Motorola MPx220 PDA Phone (Cingular)

Rating:
Summary: The best phone I've ever had!
Review: I have had this phone for a month and absolutely love it! It has already changed the way I work and has greatly reduced the amount (and weight) of electronics I carry most days. Without a thought I now carry my entire data base, calender etc. and have my emails updated every 5-30 minutes through my exchange server.

Yes, the speaker could be louder but that is remedied by using Motorola's bluetooth speaker.

I would love a keyboard and more memory, but the small size and weight are a more than reasonable trade-off.

For a compact, useable tool-- this is it! (For now.)


Rating:
Summary: So far, so good (great, even)...
Review: I have had this phone for over a month now, and the more I learn to use it, the better it gets. A lot of people complain about the low volume, so that was a concern, but I found several ways to make the phone louder. The simplest way is to change your profile (the Outdoor setting is sufficiently loud for me). Another way is to modify the profiles' volume settings (I overdid this the first time and nearly fell off my chair when my phone rang). You can also increase the in-call volume by adjusting it during a call (use a second phone to call yourself and adjust the volume then).

I really just wanted a good phone with some basic PDA features, so this phone truly exceeded my expectations. I can record videos, take high-res pictures (the phone has a MiniSD slot which now holds a 512MB card), listen to mp3s, and assign real music ring tones. Oh, yeah -- it has Outlook and IE, among other things. Lots of neato downloadable software at handango.com. As for how to use/optimize/troubleshoot the phone, I learned a lot by going to howardforums.com (look up Microsoft Smartphone). I'm not exactly the techy type, but so far, those who are that play with my phone get pretty impressed (to quote some of them, "SWEEEEET!").

Rating:
Summary: WARNING NO INTERNATIONAL ACTIVATION
Review: I purchased this phone since it is a GSM world band phone and I was about to travel overseas. However, when I called Cingular to activate international roaming before leaving, I was told that no new activations are offered for countries which AT&T had roaming agreements with. Thus the phone will not work in those countries. So, to make a long story short, this phone will only work in the USA until Cingular and AT&T merge their networks. This may take a long time!

Rating:
Summary: Avoid it like the plague.
Review: Returned this phone after about three weeks. Despite it's great feature set, there have been way too many problems to justify keeping it. Several trim pieces have simply fallen off, even though I've never dropped the thing. Battery life is abyssmal. Speaker volume both from the earphone and speakerphone is waaaay too quiet, even at max volume level. MP3 ringtones do not work: no matter what ring tone I program it for, it always defaults back to the standard ring...if it even rings at all when a call comes in! Screens (both internal and external) freeze and garble up constantly. Ring volume (again, when it works) is extremely quiet...inaudible unless you're in a library. Vibrate alert, much like rings, doesn't always work. When placing calls, about 50% of the time, they will "dial" and "connect" but there is absolutely no audio reception from the other party...not just quiet, NONE. Event reminders for the calendar fail to update or function regularly. The camera, for being 1 megapixel+, is terrible. And don't get me started about the bizzaro reception phenomena I've experienced with this phone.

For anyone wondering, mine was the "new" version with the orange sticker and the updated software. I know the phone looks good on paper and even better in person, but once you put it to use there are nothing but problems. I strongly encourage anyone who is considering this phone to look elsewhere. There is simply no excuse for the level of problems existing in such a high end phone. From build quality to software functionality the MPx220 is a disaster.

Rating:
Summary: Nice phone, lousy service
Review: This is my second favorite phone of all time but, unless you must have the "clam shell" form factor and/or 900mhz GSM the Audiovox SMT5600 (also on Amazon) is smaller, higher quality, and and several hundred dollars less expensive. Regardless of the phone you chose, however, I hope you have more luck with Cingular than I did.

There's simply not enough time or room to recount all of my problems with Cingular but I'll provide a brief recap. I have service with Cingular and with AT&T. The problems began when I tried to merge my two services into one account (Cingular did acquire AT&T, right?), upgrade my service plan, and upgrade the AT&T phone. Simple enough, right? Wrong.

After (literally) four visits to the store (and 3+ hours of waiting for a sales person), 10+ phone calls (and speaking with over 30+ people), and completing several forms on the web I thought I had finally solved the problem and everything was fine. THEN my phone showed up ... it was the wrong one!!! Attempts to get the problem resolved on the phone failed (we can't do that here), attempts to return it to the store failed (that was sent to you by our phone sales group, you can't return it here), and a final desperate attempt to resolve it through Cingular's Office of the CEO was meet by "you shouldn't have tried to transfer your service from AT&T to Cingular" (i.e. it's your fault) and "you're trying to order the most expensive phone we have, what do you expect us to do, give you a free one?" (i.e. you're trying to cheat us).

My experiences can basically be catagorized in the following fashion:
* You're an AT&T customer, this is Cingular; you'll need to call AT&T if you need help.
* You're a Cingular customer, this is AT&T; you'll need to call Cingular if you need help.
* You're a corporate customer, this is the retail group. You'll need to call business services for that.
* You did that over the phone, this is a store, you'll need to take up that problem with telesales.
* You did that in the store, this is telesales, you'll need to take up that problem with the store.
* That can't be done over the web.
* Sorry, I don't know how to do that.

Regarless of which phone you ultimately purchase, good luck!

...msg


Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: This not a phone. It is a mini computer. An iPod. and more

Sync with Outlook for all of your contacts.
Play all mp3.
Watch mpeg and 3gp movies.
Take flash pictures (yes, not as good as my 5 M pixels camera)
Take short movies.
Play games (Chess, pack-man, space invaders)

And then you can talk on the phone including Bluetooth headset.



Rating:
Summary: Simply has the complete package!
Review: This phone comes loaded with everything you can ever imagine.
It has a speakerphone, it has bluetooth so you can send your friend ring tones, pictures and etc. It has a 1.2 megapixel camera. The quality of the camera is better than most clamshell cameras ie. V600,V3,SMT5600. It has a beatiful screen, that displays 65k colors. Alot of nice apps that would make your old phone just look outdated. Many people have been quoted as saying that listening to mp3's from this phone and listening to mp3's from a ipod are exactly the same quality. Nice build quality too, this phone just looks plain sexy. Its pretty light, has a built in antenna. Capable of sending and receiving SMS, MMS, recorded sounds, recorded video etc..Make sure you have the newer firmware version for this phone which is currently 1.3 and you will have no problems with call quality, hearing the person your calling etc. Only cons are the small outside screen and its small caller id. This phone has a speakerphone which is very useful. Overall for only $175 you would be hardpressed to find a phone with this many features and this quality.

Rating:
Summary: truly superior
Review: This phone is truly a superior phone. I have the latest firmware build so any reviews that complain about prior bugs should be considered irrelevant in regards to the present product. Anyone who is looking for a phone with the intellegence of a pda with most of the features of one should look no further. This phone has: Bluetooth, outlook exchange synchronization, windows 2003, windows media player 9, expandable memory, megapixel camera, and video player and recorder. All powered by a 200 mhz ARM processor backed by 32mb of ram not to bad for a phone. The USB cable is included by the way. The OS runs fast, the reception of the phone is superior due to its quad band feature. The speakerphone is decent although it could have been louder. It fuctions well with bluetooth or wired hand free devices. Mp3's sound great in fact this phone saved me the money of having to buy an Ipod. Camera and video player are decent for a cell phone. The phone is sylish for its feature pacted nature. The battery lasts a very long time even with heavy use. Overall this was a great investment, truly a step above most phones, especially over the over hyped, and priced Razr. Anyone looking for a quality smart phone look no further

Rating:
Summary: Amazon Product Description is Inaccurate
Review: This phone only has a 65K color screen, NOT the 262K screen. Amazon has been notified but has yet to correct the description.

Otherwise this phone is pretty nice. The receiver and speakerphone volumes are a bit lower then desired, even with the 1.3 firmware and Outdoor profile set.

Rating:
Summary: Motorola, lowering the bar... again
Review: You have to judge a cell phone primarily by how well it works... as a phone. Not as a PDA, or MP3 player or GameBoy or web browser or any other cool geeky gadget. For a phone that retails for $400, the MPx220 has some embarrassing defects. Yes, the 1.30 update seems to have 'solved' the low sound problem, except now my mic seems to have a slight feedback/echo effect that people find distracting and unpleasant.

And releasing the phone with the original low volume issues shows a lack of QA testing. Real concerns if you're a Motorola stockholder, especially since the V180 is also getting bad reviews.

I'm not impressed with a million ringtones, intelligent text messaging and a 65k display, if I sound like I'm in a cave when I talk on it. Here's an idea for you Moto engineers: get the phone part right before you add extra features.

The PDA/calendar/browser/text features work fine. But you can get those in a Palm, Blackberry or iPAQ.