Motorola MPx200

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel
Durability & Robustness
Battery standby time
Value for money
Range of features

Advantages:	Fantastic Features, Looks cool, PDA functionality
Disadvantages:	Battery Life, Lack of Bluetooth and Camera

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I am a gadget guy. If you look at the other reviews by me, both under 'memorekz' as I write here, and 'memoreks' which I used to use, you'll see that I love my gadgets. However, this puts me in a position that I am somewhat more technically savvy than most, and will put the time in to understand and explore all the features of the gadgets I purchase.

One of these techy gadgets that I purchased in Dec 03 was the Motorola MPX200 Smartphone. Having used an Orange SPV for the year before, I decided to chop the SPV (The original Windows Smartphone) in for an MPX200.

The MPX200 was Motorola's first foray into the Windows Smartphone world, with previous phones concentrating on either proprietary or linux-based operating systems.

The MPX200 is a clam-shell phone, which are extremely popular in the US. In the UK and Europe, the 'chocolate-bar' style phones from Nokiaa and Sony Ericsson have been popular, but recently consumers hgave been shifting to the Clam-shell phones, mainly due to the success of Vodafone Live and the associated Sharp clam-shells.

Upon opening the MPX200 box (provided by Orange, and thus is Orange branded) you'll find the phone, battery and battery compartment cover, 16MB SD card (which we'll come to later), head-phones with integrated microphone for hands-free use, a charger and a docking station. in addition to all this hardware is a chunky manual and a Motrola CDROM, with Outlook 2000, and a few bits of software to get you going.

the phone itself, with battery, comes in a t a mere 124grams. This may be a bit more than your average Nokia, but when you cram all that Motorola have into a phone, 124grams is an impressive feat of engineering.

In the Phone
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the phone comes with Windows for Smartphone 2002 installed on it, which is based on the WindowsCE Operating system, similar to that found in Pocket PC's. The OS has obviously been adapted for use on a phone, replacing the stylus-based touch-screen input with a more tranditional button-based navigation.

Microsoft have used this oppertunity to tweak the OS to safeguard their PDA market, and have removed Pocket Word, Pocket Excel and Microsoft Reader from the core OS install, and these apps are not available even as separate download for Smartphone 2002. For those wishing to replace their current Cellphone / PDA combination with one machine may find this a serious blow to productivity. More emphasis has instead been put onto the phone aspect of the OS, with all the usual features you would expect, iincluding SMS, MMS, GPRS, Internet browsing, Email, Contacts and Calendar.

The screen on the MPX200 is a clear, 16bit TFT display, which is easily readable in both bright and dark conditions. The MPX200 also has an exterior screen, on top of the phone when the clam is closed, which usually displays Date and Time, Battery status and signal strength. When someone calls, this screen will display either their number, or Name if they are already in your contacts list.

In terms of connectivity, the MPX200 uses a Mini-USB connector which plugs into the bottom of the phone, and this will plug straight into a USB port on your Desktop or Laptop PC and synchronize with ActivSync, which allows synchronization of Contacts, Inbox, Files, tasks and various other bits from PC to Phone and vice versa.

There is also an IrDA port on the bottom left of the phone, to provide a line-of-sight wireless network to an IrDA enabled PC, PDA or Phone.

On the right hand side of the phone, you'll find two flexible flaps. under one is the SD / MMC card slot, which allows the addition of a VGA camera or more usually a memory expansion card. The top flap hides the head-phone / hands-free socket.

Software
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Although lacking the Office productivity tools of its bigger PDA cousins, the MPX200 does come with a reasonable suite of software to get you going. the standard Calculator is there, along with MMS software and picture album software to keep your MMSs in order.

You also get a simple task manager and space maker. Task Manager allows you to kill programs running in the background, and Space Maker which will clear temp files and other such things that can eat up space before you know it.

WIndows Media Player makes its mobile phone debut, with Media Player 8, capable of playing MP3 and WMA audio, and WMV video. This turns your phone into a nice music player, when you add a decent sized SD card, but don't expect huge amounts of features, as Media Player on Smartphone is quite basic.

Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) 2002 appears in the MPX200, and provides reasonable browsing abilities, but lacks some core browser functionality, such as frames. This is due to the diminutive size of the Smartphone screen (172x220) when compared to its PDA big brother (240x320).

Pocket Outlook handles all of your SMS, MMS and Email, and allows you to synchronize with either ActivSync, or an Exchange server if you have access to one. It also allows you to have a single POP3 or IMAP4 account, which will sync over the internet, usually via GPRS or GSM dialup.

MSN Messenger makes an appearance too on the MPX200, which allows you to keep in contact with your buddies online while on the move, again via GPRS or GSM Dialup.

Hardware
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The MPX200 is a tri-band phone in the UK, giving GSM 900/1800/1900 support. The US version is limited to Dual-band, so be careful if you are buying from eBay, and make sure which version you are getting.

The Processor in the phone is a Texas Instruments OMAP 710, the same as what was in the original Orange SPV, but the MPX200 has about doubled in speed at which the original SPV ran at. Improvements in the design and implentation of the smartphone capable hardware has allowed the TI OMAP processor to run at its fullest capacity, and the speed difference is noticable, espeically on games and navigation.

It comes with 32MB of SD RAM, a 32MB ROM which holds the Operating System, and 10MB of what is called IPSM memory. IPSM (or Intel Protected Storage Medium) means that system settings are not lost, even if you don't charge it for a month.

The phone does lack a Camera, which Motorola are putting in its replacement, the MPX220. It also lacks Bluetooth or any sort of radio wireless LAN capability. This is more due to the fact that Smartphone 2002 does not have integral Bluetooth capability, and as this phone was released before Windows Mobile for Smartphone 2003, implementation of Bluetooth would have been tricky, time-consuming and expensive.

In use
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I have been using thisp hone for about 7 months, and overall it has been great. The reception isn't great at home, but the audio is clear, and navigation around the menus is quick and easy. Battery life is quoted as 70 hours standby, and 230 minute talk time. I find that I can charge it once every two days, with a medium amount of calls in the middle (20 minutes per day roughly). Once nice feature of the phone is that it will charge directly from the USB port on your PC, and thus I can charge it at work without faffing with chargers!

As with all Windows-based products (sorry BillyG!) you do get the occaisional bug-ette cropping up, usually with the phone turning itself off or resetting. This happens rarely, and has never adversely affected what I am doing.

But this slight instability is enormously outweighed by the flexibility of the product. So far I have outlined what comes with the phone out of the box, but what really makes this phone (and other Windows Smartphones) unique, is the world and wealth of software available for this platform. There are litterally thousands of programs, games and applications available for the Windows Smartphone. As I speak, I have best part of 20 3rd party applications installed on my phone, from a replacement web browser to games which involve blowing up Snails! It is once you discover this that you begin to see why the Windows Smartphone is such a world apart from your regular mobile phones. No crappy Java Tic-tack-toe games here; What you have is professional developers creating games and software of incredible caliber.

Due to the binary compatibility between Pocket PC's and Windows Smartphones, the task of porting an App or Game from one to the other is very straight forward, and thus many developers are now creating their wares for both Pocket PC and Smartphone Operating systems.

This is truely what you come to the MPX200 for, and if you are a techy like me you'll love it.

However, if you are not a techy, i.e. If you don't know what a CAB file is, and the idea of installing IRC clients, games, new browsers and file explorers to your phone means nothing to you; I would suggest you find a different phone.

This really is a phone for tinkerers, geeks, techies and computer bods. There are virtually no limits as to what you can do with this phone, and that is a big plus point for me, and people like me. But if you want to send SMSs, phone people, take a few pictures and that's it, then I'd suggest looking elsewhere.