecting from a computer, but
instead, files must be manually added to the library. Listening to
music sounds great, and when the clamshell is closed, you can use the
buttons on the left side to change the song and the volume.
..:: Voice Recognition
Rather than using pre-recorded voice tags for various callers, the
A1200 has a voice recognition system. Unfortunately, it's not very
accurate. Press the VR button on the right side (either the clamshell
must be open, or a headset must be connected), and then it asks you for
a command or name. I have some 300 contacts, and the only one it picks
accurately is my friend Sean (which, amusingly, is a completely
non-phonetic name). The VR hack is used to get the media player to play in mono headsets. The VR cannot be used as dictation software (yet anyways).
..:: Additional Included Programs
There is a document viewer that supports GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, PDF, TXT,
DOC, XLS, PPT, and HTML. There is also a basic paint program (that can
be used to edit your photos), and there is also a note-taking program
(a basic text editor). Additionally, there is a world clock with preset
city locations, and an alarm that can be used to set two different
notification times. There's also a voice recorder for personal voice
notes. The phone came with what appears to be a Chinese-English
translator, and also an extreme snowboarding game. The snowboarding
game doesn't compare to Amped on Xbox, or any other snowboarding game
for that matter. It's pretty embarassing, and I never play it. MSN
Messenger is also included (not that I'd use it -- I personally use gaim for instant messenging and only know a few people on MSN). However, the language defaults to Chinese, and you might want to change the MSN language to English.
You can also visit motorolafans for free A1200 games.
I have tried out a bunch of games for the A1200 (from there and other
sites), but the problem I see all too often is that most games only
support a tiny portion of the screen, as they're really designed for a
different phone and are miscategorized. Another major common problem is
lack of touchscreen support. What that translates to is using the
joystick, which is horrible for gaming. When looking through many java
midlet archives, a lot of programs will still list in A1200 categories
when they suffer from both of the above mentioned problems. I have a
running list of free A1200 games
that support fullscreen and the touchscreen. There are many more games
around, but even if they're ports of great classics like Bobble,
Lemmings, Ghosts & Goblins, and Zelda, having shoddy controls makes
the game nearly unplayable.
..:: Overall
I personally think this is the best phone on the market.
It's by far the smallest handheld I've seen, and most smartphones can't
compare to the feature set. I've read much criticism of smartphones and
how "Americans want cell phones that only do one thing -- make calls",
but that's rubbish perpetuated by the ignorant and uninformed. Once you
have a multi-feature handheld, you absolutely cannot go back. The only
features that put the A1200 short of being the One Handheld to Rule
Them All (tm) are:
- Camera: only 2mpx, no zoom, and no flash. It needs to be 4mpx with at least 4x optical zoom and a flash.
- Media Player: RealPlayer is rather crappy, but Windows Media Mobile
on the MPX200 wasn't any better. Amarok for the cell would be rather
nice, but porting KDE wouldn't exactly be easy. - GPS: there is none. Some phones (like the Mio A701 GPS Phone) are adding this already.
- Wifi: where is it? Most respectable PDAs come with this now.
- Lockdown: Unfortunately, the phone is locked down pretty well in a
development aspect. Getting applications that aren't java based is
incredibly difficult. Hopefully, the new wave of Linux EZX phones will
make this better.
1 comment:
So much written about the phone..Can we at least have a glimpse of the device
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