Latest Phones - The Motorola CHARM, A Review

Latest Motorola Phones - The CHARM

As mentioned in the previous article (Motorola BackFlip Review) the mobile giant is now into some serious competition with others. That phone was more likely to be competing against iPhone and the Google Nexus One but this unit the "Charm" is looking more likely a Blackberry device. And except the keypad the front interface looks a bit like the LG Remarq Turquoise With a roomy keyboard and a gorgeous looking display at the front are among the main features of this device. Let's have a look at how the hardware stands...



OK let's start with the length which is about 98cm, width 62 + the depth is around 11.4cm. Including the battery it weights about 110grams. There are only two color choices available but as the time goes on we'll see many third party skins also come in to life. Anyway the display has a 320x240 resolution in pixels. The total size is 2.8". Although it certainly big in comparison with other models still when analyzing it did lack some brightness and sharp enhancements.

The camera is a decent one but not a excellent in today's standards. The 3MPX can capture images in some high resolutions but again for some reason some basic features like brightness, etc were not that good. But the overall quality of the colors were pretty decent. And if you're interested in taking some serious pictures then you should check out the Sony Ericsson Vivaz which has a 12MP (12.1 to be exact) monstrous camera which can take HD standards both video and images. Anyway it also has LED flash and autofucus functions.

The keyboard is pretty good and because of the larger width has enabled them to include a bigger keys + camera and some other controlling buttons also. It has 3G, HSDPA (with a maximum speed of 3.6Mbps) and surprisingly WiFi also (after considering the low price). USB and Bluetooth is also included. Both audio and video capabilities were also impressive. By default it can playback man popular formats such as MP3, AAC, eAAC, WMV, MPEG-4, H.264/3, WMA, AMR. 

The operating system is Andriod 2.1 and since they released the latest 2.2 version it should be available by now. The overall usability concerning the user friendliness was also very good. In the home screen there are few widgets available and can add and remove more according to the needs of the user. It comes with a 2GB of microSD card and can be upgraded up to 32GB in the future.

The quality of the calls were also pretty decent even though it did picked up few noises it's not a huge issue here. Youtube and many other flv files including the Web pages were loaded without much of a hassle. The web browser was also pretty robust thanks to the Android OS.

The phone battery can give around 5 hours of continuous talk time and almost 14 days of standby time. This may not be one of the best latest phones concerning especially the capturing device but, if you can just ignore the 3MP camera, when considering the asking price the Motorola CHARM is certainly a pretty good device.

Latest Phones from Motorola - The BackFlip, review

Latest Phones - The BackFlip

"Even though there are many new phones out they're not all worth writing about. But the reason that I choose to write a bit about it is that, even though they've been designing these devices for a long time because of Apple, Blackberry and some other giants in the field has been dominating the market with devices such as Sony Ericsson Vivaz, Nokia N8 for instance it just feels like they were a bit thrown away."

But starting with Droid X and some others recently (are flip phones, slide-type, becoming popular again?) and I don't know what they did different (maybe firing some of the "old" heads in the engineering section - just kidding) but this time it seems like they've what it takes to get there and win some decent portion of the market.

So anyway let's see the see hardware specifications first,


* Display - 262K colors, 3.1" with a resolution of 320x480

If you have a look at the picture below you'll that the display actually is really good looking one. But be aware that in my experience most of the time these companies (they're really good with that aren't they?) usually make sure to post a small picture of the phone so the less the resolution (+ some dark background - another trick - ha) of the image most of the time the screen can look gorgeous. Anyway even without the 16Million depth the images looks good but in comparison with some others (Nokia N900 for instance) did lack some quality.But that being said, again the 262K certainly looks really good.

The weight is 4.7 ounces. The length is around 108 mm, width 53mm and a depth of 15.3 mm. The Motorola BackFlip also comes with a physical keyboard  (+ onscreen one too - since it's touch-sensitive). And as the name suggests you have to do a back-flip to see the keypad. It'll also be nice if they include Swype with the OS as it has revolutionized the way we use the keyboard (you can achieve 40WPM - yes it makes it easy to type on mobile phones). The buttons and the arrangement seems nice and roomy. The large space-bar button and navigation keys to the right end were also good. The backlight is there too which is something most of the manufactures seems to "forgot" to include. It certainly makes using it easy when you're in darker surroundings.


For some reason the OS is Android 1.5 but they say you can easily jump to the 2.1 version. Even though Google now has released the 2.2 version too but they decided to stay with the latter maybe because of some sort of stability issues. There is also 3G and WiFi. There is also Bluetooth (2.0) and the only reason that it exists in these latest phones mainly due to the Handsets. You can use it as a remote controller device too. WCDMA and an accelerometer is there too. GPS with Google powered maps, etc are also there. The USB port (micro) is included by default for Sync functions.

The camera is a 5MPX unit with 4x digital zooming capacity, Autofocus, LED, image editing utility and also Geo Tagging. But for a 5MPX camera the overall image quality wasn't that good. It can certainly take some decent pictures with high resolutions but in comparison with others wasn't great. For serous image capturing checkout the 8.1MP Vivaz. Audio and Video playback is also looking good. MP3, WMA, AAC, MPEG4, H264/263, etc are supported (with 24fps).

The call-output quality was very satisfying indeed. Both incoming and outgoing voices were very clearly heard from the both ends. So when it comes to making some serious call this is highly recommended.

Almost all E-mail clients such as Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc, are supported through IMAP + POP3. And thanks to the faster wireless networks the web experience was also good. The browser picked and loaded pages + flv videos pretty quickly. It comes with a 2GB memory (non removable) and through the microSD card you can install up to 32GB which is pretty much the standards size in comparison with others.

The phone battery can give some decent continues duration of roughly 6 hours but most of the time will go below or up depending on the conditions. Anyway other than a bad digital camera this is a decent unit from Motorola. And I hop you enjoyed this review about the latest Motorola Phones. Thank you for reading.

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