Motorola MPx220
Average Ratings
MPX 220 - Really good phone, but with heavy flaws
The Motorola MPX-220 is a mixed bag. Today i put a deposit of $100 on the phone (which i'll be picking up tomorrow, hopefully), and was able to play with the old ROM version [.325]. I wasn't impressed by the volume at all, but i was surprised that the ear speaker was as loud as my old samsung phone [thats not to say much].
I then went on to test the speakerphone, and this is where i was heavily disappointed. At first i found it abysmal, but after removing the [really unoticeable] plastic was much better, yet not good enough [when in comparison to my friend's V600, that was right next to me at the time].
The camera quality is ok, but really bad to be considered megapixel. To me, it's a megapixel resolution camera with a cheap VGA sensor. The video wasn't much better, although it was smoother than video i've seen recorded by the D415 or even the Nokia 6600.
The phone is fast and the OS is well build, and aside from the annoyance of slow booting time, it seems fine. Luckily for me the volume satisfied me [on outdoor mode though, useless in normal profile] even though the phone had the old ROM version, as opposed to the new one being flash by Moto. Voice dial from the phone itself was good, although it takes a few long steps.
Another problem i noticed, is that the phone did not recognize various numbers under the same name from my simcard, and seems to list the same number twice [just like the Vxx series]. Flash is pretty much useless, it just makes pictures worse.
PROS
Fast OS, even though first boot takes long [around 5 mins].
Love the voice signal voice dial feature
lots of multimedia options [WMP, PVPlayer, MP3 player, IE]
Expandable memory
Lots of features for normal and business users
External Picture ID
Good reception.
CONS
Camera is nothing but a toy here
No voice dial from headset, what a joke.
Barely average volume on high settings.
Backlight turns off after 4 secs!
Great phone but has cons, get it if you can live with them.
One very nice phone!!
I have been using the phone now for almost two weeks and have really enjoyed it. The Bluetooth feature is great and I use it frequently with the Parrot handsfree set up in my car. As with some of the other reviewers I agree that the volume levels are a little low but if you change your profile to Outdoor then it is much better! I love the features of the phone and it has allowed me to carry one less device, the PDA is history. I also purchase a 256MB SD Card and have all the capacity I'll ever need! The best feature of all is that my over 400 Outlook contacts with name, business name, phone, fax, cell, address, etc... all were transfered to my phone in less than a minute!!
FIRST ONE..
One of my favorite phone had it when it first came out.. AT the time it was lightyears ahead and was untouchable!!
The Best Phone Ever
This is my Absolute favorite phone ever!!! It has a cool sleek look, One of the few clam-shell pocket PCs around. I love that its a clam-shell. This protects the vital parts of the phone while it is in my pocket. It has great signal reception (cingular in west Texas) it works in places that my previous phones would not (previous phones were also cingular) I had very little trouble with this phone and if I wasn't hard on phones I would still have this phone. I am a pool service professional so consequently most of my phones suffer water damage at one point or another. I purchased 6 MPx220s over the last year due to this problem with my occupation. Other then water damage this phone is VERY durable. I have dropped it on many occasions, always comes right back on with out any trouble. One of these phone even took a swim to the bottom of the pool and still turned on after allowing it to dry out. It worked fine for another 3 months until it ended up in the bottom of another pool. The second time around it was not so lucky. Most of the 6 MPxs I went through were subjected to water 2 or three times before finally kicking the bucket. I was never afraid to pull the phone out and "show it off" when asked "What phone do you have?". This is a respectable phone among any crowd. It is sophisticated without being ugly, or to large as mentioned before the style of the phone is small and way cool. Most of my friends fell in love with this phone when I showed them what it was and what it is capable of. I could not say anything bad about this phone, it has been a wonderful business companion, I think after my current phone kaks I'll buy another MPx220.
PROS:
Very durable
Great applications for business people
Great speaker
Easy to use and navigate
Very stylish
CONS:
Motorola's magnificent charger connection
Music could not play very loud
I really liked this phone for the 3 years I used it
I used this phone for 3 years on Cingular/AT&T, and only switched (to a Samsung SLM) because the 220 finally died.
Pros:
Quad-band GSM (worked fine when I was traveling in Europe)
Very easy to sync with Outlook using ActiveSync (which I already had installed anyway for my PDA)
One of the earlier phones I was aware of allowing user-customized MP3/WMA ring tones (but see below)
Predictive text entry in the phonebook, making looking up a name simple (for instance I could filter enough to find my friend Nicole's phone number by hitting 6-4-2, rather than having to type 6-6-4-4-4-2-2-2, at which point I may as well directly dial :) )
Plenty of software available due to the Windows Mobile OS (including new options such as Google Maps).
Clamshell design (well, that's a pro for me)
Cons:
Battery life was spotty, sometimes the phone would just run itself down
Battery contacts were intermittent -- sometimes the phone would just turn off without warning even WITH a powered-up battery installed. Inserting a few pieces of paper in the battery compartment to force snug contacts between the battery and the phone fixed this, but a used kludge shouldn't have been necessary
The charging cable contacts on the bottom of the phone stopped working correctly in my phone, I HAD to use the USB cable to charge the phone rather than the A/C adapter. Not a huge issue, but annoying. (I verified that it wasn't just my A/C adapter, I borrowed the charger from a coworker with the same phone and that one didn't work for me either)
Using custom MP3 ring tones resulted in a rather quiet ring, even though I'd edited the audio file and normalized the volume to max before encoding the MP3. The identical audio file re-encoded to WMA made for a much louder ringer.
Other comments:
My SLM holds the signal a bit better than my 220 did, and is definitely lighter, but to be fair it's also a much newer design.
I just got my MPx220!
For an older phone, it sure holds it's weight. It's definitely better than the Q. Not an iPhone killer, but it does what it needs to do.
Pros:
Windows Mobile. I can try to use other programs, but they all fall short.
Clamshell Smartphone. Not too many of those exist in America {Except for my 3125 that I needed to get rid of}.
Okay Camera and video {What made it stay out of the "Cons" is that the zoom is phenomenal}
Can hold my 2gig card with no problems.
Great reception.
Loud mp3's.
File transfers with both Bluetooth and Infrared.
I can read my bible on it.
I got it really cheap.
It's NOT the Q!
Takes Mini SD's, which I can find a 2gig for $24.99.
It has so many menus. It's complex, which I like.
Cons:
Finding an adequate case for it.
Not buying it when it first came out.
No Stereo Bluetooth.
Memory card is hard to get out at times.
It does take a minute to load up; but once It does, it's all gravy. It's only bothersome when you're expecting a call.
I have to move a song/clip to the phone memory to use it as a ringtone.
32 MB of internal memory {The ram sucks too, but that's why my primary line is a Blackjack}.
Definitely an oldie, but goodie. For talking, programs, bubble breaker {then called "jawbreaker"}, and the occasional picture or two, this phone is great. Except for the camera, it's MUCH better than my Nokia 6682. It's the phone that's hard to beat; and may be for sometime.
Good all around Smartphone
I've had this phone twice now. I had it about 2 years ago, then when I broke my SDA, I bought another one from a friend.
Pros:
- Smartphone flip phone, not many of these around
- Flash on the camera
- Tactile sensation on buttons is good
- Battery life
- Quad band
Cons:
- Slightly buggy software
- Picture quality is pretty low
- Dropping calls as it gets old (TMobile service)
- Looks...kinda looks outdated nowadays, and rightfully so, it's a 3 year old phone.
Overall this is probably the best bang for the buck phone on the market. For under $100 on Ebay you can get this phone unlocked. It has pretty much every feature you would ever need, Bluetooth, Smartphone, cam w/ flash, flip phone, etc...
I'm replacing it w/ the dash...we'll see how it compares.
Stubborn and Frustrating
I've had this phone for 6 months, acquired from a former AT&T user. I was excited that I could sync w/my PC but the joy stops there.
Since acquiring this phone I've wanted to turn it into a skipping stone or a whip it against a hard brick wall several times. SPARE YOURSELF THE FRUSTRATION!
PROS:
- Can sync w/PC
- Uses predictive text & number recognition when searching address book (e.g. 2-3-2 will list all entries with 232 in number, and combos of abc-def-abc characters in name)... very slick
- Concise navigation to get to often accessed areas of phone
- Vast onboard mem for TXT msgs
- Signal quality is better than some of my earlier phones
CONS:
- OS stalls often; needs a reboot once to several times a week
- Long time to shutdown & reboot
- Alarm & Time are set on same screen; I've accidentally changed my time when I meant to set my alarm
- Cannot pull up a number in call log and send a text message unless it's a stored # in addrbk
- Cannot figure out how to transfer TXT msgs off of phone
- STUBBORN, STUBBORN, STUBBORN - when calling a number, it will default to the BlueTooth device. While ringing you can turn off the HandsFree device via the menu but as soon as it connects, it switches right back so you have to scramble through the menu to deactivate it again before the other person hangs up on you. Same with speakerphone.
Still solid
Although over two years old, the phone is still better than many of the phones cingular/new att currently carries. Currently at Cingular, I worked for GameStop previously. Had a discount Helio devices and plans. Basically, what Helio has done is rent towers from Sprint and bought a bunch of updated phones in Korea.
The MPx220 is comparable to the Helio KickFlip in just about every way; the Windows OS still being superior.
PROS:
Still has great features after two years
CONS:
No 3G internet
Old clamshell design
I've had nothing but problems
I've had a couple of MPx220s, and I've had plenty of problems. After owning it for only a couple of months, the phone would not turn on. When I'd try to power up, it would show a blank screen. I sent it into Motorola, and they fixed it, though it took an unacceptable 5 weeks to get it back.
The phone occassionally shut off when it was closed quickly. To prevent this, I had to very slowly and gently close the flip. Shortly after owning the phone for a little more than a year, the charging terminal began to be problematic. I could not charge the phone! Every time I powered down the phone, I needed to do a hard reset (sometimes more than once), to get the phone to power up again. I sent the phone into Motorola, who take 4-5 weeks to fix it and get it back to me. The phone came back with a few different marks on it, so I assume I just got a refurbished one.
Well, the same problem continued. If the battery gets too low and the phone turns off, I need to do a hard reset to get the phone back on. Now, it doesn't power on at all. Previously, I could run the phone solely via the power cord (i.e. removing the battery but having the phone 'plugged in'). Now, nothing works. Nada, zilch, zero power. I haven't ever been able to go more than a few weeks without having do reset the phone, which makes it almost useless to load programs and data since it gets deleted regularly.
I assume I just got lemons, but 2 for 2 is bad. I was never able to flash the firmware (using either the online or offline updaters) as well. In addition, the reception on the first phone was horrible -- I would consistently drop calls and not have reception, even though my wife's phone (v551) would be just fine. Heck, I needed to bring in my external antenna that I use on my car in order to get any reception in my apartment.
I hate the Moto charging port. It's quite fragile, and I know that they designed it this way. They bank on it going out so folks need to buy new chargers. Grr.
