Motorola A810 Preview

Announcment expected soon
25th April 2008
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The Motorola A810 has not yet been officially announced by the troubled US manufacturer, but documents filed at the FCC reveal it to be a touchscreen smartphone aimed at European and Asian markets.

From the documentation we have seen, we can see that the A810 is very roughly around 100 x 50 x 13mm in size with what appears to be a 2.2" (or perhaps 2.4") QVGA display. That's very roughly the same size as the HTC Touch, but somewhat narrower and with a smaller screen.

On the back of the A810 is a basic 2 megapixel camera without a flash, and we suspect with no autofocus. There's a microSD slot, FM radio, 3.5mm socket for wired headset or headphones and Bluetooth.

The front of the Motorola A810 is very uncluttered, with just a 5 way navigation joystick and a Call and End key. There is a volume control on one side of the phone and a camera key and screenlock slider key on the other side. The case appears to be slightly dimpled or textured in some way.

The Linux-based operating system will be similar in function to that on the Z10, something that has won praise from consumers. The touchscreen is operated using a stylus (you can see it on the rear of the case at the bottom), and the A810 supports handwriting recognition as well as an on-screen keyboard.

One drawback is that the Motorola A810 doesn't support WiFi or 3G. We think at least one of those would be essential in a phone capable of rich multimedia playback. It also lacks GPS, and as we said before, the A810's camera looks to be very basic.

The Motorola A810 certainly doesn't compete with the Apple iPhone.. perhaps Motorola are pitching the A810 as a sort of mass-market touchscreen device. We do know that Motorola are working on an impressive looking 5 megapixel camera phone in conjunction with Kodak, so maybe the A810 forms part of a comprehensive range that can revive Motorola's fortunes. We certainly hope so.