Motorola i465 mixes iDEN technology with a QWERTY keyboard

A Motorola phone with a QWERTY keyboard is certainly not something you’ve never seen before, but when that phone is also an iDEN one, well, then we’ve got something special.

And the new Motorola i465 is exactly that: an iDEN handset with a QWERTY keyboard.

There’s nothing official about the i465 for the moment, but an image with it has just been unveiled by Engadget.

The phone looks kind of weird, perhaps because a small display can’t look “normal” when paired with a QWERTY keyboard.

Regarding the features of Motorola i465, the only known ones are Bluetooth 2.0 and a 2001-like VGA photo camera. Release date and pricing details are obviously not known yet.

Orange MotoPrizm released in Korea

Motorola Prizm (or MotoPrizm), the Korean edition of Motorola Krave ZN4, has just been launched in a new and good-looking orange version.

Coming shortly after the dark grey version released in December 2008, the orange Prizm offers similar features. And no, I’m not talking about features similar to the one of Verizon’s Krave ZN.

Motorola has blessed the Prizm with a 840 x 480 pixels touchscreen display, a 3MP camera and mobile TV capabilities.

And these surely make it better than the Krave, which only has a 240 x 400 pixels display and a 2MP camera.

Sadly, both of the MotoPrizm versions are Korea-exclusive products. But maybe, just maybe, Motorola will soon come with an orange Krave ZN4 too.

Via NewsWire.co.kr

Motorola ZN300 pics & specs, Motorola QA1 UI

Yesterday we told you about 4 new Motorola phones nearing the release date - Motorola QA4, ZN300,VE465 and VE66 Luxury Edition.

Unfortunately very limited information about the new handsets was available. We weren’t even able to bring you the images of the darn things.

Well, today we might do a little better, since we’ve got some more info about the upcoming Motorola Zine ZN300 music slider.

As you can see from the picture it looks like an incremental upgrade to a low end Motorola Zine ZN200 handset released last year. And the few specs that we know about confirm this.

The new Motorola ZN300 will come equipped with 3 megapixel camera, QVGA display and Opera Mini mobile browser.

Well, that’s about all we know about ZN300. But we also got confirmation about another Motorola handset in their QA line.

It’s a Motorola QA1. But at this moment all we can give you are some screenshots of it’s UI:

Which probably indicates a touch capability and what looks like a rather smallish display.

Via Mobile Review

Motorola VE465, ZN300, QA4 and VE66 Lux get semi-official

We knew a while ago that official Motorola site webmasters are not really at the top of their game.

And as the launch of new Motorola handsets approaches, they sometimes tend to appear on it’s official site before the official announcement.

Today, in such a semi-official way Motorola confirms 4 new phones – VE465, ZN300, QA4 and VE66 Lux Edition.

We already heard about Motorola VE465 as it passed through FCC. It’s a low end CDMA/Ev-Do music clamshell with 1.2 mpx camera:

The other model to appear is Motorola ZN300. Only in this case we do not have the picture of the phone itself, only the model number and interface screen capture:

Which does not tell us very much about the new handset.

For Motorola QA4 Halo it’s the same situation. Only some phone menu screen captures are available:

It’s too early to guess, but the picture itself seems to confirm rumored Web widget capability, and the app icons at the bottom of the picture indicate touchscreen functionality. Other rumored Motorola QA4 Halo specs include CDMA/EV-Do connectivity, 2.8″ 400×240 px display and built-in accelerometer.

And finally there’s Motorola VE66 Lux. Not even a picture here, but the name makes it kinda obvious that this will be a Luxury edition of Motorola VE66 phone.

Via Mobile Review

AT&T Motorola Tundra VA76r Review

In an effort to bring more durable phones into its lineup, AT&T has released the Motorola Tundra VA76r. The military-spec Tundra was announced to be coming out on AT&T’s network around a month ago, and adds some extra variety by joining forces with the Samsung Rugby.

As a military-spec phone, Motorola has designed the Tundra to withstand a lot of harsh conditions and crazy situations. In order to live up to military specifications, the Tundra had to be rigorously tested to handle the extremes such as temperature, shock, vibration, dripping rain, dust, and humidity.

We have to admit, we didn’t have the opportunity to kick the living snot out of the Tundra, so our review will be more about the phone’s other outlying features. However, there is a video showing the military-spec Rugby holding up under every type of harsh condition possible. Check it out here.

Design of the AT&T Tundra

The Tundra essentially looks like a cross between an updated V365 and a Motorola iDEN phone, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise; after all, this phone is built for durability as well as functionality, but it’s not designed to be stylish. Just from casual observation, the outside of the Tundra feels like it’s made of Kevlar.

Motorola opted for an external antenna with the Tundra. This wasn’t something I was glad to see, considering the rest of AT&T’s lineup has begun using internal antennae for several months now. At least it was a very short one.

In my hands the Tundra felt great. It’s not a very thin phone compared to the RAZR or others like it, but it’s thicker because it’s made to last. On the right side of the phone you will find the camera shortcut; the traditional Mini-USB port is on the bottom.

On the left side there are two buttons: volume, and an unusually large Push-to-Talk button. I understand these phones are designed with the Push-to-Talk customer in mind, but let’s be honest — if you’re not using that feature, it’s incredibly annoying to have a huge button on the side that can’t be used for any other purpose. Dedicated PTT buttons are getting a bit old, AT&T.

There isn’t much to the back side, but it definitely has a classy look.

The buttons inside are also typical AT&T style — in addition to the obligatory green/red call buttons and numerical keys, AT&T has also thrown in its Media Net and Cellular Video shortcuts. All of the buttons are easy to press, however, because each one is raised slightly.

Overall, I found the design of the Tundra to be typical of a military-spec phone; it felt very similar to a Motorola phone found on Nextel, but with the usual features of AT&T’s newest lineup. This, I feel, can be very beneficial. The Tundra is easy enough to handle, while convincing the user that it truly can go through anything you throw at it.

Features of the AT&T Tundra

As mentioned earlier, the Tundra offers many of the same features as AT&T’s latest phones; GPS with AT&T Navigator, 2.0 MP camera, 3G support, and Bluetooth. It also throws in Push-to-Talk and a louder speakerphone.

One unique feature Motorola brings to the table in the Tundra is its new CrystalTalk 2 Technology. Many of Motorola’s phones, such as the V8/V9 series, offers CrystalTalk to help improve overall sound quality when making calls. CrystalTalk 2 adds a second microphone that works to filter out the background noise, thus giving the customer a hassle-free conversation without even needing a Bluetooth to get it.

The Tundra also sports a MicroSD card port, but will only support cards with up to 4 GB of total memory. Sure it can be used as a music player, but realistically, don’t expect to be using this phone as your next MP3 player replacement. And the 100 MB internal memory is good, just not enough for music.

All other features in the phone are standard for any phone made after 2007, so they won’t be mentioned. But I do enjoy the screen on the Tundra; the menus are reminiscent of the V8/V9 series in terms of a crisp look and large font size.

Performance of the AT&T Tundra

The AT&T Tundra weighs in at 4.94 ounces (140g) and has a rated battery life of 4 hrs talk time on 3G and 6 hrs on GSM; talk time is 20 days and 14 days, respectfully. The phone’s dimensions are at 2.1 x 3.85 x .96.

Overall I have been satisfied with the Tundra. I didn’t hear a huge difference in sound quality with CrystalTalk 2, but that may have been due to placing calls in a quieter environment. If any readers have used the new CrystalTalk on any of Motorola’s newest phones, please let us know your experiences in the comments!

AT&T’s rugged Motorola Tundra now on sale

In case you were waiting for the release date of the Motorola Tundra VA76r from AT&T, now’s the time because it’s already officially available. It’s about the best any rugged phone can get. Or at least, it’s one of the most well-rounded out there.

Aside from having military grade toughness, the Motorola Tundra features a 2 megapixel camera, QVGA display, AGPS, microSD card support, and 3G data.

And as mentioned in out earlier report, the price will be $199 after a $50 mail-in rebate and the signing of a 2-year contract with AT&T.

AT&T via Engadget Mobile

Motorola PEBL Rose Bloom launched just in time for Valentine’s

Did you really think you could get away with buying a new phone for your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day without considering something from the mother-of-the-RAZR’s stable? Well, you thought wrong if you did.

Just launched is what Motorola calls the Motorola PEBL Rose Bloom, a cutesy little almost egg-shaped clamshell phone that’s adorned with a rose drawing up front and center.

It doesn’t have much going for specs, since its main selling point is its fashion-centric design, but it does have a touch-sensitive panel on its outer lid, a 3.5mm headphone jack, 2 megapixel camera, MP3 player, Bluetooth connectivity and up to 7.2Mbps HSDPA data transfer rates.

The Motorola PEBL Rose Bloom will be available in Korea from SK Telecom and various retailers and resellers for an unspecified price. It shouldn’t be too high as to burn anyone’s wallet, though, ’cause this one hardly screams out luxury.

Official pics of Motorola EM326g and the MOTOROKR S7-HD Bluetooth headset emerge

Totally unrelated to the unnamed CDMA Motorola clamshell that was just approved by the FCC, we’ve got word about two other unannounced Moto products: Motorola EM326g and MOTOROKR S7-HD.

Motorola EM326g is a slider phone that looks almost similar to the EM25, a handset which was announced back in the summer of 2008.

There are only few details about the features of EM326g (we can see a 1.3MP camera), but it’s highly probable that they’re like the ones of EM25: stereo Bluetooth, dedicated music keys, a 3.5mm headset jack, microSD card support and so on.

MOTOROKR S7-HD is not a phone, but a Bluetooth headset, and that’s all we know about it.

Motorola might announce the two products at the same time (since they’re both music-oriented), but we can’t say when exactly this will happen.

Via Mobile-review

New, unnamed Motorola CDMA clamshell leaked by the FCC

The Federal Communications Commission has recently approved a new Motorola phone, a clamshell that appears with the FCC ID IHDP56JM2.

Unfortunately, the handset’s official name is not known for the moment, and neither are details about its release.

What we do know is that the new clamshell seems to be a mid-end device. It has external music dedicated keys, Bluetooth, a photo camera (probably of at least 2MP) and a flat alphanumeric keyboard.

Here’s what the phone looks like:

Apparently, there will be two versions of the phone available: one with 800 / 1900 MHz CDMA connectivity, and one with support for MetroPCS and Cricket’s 1700 MHz AWS frequencies.

Motorola will probably announce the clamshell in the near future and we’ll be here to let you know when this happens.

Via Cell Phone Signal

Exclusive Pics of Moto Surf A3100

World, Moto Surf A3100. Moto Surf A3100, world. Glad I could help introduce you. This is Motorola’s entry to the iPhone Killer department, and not a bad Windows phone to boot.

Overall from my first impressions I felt it was very similar to the TouchFLO interface found in most HTC WinMo devices, such as the Touch Pro. The Today screen was actually easier to see, larger fonts and icons spaced out further to allow ease in touching them.

I didn’t get too much of an opportunity to play around with the features. I noticed the grid-style menu allowed for customization, with the ability to move icons around as someone would do on the iPhone.

Reps are telling me the Moto Surf will be available this quarter starting in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia before spreading out to other parts of the world. So for now, enjoy some pictures and I will have a video of it ready for you later.

Motorola Q11 White and Black Pics at CES

The Motorola Q11 phone has already seen limited release in various parts of the world, but is still a fresh phone that deserves mention.

At Unwired View we have dished the scoop on the specs, and have seen a few live pics of the new phone. Fortunately, however, I had the opportunity to check out the Q11 in person at CES, and took a few pics of it in 2 different colors — both black and white.

On the white phone, the darker part on the right is just my shadow.

Moto Shows its Green Side with Renew

One of the underlying themes that kept popping up at CES 2009 was environmental technology. What was each company doing to help the environment? Motorola was no exception, showing off a rather large display featuring the Renew, a simple candybar made entirely of recycled products.

The Renew is expected to hit T-Mobile stores sometime this quarter, presumably next month. From what I could see, the Renew is a basic phone without too much pomp and circumstance. The OS is reminiscent of what we would see on Motorolas about 3 years ago, but the point of this phone wasn’t to be state of the art; rather, the point was to make a statement that we can have a green lifestyle even with our phones.

Personally, this is a great beginning for the Green Phone movement. Let’s make sure that the trend continues and will work into getting better and better specs. We applaud Motorola’s effort, and hope it’s successful enough to translate into green smartphones in the next couple years.

I asked the Motorola representative how robust a recycled phone could be, and he was quite confident in its ability to hold itself together well over the two years of the contract.

Here, have some pictures to look at. Pretty nice fit in the hands, but it was difficult finding nice things to say when the previous phone I had handled was the $2,000 Aura.

Motorola might say goodbye to Windows Mobile and 50% of its handset division’s employees

Motorola’s long affair with Windows Mobile could be ended this year, and that’s because of Google’s Android platform.

According to PhoneScoop, Moto intends to release fewer handsets per year from now on, and none of them will run on Windows Mobile. Instead, the future Motorola smartphones will be based on Android.

This means that MOTOSURF A3100 is, most probably, the company’s last device to come with Microsoft’s mobile OS. And I’m not sure if this is good or bad news.

What’s certainly bad news is that, besides planning to ditch Windows Mobile, Motorola also intends to layoff about 50% of the employees from its handset division – meaning thousands of people.

The first series of layoffs could begin this week. Only the handset division will be affected, so it’s once again clear that this is Moto’s weakest branch.

Motorola Aura Makes CES Appearance

I can now say I’ve held a $2,000 phone in my hands. The Motorola Aura was making its rounds at the CES 2009, and I was able to snag some pictures of it in action.

While I am not the kind of guy that would just simply fork out a couple grand for a phone such as this, I came out rather impressed. It definitely feels like a solid phone, and I must say that the screen, albeit small, was the most beautiful screen I’ve ever seen on a phone.

So check out the pics for yourself. I’m planning on getting a video posted on the website as soon as possible as well. Motorola certainly did a good job of showing luxury in making the Aura.

Below, you will notice the gears in the back which allow the swivel mechanism to work properly.

Above, you notice how Motorola takes advantage of the tiny circular display to incorporate the menu.

The camera in action. While a circular display, the picture still shows up in a square. I had to double check for myself.

AT&T’s rugged Motorola Tundra VA76r now official, out on January 13

Apart from unveiling the MOTOSURF A3100 and MOTO W233 Renew, Motorola has also announced, today, the release date of Motorola Tundra VA76r for AT&T.

So if you’re in need of a new rugged clamshell from the largest North American carrier, you should know that the VA76r will be available starting January 13. The phone’s price will be of $199, after a $50 mail-in rebate and the signing of a 2-yer contract agreement.

Already outed by Rogers in Canada (as Motorola Extreme) the new Tundra meets US 810F Military Specifications for dust, drop, vibration, humidity, rain and severe temperatures. Also, it comes with Push to Talk capabilities and Motorola’s CrystalTalk Plus technology, these making the phone perfect for harsh environments.

The full list of specs and features include:

• Quad-band GSM/EDGE connectivity (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz)
• Dual band HSDPA connectivity (850 / 1900 MHz)
• A 2.2 inch internal display with 240 x 320 pixels and 262K colors
• One-touch GPS navigation, AT&T Navigator
• Email & Instant Messaging
• A 2MP camera
• Stereo Bluetooth
• Standard USB connector
• 100MB of internal memory
• MicroSD card support, up to 8GB
• 4.94 ounces
• 3.85 x 2.1 x 0.94 inches
• Talk time: up to 5.9 hours
• Standby time: up to 14 days

Quite a nice set of features for a rugged phone, isn’t it?

Via Press release

Motorola announces MOTOSURF A3100 and MOTO W233 Renew

Big day today for Motorola: the American company has just announced two new phones, one of which is the full-touchscreen device previously known as Motorola Attila.

The final name of Attila is MOTOSURF A3100. Sure, we knew about the A3100 part before, but now it’s all official.

Motorola presents the MOTOSURF as a “touch tablet”, saying that it’s the perfect handset for managing both your social and your work life.

The handset runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 and comes with a homescreen that can be easily personalized.

Here’s how the A3100 officially looks like:

The smartphone’s features include:

• A 2.8 inch TFT touchscreen display
• GSM and HSDPA connectivity
• An omni-directional trackball
• GPS and A-GPS
• Wi-Fi
• Facebook integration
• A 3 MP camera with autofocus
• Video call camera
• MicroSDHC card support, up to 32GB

“We developed the MOTOSURF A3100 as a true social smartphone. Home screen personalization and access to a whole host of applications gets the info you want – fast, and at your fingertips,” declared John Cipolla, senior vice president, product development, Motorola Mobile Devices.

Starting this quarter, MOTOSURF A3100 will be commercially available in “multiple regions” around the world (Latin America and Asia included). No pricing details yet, but those curious to see the smartphone live will be able to do so during CES 2009.

The second new handset is MOTO W233 Renew, a device that has a plastic housing built from recycled water bottles. The simple candybar is also “the world’s first carbon neutral phone” and it comes in a box that’s 100% made from post-consumer recycled paper.

Feature-wise, the W233 offers CrystalTalk technology, messaging capabilities and up to 9 hours of talk-time.

As we’ve said before, MOTO W233 Renew will first hit T-Mobile USA, sometime during this quarter, for an affordable price.

Via Press release

Motorola W165, another low-end Moto phone

There will always be customers who want cheap, basic mobile phones, thus there must always be manufacturers to produce them.

Motorola isn’t ashamed of being one of these manufacturers (why would it?), and the new Motorola W165 phone comes to say I’m right.

The handset is a candybar that will probably be targeted to emerging markets. Even so, the US might get it too, since it’s Motorola’s home country.

Design-wise, the W165 is as simple as it gets, looking like a phone from circa 2004. Here it is:

The known specs and features of Motorola W165 include:

• Dual band GSM connectivity (900 / 1800 or 850 / 1900 MHz)
• 1.44 inch CSTN display with 65K colors and 128 x 128 pixels
• A 2.5mm headset jack
• A 780 mAh battery of unknown performance
• 108 x 46 x 12.5 millimeters
• 77 grams

No details yet about the release date of W165 or about its retail price.

Via Mobile-review

T-Mobile’s Motorola Renew shows its green face

Motorola Renew, one of the phones T-Mobile USA is getting ready to launch in February, has just appeared in a leaked photo - and what we can see there might not make everyone happy.

The phone, which seems to be officially called MOTO W233 Renew, is only a low-end one, far from the likes of Samsung Memoir and BlackBerry Curve 8900 (both of which should be released by T-Mo in February too).

If the new candybar looks familiar it’s probably because you’ve seen the Motorola W231, a handset that’s basically identical with the W233.

The phone is made from environmental friendly materials and, judging by the features we know the W231 has, it should come with:

• MP3 player
• FM radio with RDS
• CrystalTalk technology
• MicroSD card support, up to 2GB

The price of Motorola W233 Renew is not known yet, but it will surely be a low one. Now all you need to do is wait for February 4 to come and buy the phone. In case you like it and want it, of course.

Via TmoNews