Motorola V80, V180 and V220

Discontinued / End of life
8th February 2004

Motorola have announced three new phones to complement their growing range of V-series handsets. The V180 and V220 fit pretty squarely into the range of phones that starts with the minimalist V150 up to the V600. The V80 is a different beast altogether. There's no sign of the long-awaited MPX220, but Motorola have demonstrated that they're still the market leaders in the clamshell market. In addition to these new phones, Motorola have also announced a limited black edition of the V600 - a phone that's almost impossible to find in the retail channel as it is.. a limited edition of a limited edition?

Motorola V80

Possibly the joker in the pack of V-series mobiles, the V80 brings back the rotating mechanism that we'd seen before in the Motorola V70. Although at first glance the rotating mechanism looks like a gimmick, it's actually very practical on this phone, as we will see later.

In pure technical terms, the V80 is pretty typical for a high-end compact handset. It's a tri-band GSM phone with support for GPRS, Bluetooth and Java plus a large 176x220 pixel display and VGA resolution camera. There's instant messaging support, an email client, MMS and an internal antenna to keep it looking tidy.

However, the rotating mechanism (dubbed as having "auto open" capability) is highly useful here.. with the large screen and navigation key visible at all times, this means that most people will rarely have to open the keypad. And more interestingly it makes it a good-looking games console.

And it's games that the V80 excels at, and it beats the rival Nokia N-Gage on several key features. Firstly, the screen is larger and has a greater colour depth, it has more memory as standard, the V80 is smaller and lighter and the design isn't as compromised as the N-Gage because it works perfectly well as a phone too. Plus there's peer-to-peer gaming over Bluetooth, so you can play games against friends.

There's no doubting that the V80 is an attractive phone too, and the rotating function definitely adds to the "wow" factor. The V80 should sell well on looks alone.

However, the rest of the phone, although competent, is nothing to write home about. The screen only looks good compared to the current batch of Nokias - if you look at something like the Sharp GX30, then the V80 is easily beaten in terms of screen and camera resolution, but the V80 is prettier and better for gaming.

We think this is going to be a phone in some demand when it comes out. Our estimate of contract prices is about £180/€290 on a 200 minute cross network tariff.

Motorola V180

In stark contrast to the V80 is the V180 model. Pitched somewhere between the back-to-basics V150 and low-end camera phone, the V220, this unit is pitched at the bottom end of the market.

There's no digitial camera, and the display is only a basic 128x128 pixel unit in 4096 colours. It's a tri-band GSM unit with GPRS though and like all of the recent Motorola clamshells, it's in an extremely attractive case, complete with a small secondary display on the outside so you call tell who's calling.

You can expect the V180 to be free on all but the most basic tariffs. This looks like a practical, inexpensive phone with some cool features such as a ringtone mixer that's likely to shift in some volume for lower-cost contracts.

Motorola V220

Best described at a V180 with a built-in VGA resolution digital camera, the Motorola V220 is similarly pitched at the budget end of the market. It does nicely fill in the gap between the V150 & V180 and the extremely popular V300. The press releases show a farily standard, but compact, silver clamshell with a bottom-end screen, but this is a competitive part of the market, and the V220 is going to be fighting out for market share against the elegant Siemens MC60.

• But the Motorola V220 (UK Only)
   

• Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on new mobile phones as they are announced