Motorola A910

Cancelled (presumably)
26th July 2005

The familiar-looking Motorola A910 is a Linux-based smartphone with built in WiFi and a 1.3 megapixel camera. And we say "familiar" because it is physically almost identical to the Motorola E895 we saw last month.

There's a different emphasis here - "A" series phones tend to be more business orientated than "E" series devices which are pitched more at the entertainment market. Although, we're pretty certain that apart from some minor cosmetic differences, the A910 and E895 are identical except for the WiFi capabilities in the Motorola A910. (Except the A910 doesn't appear to have EDGE)

In case you didn't see the E895, the A910 has a 1.3 megapixel camera, TransFlash/microSD removable memory, "3D audio" playback, Bluetooth, speech recognition, web and email access.

We believe that the screen is a compact 240x320 pixel panel in 262,000 colours (to be confirmed) and that it will weigh something in the region of 130 grams.

We have to admit that although the Motorola A910 is a clever bit of kit, we're not entirely sure what it's for. After all, in the rare cases we see WiFi, it tends to be on handsets with a QWERTY keyboard, like the HTC Universal, Nokia 9500 or T-Mobile MDA III. The reason for this is simple - both WiFi and a QWERTY keyboard lend themselves well to someone who uses the handset like a mini laptop.

So, why but all the clever things in a handset such as Linux, a good camera, WiFi and expandable memory and then package it is a plain old clamshell device as Motorola have done with the A910? It's a mystery to us at Mobile Gazette. We think that if you put all these elements into a package such as the (cancelled) Motorola MPx then you'd have a smartphone that would be the main attraction - as it is, the Motorola A910 just looks like some sort of sideshow.

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