The Motorola XT301 Comes In Colors
If you can believe it, Motorola is creating a smartphone in more than just boring black. It is the Motorola XT301. Getting your hands on this smartphone will be a surprise. Those who are familiar with most handsets from Motorola know that they are characteristically devoid of color choices.
The Motorola XT301 can be had in blue! Good on Motorola. The size is smallish, and will favor a pocket or purse. The height is 104 millimeters, and the thickness is 15 millimeters. For readers from the United States, that is 4.1 inches tall by .59 inches thick. There is no manual keyboard, so the virtual keyboard on the display will need to be used for typing messages or email.
The screen for the Motorola XT301 is three inches in size. It is one of the few with this size of a display. Nevertheless, it has a full set of features. Some of them include an accelerometer, proximity sensor, touch sensitive controls and multi touch input method.
The user interface for the smartphone is the Motoblur with Live Widgets. This is to jazz up the generic menus in the operating system. Resolution is rated for a below-average 240 by 320 pixels. That means some small letters will be hard to read.
The wireless lineup for the Motorola XT301 is lacking. There is Wi-Fi, but not in the fast “N” mode. This handset handles Wi-Fi up to the “G” mode. There is no EDGE or GPRS, but thankfully 3G data can get up to 153.2 kilobytes per second. This is not a GSM smartphone, so voice data is handled by CDMA networks, similar to Verizon. This may or may not be headed to the United States. The first stop will be China.
An older version of android is running the menus and programs for the Motorola XT301. Version 2.2 is available, but this handset is running 2.1. Android is a free ( as in money ) software that is distributed by Google, the search engine. It has gained popularity in the United States, but not so much in other countries. It currently has around 180,000 downloadable apps ( programs ) in the andriod marketplace. For comparison, iTunes has over 250,000 apps available for their users.
How about the hardware? The Motorola XT301 has a Qualcomm MSM 7625 528 megahertz processor running the show. The upper level models are running at one gigahertz ( 1000 megahertz ), so this handset may have problems with multi tasking. Otherwise, the internal memory is set for 150 megabytes. The RAM and ROM are 256 and 512 megabytes respectively. The camera is a little on the weak side. It is 3.15 megapixels of picture taking power. It does not have flash or auto focus. It does have geo tagging. The geo tagging can be turned off in the menus of the XT301 for security and privacy.
The battery is 1170 mAh, which should give a projected time of seven hours and forty minutes. That is above average. The Motorola XT301 comes with a FM radio and games for entertainment. It is going to be available in China before the end of the year. There is no word on other countries.
