Motorola MING A1200

Call Quality

Calls and speakerphone: We found calls to be loud and clear on the Motorola Ming. We rarely needed to use the side volume keys to adjust the sound. Using the speakerphone didn’t degrade call quality, and we particularly like that two people can talk simultaneously when the speakerphone is activated. Since the cell phone’s flip is actually made of plastic, the earpiece doesn’t heat up when you talk on the phone for long periods of time.

Audio quality: Playback of songs and music on the FM radio application is decent and loud through the cell phone’s speakers. Additionally, since the speaker is located on the back of the cell phone, you should turn the Ming over to listen to songs. On the plus side, we really enjoyed listening to music with the included headset; songs sounded great through them.

Ease of Use

Menu/phone book: As is the case with many Motorola cell phones, the menu’s interface is intuitive, requiring only a couple of steps to access most of the Ming’s features. This cell phone sports a touch screen, so everything you want to do is a just a tap away. The bottom of the screen serves as sort of a task bar with shortcut keys to the most recently used features; the top of the screen doesn’t change. The button in the upper left of the screen with four circles on it (the image looks a little like the bubblet game found on some Windows Mobile smart phones) provides access to the main menu. There’s also one-touch access to the phone book, creating messages, and using the phone. Once you master these buttons, understanding the rest of the icons on the cell phone becomes second nature. In the main menu, just about everything is in English except a few applications that are strictly in Chinese. That said, it’s pretty easy to figure out those apps. While you can run multiple applications at once, if you don’t close them and have too many open, there’s little you can do with the cell phone until you close a few.

Entering and saving numbers (there’s room for 4 phone numbers for each contact) is easy. Additionally, you can save birthday info, anniversary dates, a Web address, and a physical address for every contact on your cell phone and dedicate a song stored in memory as a ringtone.

Camera/video: The Motorola Ming sports a 2-megapixel camera, and it can record videos. Although the Ming lacks a flash, we doubt that having one would enhance picture quality much. About that: Picture quality isn’t the best. Most images came out pretty blurry. Video quality isn’t much better, but at least you can see what’s happening on the screen. Additionally, if you want to save a lot of photos and music, you’ll need an optional MicroSD card storage card since the cell phone has only 8MB of internal storage, which can fill up quickly depending on what else you have saved on the Ming. You can snap pictures by selecting Capture on the screen in the camera mode or pressing the button located on the side of the cell phone with a camera icon on it. There’s also a tiny mirror underneath the lens on the back of the cell phone for snapping self-portraits.

The good news is that this cell phone offers many tools for enhancing picture quality. There’s brightness, zoom, night mode, and the ability to snap in black and white mode, among others. In addition to the many settings for taking pictures already available on the camera, you can edit images with the included Photo Editor. In this application, you can crop pictures and even add writing or draw circles and lines on photos to point out specific objects in the image. If you’re not a fan of the pics you snap with the integrated camera, you can connect the Motorola Ming to a computer via the included mini-USB-to-USB cable and upload a few of your own favorite images to the cell phone.

Music: There are a couple of ways to listen to music on the Motorola Ming. First, there’s a radio application that you can use to hear local FM stations. While you will need to plug in the headset to use this feature, you can still select the radio to be played over the cell phone’s speakers. The other option for playing back music is in the RealPlayer application, entitled Media on the main menu. Once in this application, you can create playlists and play music, but there isn’t much you can do to adjust audio quality. The good news is that you probably won’t have to since playback of songs is pretty impressive. You can play AAC (Apple’s music file format), WMA (Window’s music file format), and MP3 files. If you plan on storing more than two or three songs on the cell phone, you’ll want to purchase an optional MicroSD card, since the Ming has only 8MB of internal memory, which is simply not enough for more than a few songs.

You can get music onto the phone using the USB-to-mini-USB cable, then drag and drop songs from your computer onto the cell phone. You can also store tunes from your PC on a MicroSD card, then slip it into the MicroSD slot located beneath the battery cover on the back of the Motorola cell phone.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: We were able to pair the Motorola cell phone with a Motorola H680 Bluetooth headset and an Apple iBook G4.

Design

Look and feel: In a word, the Motorola Ming just looks cool. It’s definitely one of those cell phones that everyone will want to see or ask about whenever it’s revealed in public. It’s got a charcoal-gray plastic covering that flips open to reveal the cell phone’s touch screen. The back of the cell phone is slightly rubberized (like the Pebl's). While the Motorola Ming isn’t exactly what we would call small (on a par with the Motorola Krzr), it’s definitely compact and fits easily into a pant pocket or small purse without creating too much of a bulge. Our least favorite design aspect is the location of the voice record button; we often pressed it while on a call or when we flipped open the cell phone with one hand. As a result, we ended up recording way too many of our conversations.

The display is bright but not nearly as crisp as, say, the Samsung A990's. Since the screen is slightly recessed, it doesn’t attract as much grease and fingerprints as many cell phones available today. As noted, the cell phone sports a touch screen, which is responsive to the touch of a fingernail or the included stylus. The Motorola Ming will accept an optional MicroSD card; however, figuring out where to insert the card isn’t immediately obvious since it’s hidden behind the cell phone battery.

Keypad: The touch-sensitive grey keypad sits on a bright white screen, so dialing in the dark isn’t an issue. Neither is accidentally dialing the wrong number. Additionally, when you want to compose a text message, a pop-up keyboard will appear on the screen. The good news is that the predictive text software included in the Ming is pretty accurate, so you won’t have to peck out all the letters of a particular message yourself. The bad news is that the keyboard is on the tiny side, so accuracy takes a hit if you’re trying to tap out messages with just your fingernail.

Battery Life

In the battery life department, the Motorola Ming had decent performance. We found that we could last a little over two days before needing to recharge when using the Motorola Ming regularly to make calls and send/receive text messages. Users who barely use the cell phone to make/receive calls and send/receive messages can wait about four days before needing to recharge, while heavier cell phone users will likely need to charge the Motorola Ming every other day. You can use the included mini-USB-to-USB cable to charge the cell phone when it’s connected to a computer. Nice!