Motorola MPx200

The Motorola MPx200 Smartphone was launched in December 2003 as a joint venture between Motorola and Microsoft. The mobile phone's Windows Mobile for Smartphone OS allows users to access email and the Internet,use MSN Messenger, and view documents in Microsoft Office formats (with third party software) much like other Windows Smartphones such as the Samsung SGH-i600 or HTC Tanager. The MPx200, along with the Samsung SGH-i600 were the first Windows Mobile Smartphone devices to have wide distribution in the United States. Previously, Smartphone platform devices could only be purchased in the United States as part of development kits sold by Microsoft. The only U.S. carrier of the phone was AT&T Wireless however, reports also suggest a somewhat limited amount of devices with Cingular branding have appeared following the purchase of AT&T Wireless by Cingular.

A common complaint about this device is that it continued to ship with the WM Smartphone 2002 operating system even after most competing Windows Smartphones like the Samsung i600 or HTC Voyager shipped with Windows Mobile 2003 or at least offered an official upgrade path. The release of the Motorola MPx220, which runs Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, an upgraded version of the MPx200 that has an integrated camera and bluetooth support made it an obsolete smartphone, making the release of official OS updates look pointless. However, this led to the release of leaked unofficial upgrades for the MPx200 over the internet, with the community constantly improving them and eliminating the existing bugs. So far a Windows Mobile 2003 upgrade, and Windows Mobile 5, 6, 6.1 and 6.5 OS upgrades have been made available. The MPx200 is the only phone that has ROMs available for all existing versions of Windows Mobile Standard. As a result of the limited 32MB ROM memory, the last two need a memory card to install, merging the phone memory with the memory card and thus making the external vga camera useless when using these updates. There are various complaints pointing that a 512MB memory card causes conflicts so it's best to avoid that memory card size.

No leaked WM5 or WM6 images exist for the MPx220 as only the MPx200 was used for testing the OS internally at Microsoft.

Specifications

•Triband GSM 900/1800/1900 support

•GPRS Class 8 (4+1 slots), 32 - 40 kbit/s speed, browser supports WAP 1.2.1 and HTML (PocketIE)

•Weight: 118g

•Dimensions: 89 x 48 x 27 mm

•Display:

• Main: 2.2"(35 x 44 mm) 176 x 220 pixels TFT, 65,536 colors (16-bit), 9 lines.
• Secondary: 80 x 48 pixels monocrome TFT

•Smartphone 2002 and the other before mentioned unofficial firmwares

•Supports 32 presets, Polyphonic(24-channel) and WAV for ringtones (WMA and MP3 support can be added with the OS upgrades), silent alert: vibration.

•132MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 710 Processor

•32MB of RAM

•16Mb internal memory (8Mb available to user)

•Expansion slots: SD MMC/SD Card Slot(1 GB max)

•Camera: none, optional Viewtake CM35D SD slot camera available separately

• Image Sensor type: 0.3Mpx Pixels CMOS
• Image preview: 160x120 JPEG 10 frames/second
• Photo shot format: 160x120\320x240\640x480 24-bit color JPEG
• Video file format: 160x120 24-bit color AVI, 8 frames/second
• Lens: 180¢X rotation
• View angle: 60¢X
• Fixed focus: f/2.8, 4.1 mm focal length
• Focus range: On Screen 16-bit color 20 cm to infinity
• Shutter speed: f/2.8 , 4.9 mm focal length 1/7.5 ¡V 1/500
• Dimensions: 60.9 mm x 33.6 mm x 12 mm; 26.7 mm x 33.6 mm x 12 mm (ex SD card)
• Weight: 20 g
• Software: IA Camera 2.0(includes driver)

•Connectivity:

• IrDA: Yes
• miniUSB port with USB 1.1 support

•Battery: BA520 standard Li-Ion, 850 mAh (5hrs talk-time, 80hrs standby, 2hrs to fully charge the battery)

•Available colors: Liquorice Black

There is much debate if the slot supports SDIO. It is generally believed that it has hardware support for IO devices based on the existence of the SD camera addon but the lack of drivers for the MPx200 do not permit the use of the full potential of its hardware.

For the WM5 and WM6 updates, the memory card is mandatory.

External links

• Official Motorola product page
• Review of the MPx200
• Motorola MPx200 on Wikicells
• The Mpx200 forum section on MoDaCo
• MPx200 community and all ROM collection (including WM5, WM6 and WM6.1)
• Upgrade to Windows Mobile 2005