Motorola Ming A1200 (Unlocked)

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Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 49 reviews Back to product review
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful

4.0 stars

"Very nice GSM Phone"

by themorn2112 on September 10, 2006

Pros: nice touch screen and features

Cons: Small internal memory, stacked features when open
Summary: I bought this phone as a replacement for a Sony/Ericsson P910a. I really like the features of this phone.

One that I was impressed with is the voice recognition (VR) feature that intuitively reads the information stored in the address book, as well as the voice response that verifies the audio instructions inputed into the phone. The only issue I have with the VR feature is the amount of time it takes between issuing a command and the actual execution of the command because of the time the phone takes to verify the commands given to it (a neat feature all the same).

The handwriting feature (HR)is on par with the P910a and other PDA/phone I have used, with the option of HR or virtual keyboard. HR response is on the slow side, but there are setting for the speed the writer uses (I have not attempted to change the settings). The touchscreen is not as sensitive as other touchscreens I have used in the past, but is still reasonably usefull.

The touchscreen display is rich and full. Pictures are fitted to size. The camera blurs easily and is sensitive to movement, however it has a nice business card reader feature that allows you to take a picture of the business card. The phone recognizes and stores the information in the address book.

The messages received are stored in the inbox of the phone. The problem I have is in the way the messages are processed. Actions that are done in the message features are recorded; for example if a message is sent a copy is stored in the send file of the phone, if a message is deleted it is sent to the trash file. This feature is nice if you remove a file by mistake, but can be a problem because of the small amount of internal memory. I have to frequently clear unnessesary messages.

The phone uses Linux as its OS, and runs Java applications. Unfortunately, there is little support for Linux based mobile phones. I plan to find out if there are any Java based application that can cross over to this phone.

The media player is Real media player. I am not a fan of real player because of its invasive nature on desktops, but functions well on this phone. The issues I had were the pauses that occasionally happen while playing .mp3 songs, as well as a problem erasing titles stored in the library, but that may be due to the small memory card I am using (256Mb with plans to upgrade to 1 Gb in the near future). .mp3 music can be used for ringtones.

Speaking of memory, my biggest gripes is the small amount of internal memory (8 Mb). This limits the amount of information that can be stored internally, but most information (ie. messages, pictures, etc. ) can be stored on a micro SD card. There is no limit as to the amount of memory that this phone can use. The small amount of memory can be a problem if you have multiple features of this phone open as well. The open features are stacked upon each other, with no way of knowing if any are open, which can place a load on the processor as well. A tab window feature would be nice.

This is a phone that was not meant to be marketed in North America. The instructions included with the phone are in Chinese, but the website for the phone has a link for an english translated version of the instruction. There is a .PDF version of the instructions as well.

All in all, this is a very nice, functional phone in a small package. I like it and am very happy with this phone despite the issues noted.
Updated
Another nice feature of this phone is that it is A2DP campatible, and I use it to stream music to my bluetooth headset.

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1 reply to this review

reply by: sam case on December 5, 2006

thanks for the great review of the A1200, did you say that the memory has no limit to its upgradeable size? could i upgrade to a 2gig SD card ??

looking forward to your reply or anyone else's at sam@definingself.com

Thanks!

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Motorola Ming A1200 (Unlocked): $229.99

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