Motorola MING A1600 and A810

Discontinued 
9th July 2008

Motorola MING A1600

The Motorola MING A1600 may look familiar to regular readers, because it is almost identical in every way to the A1800 that we covered last month except for one important detail.

This touchscreen phone has a 2.4" QVGA display, a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and A-GPS which enables turn-by-turn navigation. The A1600 also features a talking dictionary, panoramic photo stitching, microSD expandable memory and Bluetooth. The hallmark transparent screen cover is still present as on previous MOTOMING devices.

There's no 3G support on the A1600, and it doesn't have WiFi either. But then this phone is designed for China where 3G coverage is poor, although WiFi does seem to be something that would be useful.

As we said, the A1600 is very similar to the A1800 except that the A1800 also supports CDMA where the A1600 does not.

The Motorola MING A1600 should support English as well as Chinese, so you can expect to see a small number coming into Europe and the US as special imports.

Motorola A810

We have covered the A810 twice before (here and here) and really all that was missing from Motorola was a few final details.

Although this isn't a MOTOMING device, the A810 shares a similar touchscreen to the A1600 and A1800, although this time it is a little smaller at 2.2". There's a basic 2 megapixel camera, microSD memory, Bluetooth and an FM radio. The A810 lacks GPS, 3G or WiFi but one positive thing is that it is much more compact than the A1600 and A1800 and it weighs just 100 grams.

As with the A1600, this is really aimed at mainland China. But as it is also a standard quad-band GSM phone that supports English as well as Chinese, there may be a certain amount of interest from other markets.

The A810, A1600 and A1800 have some clever technologies built into them, and partly as a result of the MOTOMING range, Motorola is still quite successful in China even though sales have slumped in the rest of the world. As they stand, the lack of 3G and WiFi in these devices would be offputting to many European and American customers, but Motorola simply doesn't seem to be targeting those markets at the moment. Perhaps this also explains why the new MOTOZINE ZN5 doesn't support 3G either.. and why China is getting it first.

Motorola say that both handsets should be available now in the Chinese market.