Our Motorola A1800 gets a billion friends in China
Wait, what? Motorola actually shipped a new product? Well, it seems so, because they just released the Motorola A1800 MING to the Chinese market. The phone is a hybrid CDMA/GSM device which runs on the China Unicom CDMA network. Hard specs are as follow:
- 2.4″ 240×320 display
- microSD slot
- GPS
- Handwriting recognition
- 3 megapixel camera with autofocus
Funny enough, on the CDMA side, the phone is only 1x capable and on the GSM side, only GPRS. Sad indeed. Wake us up when your 5 megapixel camera phones get autofocus. KthanksMoto.
Thanks, Cesar!
Man that last part was too funny!
GPS. How’d they figure that out?
This phone is intended for the Chinese market only. The chinese don’t have 3G licenses yet, so the limitation to GPRS and 1x make sense
Does anything Moto does make sense these days?
Also this phone is dual sim, so actually I can have two gsm connections and one CDMA connection at a given time. That is kind of handy!!
Admiral is right … Funny how boygenius contributors can be so quick to lay blame on Moto when they are the ones who are clueless. tsk tsk tsk.
i might be mistaken but doesn’t this run their linux OS which doesn’t support 3G.
on a side note i find it a little funny that china can make 3G devices but not use them. my Q9 clearly says “made in china” lol
How does an OS either support or not support 3G? This is a simple matter of HW Chipset choice and Moto did the right thing in deploying a phone to match the infrastructure.
Surprised boygenius didn’t jump ugly over Apple for deploying a phone into a 3G infrastructure without 3G capabilities………
it’s just a rumor — but the Linux OS running the system can’t seem to handle 3G. I don’t understand it either. It’s the same as in the RAZR 2 V9 — which was not 3G either.
The MIng is a great phone, and this is a nice addition, shame about the 3G part. Wifi would have saved the day.
oooohhh, finally somebody noticed the same thing i did … linux fan boys who jump over every motorola linux phone dont like to say that moto linux phones like razr2 v8:
a) are gsm only. no 3g love.
b) dont perform as well as their 3g synergy counterparts
c) arent usually as feature rich
I understand no 3G, but wtf? No EDGE? I don’t have 3G in my area, and I can live without it. But with only GPRS, its like 2 kilobytes a second max.
You’ll never see this phone if you are in the states, don’t worry about it.
The Motorola Ming? What next the Samsung Fugly? Nokia Jizz phone? LG Gash?
The dual SIM is both for CDMA and GSM. CDMA systems in China use R-UIM (aka SIM) cards as well, so you can have a GSM and a CDMA connection running concurrently
Motorola HAS a device with Linux and 3G/HSDPA: the DVB-H TV DH02. Ask Google about it.
Why Moto does not have any Linux 3G phone? Ask them instead of trolling; it’s Moto’s decision, not technical limitations. They’ll never admit it, though.
And, BTW, Motorola’s 3G lineup is pathetic. Period.
***
NO phone in mainland China is being sold with 3G. E.g. Sony Ericsson sells their wares in China without any 3G band. And you won’t see any 3G phone in China until TD-SCDMA is ready and stable. Period.
There is EDGE in China
With the Smartphone market exploding in the US only Motorola would see it fit not to release this.
The great thing about linux is that those are only the features it comes with out of the box RIGHT NOW. My A1200 Ming was not capable of EVDO out of the box but a quick flash and BOOM my A1200 now has EVDO. It can also run DOS and Windows and do all sorts of wonderfull things with a quick flash.
Its not that Moto doesn’t want to release the A1200, A1600 or A1800 in North America but rather that cellular providers wont take it!! Its perfectly legal to sell in the US and it is even FCC approved. Basically it has been released just not adopted. American providers are scared that someone might write malicious software into the Linux OS (open source). To date no open source phone have been taken by any cellular provided in North America and I don’t expect it to change any time soon.
Sorry I mean EGDE not EVDO I always get those two confused