Review Of Motorola Ming A1200 (Unlocked)

REVIEW:
Motorola’s Ming A1200 is a good and decent handset. It has got a good design, though it ran a bit short in the feature department. Call quality of the handset is good and the design is unquestionably distinctive. But there is no Wi-Fi and 3G. The price of the phone is decent and affordable for the users.

Motorola’s Ming A1200 is completely different from the other Motorola handset. And there is no denying that he A1200 would stand out in any smartphone crowd, mostly because of its diminutive size. It fits comfortably in the hand and the rounded edges give it a streamlined appearance. Ming is one of only a few handsets we’ve seen to feature a protective cover. Though the cover is transparent, it has a slight gray color that gives it a sleek and futuristic look and it’s not the first smartphone that rely so heavily on a touch screen.

The Ming’s touch screen supports 262,000 colors. The screen is a treat to use and it has bright colors and graphics. But the virtual keypad is pretty small. The menu font size is adjustable. You can’t change the display’s brightness but you can change the color scheme, wallpaper and backlighting time. There are four static icons that open the main menu, the numeric keypad for making calls, the messaging folder and your contacts lists at the top of the display. There are five shortcut icons that are user-customizable at the bottom of the display. Your calendar events for that day are conveniently displayed in the middle of the screen, but you can turn that setting off if you want. The main menu interface is easy to use as well.

There are three buttons on the front of the phone, a select button, the End/power control and a Talk key below the display. In standby mode, you can use the Talk key and the select control to browse through your calendar events or to open one of the five menu shortcuts at the bottom of the display. On the left spine there’s a headset jack. There’s also the traditional Motorola smart key and volume buttons on the left spine. There’s a camera shutter, the voice dialing and a button for activating the voice recorder on the right spine. The microSD card slot is stashed behind the battery. The camera lens is on the rear side of the Ming at the top. It comes with a self-portrait mirror and a Macro switch, but we were disappointed there’s no flash.

The Ming has a large, 1,000-contact phone book, the SIM card can store an additional 250 names. Each phone book entry has room for seven phone numbers, two street addresses, a company name and title, a birthday and anniversary date, notes, a Web site address and two e-mail addresses. You can organize callers into groups or pair them with a photo and one of 14 polyphonic ringtones. Some other essentials include a calculator, a task list, an alarm clock, a call recorder, a file manager and a world clock.

The A1200 offers full Bluetooth for making calls, listening to music with stereo headphones and sending files wirelessly. Some other data features include PC syncing, a dedicated application for using the Ming as a modem for a PC, a full HTML browser and USB mass storage and file transfer.

The Ming’s camera offers fewer features than we’d expect on a high-res camera. You can take pictures in three resolutions. The editing options are limited to brightness and white balance settings, a night mode, a self-timer, an 8x zoom and four color effects. But there is no camera flash. The photo quality is decent. . The camcorder records clips in three resolutions with sound and offers a similar set of editing options. The Ming has 8MB of internal memory, which is quite small, but it can accommodate microSD cards up to 2GB.

The Ming comes bundled with RealPlayer for watching videos and listening to music. The features include shuffle and repeat modes. The player interface is very easy to understand. The music quality is decent.

SPECIFICATIONS:

GOOD FEATURES:
1 Very easy to use.
2. Great call quality.
3. Great design.
4. Good battery life.

BAD FEATURES:
1. User interface is not flexible.
2. Small internal memory.
3. Camera isn’t good enough.
4. It lacks 3G and Wi-Fi.

MAIN POINT
The Motorola Ming A1200 is a functional smartphone with a stylish, compact design and satisfying call quality. The feature set offers a decent range of options and the call quality is satisfying. Ming A1200′s interface was occasionally sluggish. The microSD card slot is in an inconvenient location. Also, it lacks 3G and Wi-Fi. So I give 2.5 stars out of 5 stars to it.