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Technical Details
- This unlocked cell phone is compatible with GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile. Not all carrier features may be supported. It will not work with CDMA carriers like Verizon Wireless, Alltel and Sprint.
- Quad-band GSM cell phone compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies and GPRS capabilities
- Ultra-chic, iconic styling with outer-space transparent cover; 2.4-inch touchscreen; business card reader for easy contact input
- 2-megapixel camera/camcorder; Bluetooth stereo music; MicroSD expansion; digital audio/video player
- Up to 7.4 hours of talk time, up to 170 hours (7+ days) of standby time
Product Details
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Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description
Need one gadget to do it all? The Motorola A1200 "Ming" phone is the answer. This Linux-powered PDA phone sports a 2-megapixel camera, a huge display, quad band support, plus all the bells and whistles you'd expect on a high-end handset, including Bluetooth, a music player, a document reader, and much more. And when you want to get down to business, there's even a business card reader for rapidly capturing contact info.
Design
The first thing you'll notice about the Ming is that its design is definitely groundbreaking. While the transparent cover might look cool, it also serves a purpose, as the phone's speaker is cleverly embedded in the cover. Flip the phone open and you're greeted by a huge 2.4-inch touchscreen that sports 240 x 320 resolution and support for 262,000 colors. There's also an included stylus so you can control the unit's onscreen menus and functions. And speaking of menus and functions, the Ming's operating system offers an easy-to-use, Linux-based interface that makes navigating between entertainment, contact, document and other functions a breeze. You'll also find two control buttons, as well as a navigation joystick, below the display.
 The A1200 Ming combines eye catching style with Linux-powered PDA substance. See it in more detail: Front and rear. |
The first thing you'll notice about the Ming is that its design is definitely groundbreaking. While the transparent cover might look cool, it also serves a purpose, as the phone's speaker is cleverly embedded in the cover. Flip the phone open and you're greeted by a huge 2.4-inch touchscreen that sports 240 x 320 resolution and support for 262,000 colors. There's also an included stylus so you can control the unit's onscreen menus and functions. And speaking of menus and functions, the Ming's operating system offers an easy-to-use, Linux-based interface that makes navigating between entertainment, contact, document and other functions a breeze. You'll also find two control buttons, as well as a navigation joystick, below the display.
The Ming also supports MicroSD card expandability, which allows you to add up to 1 GB of extra storage to the device -- plenty of room for games, movies, and documents. There's a standard 2.5 mm headset jack, and a built-in mini-USB connector makes it easy to connect the Ming to your computer or other devices. Bluetooth wireless technology lets talk freely on a wireless headset or sync up seamlessly with your PC and other compatible Bluetooth devices. You can even print your favorite pictures wirelessly with the Ming's Bluetooth printing capability.
Calling Features
The Ming has all the latest calling features folks have come to expect from a high-end handset. The built-in speakerphone makes it easy to talk without having the phone to your ear. Voice activated dialing makes calling your friends, family and associates as easy as saying their names. As mentioned, the phone's Bluetooth connectivity means that your favorite Bluetooth headset is fully compatible. Plus, you can connect a stereo Bluetooth wireless headset and listen to your favorite music without any wires. Meanwhile, the ringer and picture ID system makes it easy to identify your most common callers. And last but not least, a vibrate mode allows you to receive calls in silence.
Messaging, Internet, and PDA Tools
The Ming covers the messaging bases with support for text and MMS messaging, as well as IM-based communications with MSN Messenger. There's also a complete email client that allows you to receive and view PDF, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint attachments. The email client supports POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP protocols. An integrated browser lets you view complete HTML pages or surf the wireless Web via WAP 2.0.
On the PDA front, the Ming comes with a powerful calendar and contacts system that makes it easy to stay in touch with your important contacts while organizing your schedule. And because the Ming supports the SyncML synchronization standard, you can easily sync your PC-based contacts and schedule with the Ming's personal information management system. Other tools include an integrated business card scanner, a calculator, an alarm, a voice memo recorder, and a to-do list. You can use the Ming's advanced handwriting recognition to quickly and accurately enter information.
Entertainment
The Ming's 2-megapixel camera features a macro mode for getting great closeups. You can also capture video clips; capture length is limited to a staggering two hours. Use the built-in RealPlayer application to view your videos, as well as videos you've got stored on a memory card. The integrated music player supports MP3, WAV, AMR, WMA, and AAC+ digital music formats. There's also a stereo FM radio.
If you're into mobile gaming, the Ming has you covered there, too. The phone ships with one game, Extreme Air Snowboarding.
Vital Statistics
The Motorola A1200 Ming weighs 4.30 ounces and measures 3.77 x 2.04 x .85 inches. Its lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 7.4 hours of digital talk time, and up to 170 hours of digital standby time. It runs on the 850/900/1800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS frequencies.
Product Description
The Motorola A1200 Linux PDA-phone features a touch screen as an input device and is capable of recognizing normal English or Chinese handwriting. With a 2.4 inch 240×320-pixel QVGA TFT screen it weighs just 95 grams. It also has a 2 mega pixel camera, a built-in music player that plays your favorite audio files. You can easily increase the cell phones' storage capacity via a T-Flash up to 512MB to store all those extra image, video and audio files.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
76 of 78 people found the following review helpful
I bought this phone in China early March 2006. It was just on market for a week or so. I intended to buy a Microsoft Smartphone kind of device, but came upon this phone. The things that attracted me was the near perfect finish (black version only, feel like the early IBM Thinkpad T23 skin-like touch), the fast response, large screen, transparent screen cover and a unique feature: Business Card Reader(BCR).
The BCR take a snapshot of a business card, automatically recognize the information and input into contact list. The character recognition is not 100% if the business card design is too fancy. If the card is standard, with regular characters, the recognition result will be very accurate. It saves lots of time when you finish the job in a long day and rest in hotel room. Remember, you have to set the lens switch to Macro position, otherwise the card photo it takes will be blury and recognition is impossible. The switch is above the lens, very easy to miss.
Other features include the radio, recorder, bluetooth, Real Player, voice command, notes, 2.0 MP camera and camcorder.
Writing recognition is also very accurate. I write in Chinese and English. Both are very easy to use. Overall, the software are great.
It comes with other features such as getting online but I don't use them. You can add Transflash card inside. As of May 2006, the largest card size is 512MB for $70.
I don't think I digged all the goodies out, still in the fun process learning how to use it more wisely. Overall, it is a great phone, better than any other phone I ever used.
The BCR take a snapshot of a business card, automatically recognize the information and input into contact list. The character recognition is not 100% if the business card design is too fancy. If the card is standard, with regular characters, the recognition result will be very accurate. It saves lots of time when you finish the job in a long day and rest in hotel room. Remember, you have to set the lens switch to Macro position, otherwise the card photo it takes will be blury and recognition is impossible. The switch is above the lens, very easy to miss.
Other features include the radio, recorder, bluetooth, Real Player, voice command, notes, 2.0 MP camera and camcorder.
Writing recognition is also very accurate. I write in Chinese and English. Both are very easy to use. Overall, the software are great.
It comes with other features such as getting online but I don't use them. You can add Transflash card inside. As of May 2006, the largest card size is 512MB for $70.
I don't think I digged all the goodies out, still in the fun process learning how to use it more wisely. Overall, it is a great phone, better than any other phone I ever used.
58 of 61 people found the following review helpful
Before I bought this phone, I had the V3 that I got from Cingular. I was really unpleased with it, it wasn't what Motorola made it out to be. Then I got the V3x, which I wouldn't have done if I knew that it didn't support the 850 GSM Band. It was a lot better than the V3, had an MP3 player, but it didn't support 320kbps MP3's. I had problems getting a signal with it, cause of the 850 GSM band Cingular uses. Then I saw the Motorola MING (A1200). I've had this phone for a month, and I haven't had any problems with it yet. It plays all my MP3's and it even comes with Real Player, so if you wanna play Video's, you can, but you have to convert them first. It sucks, but the phone does come with some converstion software. I've also tested the phone with some software that I found off GetJar. I only had a problem with one of the programs, it was an Internet radio. But the Messengers worked fine. The Hong Kong site says that the phone comes with MSN Messenger, but I haven't found it. It supports 1GB MicroSD and can record videos up to 2 hours. The only downfall of the phone is the fact that it doesn't have any 3G capabilities. I, myself, don't use 3G since it my provider doesn't have Video Calling yet and I'm sure that when it becomes available, it'll be expensive and no one that I talk with will get it for years to come. The phone uses Linux as it's OS. That kind of scared me at first cause I don't know how to use Linux that well....heh, but it's pretty easy to use. The OS is also Open Source, you can get it from the Motorola Open Source site (https://opensource.motorola.com). The phone has a virtual keyboard on the screen that you use to type. There is also a virtual keypad that is used when dialing a number or when entering info that requires only numbers.
Here is the short version...if you want a great phone that doesn't support 3G technology, that supports J2ME applications/games, and you can see small letters close up, then get this phone. If you have to have 3G, then get something else.
Hope this helped ^_^.
Here is the short version...if you want a great phone that doesn't support 3G technology, that supports J2ME applications/games, and you can see small letters close up, then get this phone. If you have to have 3G, then get something else.
Hope this helped ^_^.
57 of 66 people found the following review helpful
I've had this cell phone for two months now, and I can say that this is a great phone, with a couple significant flaws. I've been looking for a cheap smart phone for some time, and I have to say this phone meets my basic needs.
Pros:
- Good looking design, as expected from Motorola
- Great versatility. It's many functions add value to the phone. It has everything I was looking for (except full email sync with your computer email client). 2 MP still/video camera, media player (RealPlayer), FM Radio, calendar, bluetooth, web browser, document reader, ... the works.
- Linux OS, with Java enabled, which opens a world of possibilities. There are a lot of great Java apps designed for this phone on the internet. Is just a matter of looking for them. My first downloads were the Gmail app (gmail on my phone!) and the Opera Web browser, which is great.
- Micro SD slot.
- The Real Player is great, it plays most media file formats. And I bought a 2 GB memory card, so it's like having a music player as well.
- Quad band, so you can roam almost anywhere.
Now, the Cons:
- Big con #1: Miserable battery life. I use the phone a lot (for calling, web browsing and it's other functions), and I have to recharge the phone every other day. Thankfully, it comes with the USB cable to connect with a PC, and after loading Motorola Phone Tools, you can charge it via the USB ports of your PC. It's been a life saver at work. This is a major flaw by Motorola. If you are gonna cram so many functions on a phone, you might as well bundle it with a larger capacity battery.
- Big con #2: Not so great processing speed. After I read a couple of the reviews here, I though the phone would be blazing fast because of the processor and all, but let me say that I am quite disappointed at it. For example, after placing a call, the phone takes like 2 to 4 seconds to end the call and return to the normal screen. Or after quiting the internet browser, it freezes for 2 to 4 second when it's closing the GPRS connection. Also, the Real Player takes some seconds when it loads a file. It may seem that I'm being a little whiny, but after some time it really gets annoying, specially if you are in a hurry.
- The camera, being 2 MP and all, is not so good. You need to have a steady hand, or else you are gonna get a lot of blurry pictures (and the worst part is, if you download the images to your Windows PC, you cannot modify them, because they are transferred as Read-Only, and you cannot just change this on the file's properties. I'm guessing it's something of Linux permissions. I'm still going to look into that). And the video quality is not great as well. I got better videos with my old SE Z520a, which BTW, look great on the A1200's screen.
- No full email sync support.
- Finally, the screen is a dirt magnet. I have to clean the phone's screen every now and then, partially because I have a very oily face.
Although I'm giving 3 stars, I have to say I'm happy with the A1200. Besides those 2 major flaws, the phone is cheap in comparison with other smart phones and has a lot of functions that make it a great every day tool for communication, organizing and entertainment.
Pros:
- Good looking design, as expected from Motorola
- Great versatility. It's many functions add value to the phone. It has everything I was looking for (except full email sync with your computer email client). 2 MP still/video camera, media player (RealPlayer), FM Radio, calendar, bluetooth, web browser, document reader, ... the works.
- Linux OS, with Java enabled, which opens a world of possibilities. There are a lot of great Java apps designed for this phone on the internet. Is just a matter of looking for them. My first downloads were the Gmail app (gmail on my phone!) and the Opera Web browser, which is great.
- Micro SD slot.
- The Real Player is great, it plays most media file formats. And I bought a 2 GB memory card, so it's like having a music player as well.
- Quad band, so you can roam almost anywhere.
Now, the Cons:
- Big con #1: Miserable battery life. I use the phone a lot (for calling, web browsing and it's other functions), and I have to recharge the phone every other day. Thankfully, it comes with the USB cable to connect with a PC, and after loading Motorola Phone Tools, you can charge it via the USB ports of your PC. It's been a life saver at work. This is a major flaw by Motorola. If you are gonna cram so many functions on a phone, you might as well bundle it with a larger capacity battery.
- Big con #2: Not so great processing speed. After I read a couple of the reviews here, I though the phone would be blazing fast because of the processor and all, but let me say that I am quite disappointed at it. For example, after placing a call, the phone takes like 2 to 4 seconds to end the call and return to the normal screen. Or after quiting the internet browser, it freezes for 2 to 4 second when it's closing the GPRS connection. Also, the Real Player takes some seconds when it loads a file. It may seem that I'm being a little whiny, but after some time it really gets annoying, specially if you are in a hurry.
- The camera, being 2 MP and all, is not so good. You need to have a steady hand, or else you are gonna get a lot of blurry pictures (and the worst part is, if you download the images to your Windows PC, you cannot modify them, because they are transferred as Read-Only, and you cannot just change this on the file's properties. I'm guessing it's something of Linux permissions. I'm still going to look into that). And the video quality is not great as well. I got better videos with my old SE Z520a, which BTW, look great on the A1200's screen.
- No full email sync support.
- Finally, the screen is a dirt magnet. I have to clean the phone's screen every now and then, partially because I have a very oily face.
Although I'm giving 3 stars, I have to say I'm happy with the A1200. Besides those 2 major flaws, the phone is cheap in comparison with other smart phones and has a lot of functions that make it a great every day tool for communication, organizing and entertainment.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Review of Motorola Ming A1200 Phone
Excellent phone... poor battery life.. ear speaker finally failed after 2 years... 1Gb maximum on mermory transflash card
Published 20 months ago by shaun
Wrong Phone
Ordered the Motorola Ming A1200 as advertised and received the Motorola V3. Emailed the company and never got a response. The receipt calls it both. Read more
Published 20 months ago by kipposman
If only it could funtion as well as it looks
I've own this phone for about a year now and now I'm looking for a replacement. I absolutely can't stand the phone.
CON 1:
Texting is ridiculously hard. Read more
CON 1:
Texting is ridiculously hard. Read more
Published on September 20, 2009 by M. Barnes
Loved this phone!
For me this is a really great phone for all my communication needs. It's also stylish, cute and small.
Published on July 22, 2009 by Anarchi-Angel
One of the Best Phone I ever owned.
This is one of the best phone I ever had. I say had because a own 2 of them and both got stolen. But anyway, the features are great, 2mp camera takes pretty good pics in good... Read more
Published on June 3, 2009 by Mr. Ryan R. Lawrence
Motorola Ming a1200
I love this phone. It's compact, different and pretty easy to use. But please be aware that the functions are in Chinese when the phone arrives. Read more
Published on May 26, 2009 by Rodney Loche
Motorola Ming A1200e
Wow...great phone. Screen resolution is really impressive...and was rather pleasantly surprised by the fact that I could play movies using the full screen... Read more
Published on May 9, 2009 by P. MASTERS
NO, do not buy it !!!
It has terrible battery life. My cell phone last only 6 hours and I have to recharge it. I do not recommend this cell phone to anyone although it has nice graphic and easy-to-use... Read more
Published on April 27, 2009 by H. Nguyen
Cool phone
This phone was a gift for my daughter and she loves it. She thinks it's cool and easy to use. She enjoys it very much.
Published on February 15, 2009 by Lisa Marquez
EXCELLENT !!!
HAD THIS ON MY WISH LIST FOR A NUMBER OF MONTHS SAVING $ UP TO PURCHASE, SOOOO WELL WORTH IT !
Published on January 24, 2009 by Kitty Gretz
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