Motorola A1000 Review

Overall Rating

Two cameras, excellent sound, assisted global positioning, touch sensitive screen, tons of applications, games- what more could you want?

Well, it turns out you might want a longer battery life, an accessible memory card slot, a stylus silo in a less ridiculous place and a phone bill back in double digits country.

The A1000 is, without a shadow of a doubt, a very nice mobile phone. Bristling with more features than the average hi-end PDA and coming in slightly smaller in size the A1000 is the perfect gadget-fanatics companion for all situations.

- Chatting -
Two cameras mean you can have a face-to-face video conversation or show each other around at the touch of a button. The loud, clear speakers mean hearing each other is not a problem when video-conversing. And your conversations can be recorded so you can watch them back later!

- On the Road -
Somehow, Motorola managed to squeeze a fairly good GPS system into the A1000 which makes use of network services to help compute it's position from GPS co-ordinates. A simple mapping program will track your bus route home with a fair degree of accuracy, although getting a fix is tricky and it's prone to wondering off course when you're not moving.

- The Music -
A diverse variety of music is available straight from 3 mobiles services in the form of music videos, mp3s and ring melodies. Forget Crazy Frog- you can download your favourite songs and listen to them instead. The loud, clear speakers mean the A1000 has no trouble providing musical entertainment to a few gathered friends, place it on a coffee table or kitchen sideboard and the resulting amplification is rather satisfying!

- The Video -
As mentioned above, music videos are available for download from 3's services. They look fairly good on the screen which is crisp and clear but a little on the small side for anyone used to a PDA. Additionally live video feeds are available from the Big Brother house at time of writing, alongside plenty of comedic entertainment, video reviews and a whole plethora of other content.

- The Games -
The A1000 is a pretty capable gaming machine in most respects, with plenty of games available including some multiplayer pay-per-play exclusives from 3. The thumbstick, however, has been found wanting and requires a little bit of practise to get used to the trick - they showed us at the press conference - is to use the end of your thumbnail to manipulate it.

- The Highlights -
The A1000 is probably the easiest phone to lock and unlock that I have had the pleasure to use. With the flick of a switch on the side the screen and buttons can be locked with no silly button combinations necessary to unlock it again.

There is a huge amount of software available, enough to make the A1000 capable of competing with low-end PDAs. The A1000 shows that phones evolving into PDAs fare better than PDAs trying to incorporate phones (handspring, anyone?)

- The Downers -
Put the stylus in the silo, dock it in the cradle for charge/sync and then try to get the stylus out again- this is a fairly fundamental design floor and a nuisance in a phone that must be charged on a daily basis.

On the subject of charging, the battery life is absolutely dire- with a bigger screen and a faster processor my PDA lasts infinitely longer. For the A1000 to play the important role of a PDA it needs to be there when you need it, a PDA with a flat battery is not useful as anything bar a paperweight.

Like Nokia and their original N-Gage, Motorola opted to put the memory card slot underneath the phone battery making the hot swapping us gadgeteers are used to completely impossible. I, for one, like to take the SD card from my camera and preview photos on my larger PDA screen.

Overall the A1000 has more ups than downs, is a fantastic phone, and a great buy. The major downside is the cost of 3G services- but if you are going to use a 3G phone anyway, make it this one!