Motorola A630 - the new Communicator

We – the consumers always want more, faster and smaller gadgets. And companies listen to us, and they deliver. Welcome the new Motorola A630.

Information about the device started to appear in the beginning of 2004. And of course the initial information was wrong - some people were ready to bet their lives the phone will run Microsoft Mobile 2003 (of course the A630 is not running it). Now since more and credible information has surfaced we can discuss it.

If you remember, in 2000 T-Mobile offered Motorola V100 – a single-band GSM phone, weighting 5.6 oz with full QWERTY keyboard and black and white display - overall very unimpressive device. Later the same year, Motorola introduced the Accompli 009 Personal Communicator – a lot more refined tri-band GSM with 256 color display, running Motorola's proprietary Wisdom OS 5.0 and weighting of 5.9 oz.

 

Accompli 009

V100

Now, Motorola is ready to introduce the next version of the Communicator – Motorola A630. FCC has just approved in on 06/17/2004 so its path to the store shelves is clear. Unlike its predicators, the A630 features dual keyboards – a full QWERTY when the flip is opened, and a regular phone keyboard on the outside. This is just the beginning of a long list of improvements. The internal display is large 176 x 220 TFT with 65,000 colors. The external is small blue-illuminated screen which provides basic information like time, missed calls, signal and battery meters. Quad-band operating is also not missing – meaning the phone supports all current US GSM frequencies (850/1900 MHz) and all European/Asian (900/1800 MHz) – great for the world travelers.

(click to view large images. Images courtesy of MobileManua.cz)

Even though I am ready to see mega pixel camera in every high-end phone, Motorola has included a VGA (640 x 480) one. I am fine with this also, I HOPE (actually demand) that they have improved the quality of pictures taken (Motorola V600 was the worst performing VGA camera I had seen).
As you can see from the pictures, the phone is clamshell with laptop style flip. Pictures can be taken with the flip closed, fully open (180 degrees) or 90 degrees open.

Motorola A630 with flip open

Moving forward to the connectivity options, Motorola has opted out the infrared port (I can not remember the last time I used mine) but included Bluetooth! Class 10 GPRS high speed data is also available; with maximum speeds of around 43 kbits/sec. WAP 2.0 is not missing, allowing you to view xHTML and HTML sites. IMAP4/POP3 e-mail access is also available.

For the fun part, the Motorola A630 has 24 voice polyphonic ring tones which can be either MIDI or MP3. SD slot is available for those of you who think 5 Mb internal shared memory is not enough to hold their ring tones, movies etc. And yes, the phone also has a built-in video player. For the creative ones, MotoMixer allows you to create your own polyphonic ring tones. Themes, wallpapers can be downloaded and installed if you want to give A630 a more personal look.
Additional games and application can be downloaded thanks to the MIDP 2.0 JAVA support.

Of course, the feature set does not end here. Speaker phone, voice dialing and recording, Picture ID, distinctive ring, SyncML, Instant Messaging are just some of the additional features.
About price and availability – we do not know it. The phone will be probably available from Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile USA. Please, visit out site frequently and check the phone specifications – as soon as we know more we will update them.

 

Motorola A630 full specification and features are available at PhoneArena.com