A new phone that can compete blackberry. Review on Motorola E398

The year 2009 had a bad beginning for cell phone giant Motorola which decided to close down its distribution division in India. In 1973, Motorola showed off a prototype of the world’s first portable cellular telephone. It ultimately became commercial available in 1983., known as the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. Motorola gave the world its first cellular phone. And what a pity that this innovating giant is soon going to be out of cell phone business. In India it is already out with almost no retailer having the stocks even for the newer Motorola Zine ZN5 which was judged the best camera phone and music phone by many including PC World, Digit, Living Digital and T3.

Going by the advancements in cellular phones Motorola had always played the role of innovator and rest being imitators. "Slim is in" was Motorola’s effort when phones like Razr, L5, L6 etc made the world think that mobiles are not only utility things but also fashion statement. The clamshell design which was rather unacceptable before was popularized by Razr series . Linux which has no taker in Mobile OS World was made to work effortlessly by models like Rokr series . Touch screen devices which were thought to be Rich man devices were brought to Economy class by the launch of models like Rokr E6 and lately A810. The unique e-ink technology for display was propagated by Motorola F3 and F3C . Unique morphing keypads were launched in ZN5 and EM30 . ZN5 is the only phone which is as good in camera department as it is in music capability whereas its competition either focuses on camera or in music. The list is almost unending and Motorola has given so many firsts in mobile manufacturing that it is almost impossible to remember all of them.

That said apart my tryst with Motorola phones began in the year 2004 when I bought Motorola E398 which was at that time was placed in direct competition with the hugely popular Nokia 6600. Motorola E398 was pitched as a music phone and even called as "MTV Phone" because of some promotional tie up between MTV and Motorola. Motorola E398 was the real ancestor to the later music phone lineup from Motorola including the Rokr series . It is this phone which made people believe that Motorola can manufacture exceptionally well music phones. It was also the time of Sony Ericsson K700i which was a direct competition to E398. E398 even surpassed the audio quality of best sounding music phones of that generation. E398 was the the first phone with stereo speakers in the market. LEDs were built in inside bars of side speakers and they were able to change their color depending on the chosen color scheme. So, whenever there is an incoming call, the phone displays color along with sound. This technology is called Rhythm Lights or Haptics . The phone was loaded with different Haptics which looks specially stunning in the dark whenever there was a call. Coming to interface, interface was never a forte of Motorola and it took some time for me getting used to it. But once you master it there is virtually no stopping.The battery backup of the phone was average. It has all the necessary features including Bluetooth, Camera (VGA at that time was the norm), Java, large phone book etc. The only thing missing was FM . Different Skins and Themes were there in the menu. But there was a twist. You can add hundreds of skins and themes by slight modding of the phone. There is a full dedicated resource like e398mod.com which caters exclusively for modifying E398 as pretty much evident by its name. The extent of moddability was such that you can get many features such as Video recording, Corelets support, AAC audio support, Quad band, Voice record, Java on memory card etc etc on your E398 just by flashing the firmware. Which smart phone can give you such options and heck E398 was not even a smart phone.

I can go on and on writing about my favorite E398 but there is no point of more description as E398 was discontinued 3.5 years back by Motorola and now the time is that Motorola is going to be discontinued in India. The E398 which I bought 5 years back is still ticking and in absolute working status despite 5 years of heavy abuse of more than 500 hours and repeated droppings on the floor and a few encounters with rain in between. The only thing I changed is its charger (2 times, pretty bad charging point, feels like E398 doesn’t want to get charged as mentioned by another MS reviewer), and its battery (found a Chinese duplicate one in Ghaffar Market as original ones are long out). I also changed the case of the panel set but the Chinese ones are pretty much useless and original ones are not available but still one can have the joy of feeling a new phone for a small period of time.

I still pay my tribute to Motorola by writing this small piece and Moto lovers will always miss the joy of having a Moto in their hands. Motorola Rocked us for years and I wish that some magic will happen and get Motorola out of this financial mess and once again, Moto give us a chance to rejoice and bliss in using their mobile products. Amen.