| Motorola A780 |
| General |
| Network | Gsm 850 / Gsm 900 / Gsm 1800 / Gsm 1900 |
| Announced | 2004, 3q |
| Status | Discontinued |
| Size |
| Dimensions | 106 X 53 X 24 Mm, 106 Cc |
| Weight | 141 G |
| Display |
| Type | Tft Touchscreen, 65k Colors |
| Size | 240 X 320 Pixels, 38 X 50 Mm |
| | - Handwriting Recognition |
| Ringtones |
| Type | Polyphonic (40 Channels), Mp3 |
| Customization | Download, |
| Vibration | Yes |
| Memory |
| Phonebook | In Shared Memory, 14 Fields, Photo Call |
| Call Records | Yes |
| Card Slot | Microsd (transflash), |
| | - 48 Mb Internal Memory
- 312 Mhz Cpu Speed |
| Data |
| Gprs | Class 10 (4+1/3+2 Slots), 32 - 48 Kbps |
| Hscsd | No |
| Edge | Yes |
| 3g | No |
| Wlan | No |
| Bluetooth | Yes, V1.1 |
| Infrared Port | No |
| Usb | Yes |
| Features |
| Os | Linux |
| Messaging | Sms, Ems, Mms, Email, Instant Messaging |
| Browser | Wap 2.0/xhtml, Html |
| Games | Yes, |
| Colors | |
| Camera | 1.3 Mp, 1280x960 Pixels, Video |
| | - Gps Receiver (in Some Versions)
- Java Midp 2.0
- Mp3 Player
- Document Viewer (.pdf,.doc,.xls,.ppt)
- Pim Functions
- Syncml
- Voice Dial
- Built-in Handsfree |
| Battery |
| | Standard Battery, Li-ion 780 Mah |
| Stand-by | 110 H - 180 H |
| Talk Time | 3 H - 6 H |
|
Motorola - A780Motorola's Latest Linux Smartphone: the A780
Motorola's A780 is the company's latest Linux smartphone that sports improvements over the previous A768i such as a 1.3 megapixel camera, a TransFlash memory card slot, support for EDGE networks, and even a keypad on the front of the flip cover. It is also a quad band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) world phone. On paper, the A780 looks like a very promising phone, but does it deliver?
Physical Aspects
With its flip closed, on the front of the A780 there is a window that allows you to see 4 lines of text from the main touch screen, which is well protected beneath the flip cover. The Motorola logo at the top is where the speaker is, and you can listen to calls with the flip closed, which is great news for people who generally do not like flip phones. Alerts and ringtones also emanate through the same speaker. The numerical keypad is placed on the outside of the flip as well, and below it is the navigation joystick, next to the power and home keys. The fact that the screen has to be viewed through the window makes it almost impossible to be viewed under sunlight, though. The screen just isn't bright enough to shine through the window, which was quite annoying.
Users of the A768i will find the availability of the keypad on the front flip cover a welcome feature, as it just makes typing SMS or dialing much less of a chore when compared with using a touch screen with a stylus or one's grubby fingers. However, the keypad was difficult to type with in general. The keys were stiff, and it took quite a lot of force just to register a keypress. I didn't like the placement of the navigator joystick at the bottom of the phone, either. It just made things inconvenient and cumbersome - especially if you have small hands or, more specifically, short thumbs. I didn't have much trouble with the joystick, but there were times when I accidentally pressed it in when what I intended to do was to flick it downwards.
On the left side of the phone there is the rocker switch, a voice recognition key, and the battery cover release key. On the right side you'll find the camera button that allows you to activate the camera and take photos even with the flip closed. On top of the phone is where the Transflash memory card slot is, protected by a rubber cover. On the bottom you will find the headphone jack and the USB port that is used to charge the phone and also to connect the A780 with a PC. The back houses the 1.3 megapixel camera lens and self-portrait mirror. The stylus silo is found on the top left corner of the back cover.
Flipping open the cover is easy and can be done single handedly since it is fitted with a spring mechanism. This is where you are greeted with a 240 x 320 touch screen display, capable of displaying 65K colours. The screen is bright, suitable for use indoors, but under sunlight, it takes some effort to make out the display unless the screen brightness is set at 100%. However, colours are reproduced beautifully, and the QVGA resolution makes fonts smooth, with no apparent jaggedness, and pictures sharp and beautiful. There is also an earpiece on the flip cover so you can talk on the phone with the flip open. Flip phone zealots will appreciate the smoothness and definitely the coolness factor when flipping open the phone to answer a call.
Overall, weighing in at 141g and measuring 106 x 53 x 24 mm, the Motorola A780 is a stylish looker clad in silver and black. It is definitely smaller and lighter than a Treo 650, and very solidly built. The battery cover was tight and there were no squeaking or creaking to be found anywhere on the phone.
Phone Functionality
The best part of the A780 is that you can make calls without having to flip open the phone. This definitely is a boon to people who need to make that urgent call with no time to waste. It works just like a candybar shaped phone when the flip closed, but the phone functions are quite limited. By pressing on the rocker switch, you can access your contact list, write a message, launch Realplayer to listen to music, access your call log, and activate your keylock. If you flick the rocker switch upwards or downwards, you can easily change profiles. It's easy to switch your phone to vibrate or silent mode with just a flick of the switch. However, I dislike the fact that the phone can't ring and vibrate at the same time, as is common in many Motorola phones. It either vibrates alone or vibrates 3 times before the ringtone kicks in. Most newer Motorola handsets no longer have this limitation, thankfully.
The navigator joystick can also be used to access the same applications as the rocker switch. This makes it redundant and limits the applications that can be launched and accessed with the flip cover closed. There is no way to change the menu shortcuts, either. It would have been great if I could turn on Bluetooth or maybe set an alarm without having to open the flip cover. As is, it just too much hassle to do many simple things.
To power on the phone, you have to press the power key for about 2 seconds with the flip open. I don't understand why Motorola doesn't let one power up the phone with the flip closed. After turning on the phone, it will ask if you want to continue with the GSM radio off or on. This is great if you need to use the PDA functions on an airplane or somewhere that doesn't allow radio-enabled devices. You can use the joystick to select either On or Off, but you can't press in the joystick to select OK. This is really frustrating as I had to take out the stylus just to tap on OK as well as when it came to entering my SIM pin code. I tried closing the flip to see if I could enter the code with the keypad, but no such luck. I don't know if this is a limitation of the Linux OS, but the UI certainly needs a lot of improvement to be more user friendly.
Quirks aside, the A780 delivered excellent voice quality during calls. I did not experience any dropped calls or poor reception, and audio was loud and clear. The speakerphone worked as expected, but the volume of the speaker could have been louder. It's usable in a small quiet room, but don't expect wonders in a car with the air conditioner blasting.
Finding a contact can be done by tapping on the keypad key that corresponds to the letters in the name. For example, if you want to call Adrian, you just have to tap on 2, 3 and 7 and the letters ADR will appear. However, this isn't as straightforward as you might expect since the numbers 2, 3 and 7 all contain several letters each, names corresponding to any of the letters in that sequence will appear. If you have Bernard in your contact list, his name will also appear because BER also corresponds to the numbers 2, 3 and 7. So ultimately, you will have to tap more numbers to zero down to the right name or alternatively, you can use the rocker switch or joystick to scroll down the list.
If you prefer using the phone with the flip opened, you can easily tap on the address book icon on the Global Navigation Bar, which is located at the top of the screen with 4 other icons: Application Launcher, Address Book, Message, and Phone. Searching through your address book is done in several ways. You can choose to use your fingers or stylus to input the name. Yup, you read right...fingers. Motorola included a Fingerpad in the input option menu. It's basically rows of letters that are on squares that are bigger than the on-screen keyboard so that you can use your thumb to tap on them. Otherwise, you can use the on-screen keyboard or plain old handwriting to search for your friends. I found the system to be sluggish when looking for contacts. Tapping on K took about 1 second just to reduce my contact list to display only names beginning with K. Anyway, after finding the name you want, you just have to tap on the name and tap on the number associated with that name that you wish to call. The Phone icon is used to access the virtual keypad, which you can use to manually tap in numbers to make a call.
There is also a third way to make a call - voice dialing. An interesting function in the A780 is that you can speak numbers or names to the device without having previously recorded a voice tag. Just like the A768i, it actually interprets the number or name itself. However, it recognized the correct number or name only about half of the time. Another feature is the Talking Phone feature. With this function turned on, whenever you click on an application, the phone will state its name. For example, if you clicked on Setup, the phone would mutter,"Setup" via the external speaker. When an SMS arrives, selecting the message will trigger the phone to read out the sender's name and also the contents of the text. It was really cool but ultimately, the phone does not recognize SMS language (cu, l8r, etc.) and sometimes you can hardly make out what the phone is saying. Nevertheless, it is a really cool feature and will definitely aid those who have vision problems or those who need to read their messages while driving. Just make sure your messages are in proper English first.
Battery life was below average. Using GPRS and Bluetooth depleted the battery by 50% by the end of only 1 day. So be prepared to charge your phone every night if you are a heavy user.
Everything but the kitchen sink - and WiFi
The A780 does not have WiFi built-in, but it can support GPRS and even EDGE networks where available. There were multiple network profiles included in the UI, so setup up was easy. I just had to select the correct network settings from a list. Surfing was fast with the included browser and the high-resolution screen displayed web pages clearly and sharply.
The built-in email application supports both POP and IMAP. You can set up multiple email accounts, but the manual did not state what the limit is - if there is one. For writing messages (SMS, MMS and email), the A780 offers several options: handwriting, on-screen keyboard, or the alphanumeric keypad (only for SMS). However, when using the handwriting recognition function, the text recognition was sluggish. The writing pad is divided into 2, and the manual recommends that you alternate between the 2 writing spaces so that recognition can occur in one while you write in the other. It takes some time to get used to it, but it would have been better if it was a single writing space where you could write continuously without having to alternate between the 2 spaces. Additionally, you have the option to use the on-screen QWERTY keyboard, which works well. All input methods include predictive text, meaning as you begin to write a word, it will give you a list of the potential matches from an internal word list. The numeric keypad works as expected, except for the stiffness that I mentioned earlier.
The Bluetooth system in the A780 works well. I could send and receive pictures easily to/from various Bluetooth enabled devices. You also have the option of syncing the A780 with your PC via Bluetooth using the Motorola mobile Phone Tools software. The A780 also worked flawlessly with my HS850 Bluetooth headset. There were no distortions and I could stand about 5 meters away from the phone and still have a clear conversation. However reception got a little poorer when the distance was more than 7 meters and even worse if there were obstacles around (walls, desks, chairs). Overall, the Bluetooth system worked great. My only gripe is the amount of steps needed just to turn on Bluetooth. You have to open the flip, click on the Bluetooth icon (if you set it as a shortcut icon on the home screen), click on the menu key and finally click on Turn On Bluetooth. I hope Motorola can improve on this and make it less tiresome.
PDA Functions
Motorola A780
The Motorola A780 runs on Linux OS and is powered by a 312MHz processor. The UI felt sluggish. and the launching of an application usually took more than a second. For example, launching the camera application took about 4 seconds.
It definitely will not replace your PDA if you are a power user. However, if you are looking for simple PIM functions, this might be the phone for you. With 48mb of available memory, you can fill it up with thousands of contacts, calendar entries, task lists, or even emails.
Included in the A780 is a program called Picsel Viewer. It allows users to view various document types, including PDF, MS Word, Powerpoint, Excel, JPEG images, PNG images, HTML, and plain text. Its wonderful UI allows you to zoom in and out of documents by using the rocker switch and also turn pages by stroking the bottom of the screen with your stylus (just like how you would turn a real page). If you frequently need to view your documents while on the go, this is definitely a useful program to have.
There is also a World Time application included. I had a hard time figuring out how to set the time and date for the phone. Even the manual did not teach how to use such a simple but very important function. Finally after poking around, I stumbled across the World Time application and found that I had to change the time and date via this application. Why can't they just allow me to change the time and date in the setup menu or, even better, just state it in the menu on how to change the time and date? Even the topic on World Time in the manual did not mention anything about setting the time and date.
Another interesting function that the A780 offers is the USB Mode. You can choose to have the A780 act either as a modem or as a Mass Storage Device when you connect it to your PC with a USB cable. This is really excellent as you can easily drag and drop music files, pictures, and videos from your PC to your phone with ease. When you have a Transflash card inserted, the A780 will also act as a card reader and you can access the card via your PC. To me, this is definitely the most interesting feature the A780 has to offer.
The A780 also supports Java MIDP 2.0 so you can install Java applications as well. There are 2 Java games included in the A780 - SWAT and a 3D basketball game. Graphics were rather good, but when playing games, the flip cover tends to get in the way when you are trying to tap on the screen with your stylus. This is because both of the games that came with the phone have to be played with the phone in a horizontal position.
Multimedia
An obvious improvement over the A768i is the inclusion of a 1.3megapixel camera in the A780. The pictures taken were of average quality. Certain pictures appeared over exposed, and the camera's white balance system doesn't work too well in low light conditions. I also noticed something odd about the camera; when you turn on the camera, the image on the screen/viewfinder sometimes appears grainy and totally off colour. Fortunately, the actual photos appeared to be much better than that. My guess is that this can be fixed with a firmware upgrade. When you move the camera around, you will notice that the frame rate on the screen is low and rather jerky. The camera can take pictures in 3 different resolutions - 1024 x 1280, 480 x 640, and 240 x 320. You can adjust the brightness and also zoom digitally up to 8x. The camera is also capable of taking video recordings at 2 different resolutions - 128x96 and 176x144. The length of the video is only limited by the amount of available storage.
The included Realplayer allows users to listen to MP3s either with headphones (you will need an adaptor since the audio jack is not the standard 3.5mm) or via the external speaker. Music sounded beautiful, with no distortions or crackling through the speaker. Video files can also be played using Realplayer. You can also use MP3s or MIDI files as ringtones. Just like the pictures that you snap with the integrated camera, you can store your MP3s or MIDI files in an external Transflash card.
Conclusion
On paper, the Motorola A780 looks set to blow away the competition with its strong feature set and various input methods. However, the unfriendly and sluggish UI makes this phone a bit difficult to live with at times. The Linux OS has yet to prove itself in the mobile market, as there are not many applications available for download. However, if you can live with all these quirks and all you want are basic PIM functions, the Motorola A780 will suit your needs well with its excellent contact system, not to mention the powerful Picsel viewer. |
| Common misspellings on this brand: motforola |
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