Last week, this guy in my circle of friends over on the dot, Red Warrior, offered up two old Motorola MPx200-series phones for the cost of shipping. Another friend, rk, answered first, but, feeling pushy, I went for it anyway and asked if he wanted both. He was gracious enough to offer me a choice of the two models, the 200 or the 220. I went and read what Howard Chui had to say about it, and decided the 220 was better. But I told rk about the review and said he shouldn't let me choose. rk saw sense, but said since I was honest about it (and since he'd never seen Howard Chui or his amazing forums that he'd pay RW to ship the 200 to me. So I got an awesome phone totally for free. And it arrived yesterday.
It's a bit bigger than my Moto 551, but before even opening it, you can tell it's a different class of gear. For one thing, it's glossy black, like a beetle that's been powder-coated. It's got a display on the face, for quick viewing of things like battery power and time, but the display is bigger than on my 551. It's got, no kidding, a sort of dial on the side to control the volume, instead of buttons. It's got an IR port hidden on the same side. On the other side, It's got a covered headphone miniplug jack, and the first SD card slot I've ever seen on a Moto. (I know, this phone is from 2003, but I don't look around much) On the bottom, amazingly, it has a mini-USB port, also covered. That's where the travel charger plugs in, also. It's great to not have to find a proprietary serial cable if I want to plug it in, now. Oh, one last thing, before opening: above the battery compartment button is a little... Windows logo?
Ok, so opening it up, it's very glossy on the inside, with metallicized control pad and hotkeys. Everything glows faintly blue. Did I mention my favorite color is blue? The screen is also pretty much all blue, the way I have it set up. There were a ton of ringtones built in -- I gave up listening after about 30 -- and a lot of background pictures. The actual platform is Windows Smartphone 2002, so it has mini-Outlook Express, mini-IE, mini-WiMP, etc. I will wait to try those out until I have a cheaper data plan, but they sure look nifty :)
It's a cool phone. And I've just started playing with it. I noticed a few quirks, like how the navigation and text entry is just slightly different from all my previous Moto phones, and how, to edit contacts that were on my SIM, I actually had to go to the SIM Manager, instead of being able to edit from the contact menu. But I'll figure it all out. It's also missing 3 things my 551 has: EDGE support, a camera, and Bluetooth. But right now I never use data features under Cingular, anyway, because they charge too much. And I doubt I'll ever need that kind of speed, because I won't be moving megabytes over cellular, anyway. The 1.3MP camera on the 551 is very blurry. Bluetooth is actually pretty cool, and I use it to keep my 551 synced with my Mac Mini, and I have a BT headset, and everything. But because this is a Windows-platform phone, I suspect I'll be syncing it with my XP box, and USB will be fine for that. And Red Warrior threw in a handy Jabra-on-a-wheel, too. So it's all good. Oh, and free :) So that much cooler.
This phone, actually older than my 551, is so much cooler. I just called both my mom and my sister, and I could hear them more clearly and noticeably louder, and they said I sounded clearer, too. Thanks to Red Warrior and rk for my early Christmas present!
