Motorola MPx220

Discontinued
30th June 2004

The Motorola MPx220 has been an open secret for about six months - Motorola have resisted making an official announcement in the past, presumably to protect sales of the MPx200 range, but now there's official word from Motorola on the new handset, even though most of the details have been known for a long time.

A few weeks ago we published what was possibly the first siting of the MPx220 in official Motorola publicity material, and combined with leaks and various other bits of intelligence we now have a fuller picture of the specifications of this new handset.

The MPx220 is a pretty conventional looking handset on the inside, with a 176x220 pixel display in 65,000 colours, the same specification as on the Motorola MPx100. Also in common with the MPx100 is the 1.2 megapixel digital camera, and Bluetooth, but the MPx220 is a much more sophisticated handset than its sibling.

Motorola have made the MPx220 a quad band GPRS phone supporting all GSM networks worldwide, and also the MPx220 comes with removable mini SD memory cards, giving the MPx220 a maximum capacity of 512Mb storage. There's a small external display measuring 96x64 pixels.

Size and weight are still to be confirmed, but we believe that the MPx220 measures about 90x48x22 mm and weighs 111 grams, making it a very compact Smartphone.

For those that like the looks of the older MPx200, the MPx220 comes in two varieties, one silver-black and the other in silver.

The MPx220's software package is based around the Microsoft Windows Mobile Smartphone 2003 Edition software and includes Pocket Outlook and Internet Explorer. One of the key selling points of the MPx220 will be the ease of connecting it to corporate mail systems running Microsoft Exchange, and also it retains the look and feel of Windows-based PDAs.

There's strong media support - the MPx220 plays back a variety of Windows Media Player files including MP3s. The removable memory comes into its own here - as a rule 64Mb is just about enough to fit an average CD into when converted to MP3 format, so you could theoretically fit about 8 CDs into the maximum 512Mb. The MPx220 is hardly an iPod, but this is all pretty impressive for a mobile phone.

There's all the usual bells and whistles you'd expect from a high-end phone like this, polyphonic ringtones, MMS, photo caller ID, downloadable applications plus of course Bluetooth and GPRS.

Battery life has not been confirmed, not has the exact size and weight. Motorola say that the handset will be available in the third quarter of 2004.

This is a hugely important phone for both Motorola and Microsoft - probably more so for the latter. Windows smartphones are few and far between, and most of the current batch are either poorly specified, out of date or hideously ugly. The MPx220 has a winning combination of features and looks and may well be the phone that makes Windows commonplace in mobile phones.

Some people love Windows in phones. Some people hate it. For those people who have a sense of humour, click here.