Solid Rocker. Review on Motorola MPx200

Motorola MPx200 is a thing of beauty. Blame it on my obsession for all things black, but this is one of the best looking flip models I've seen. I got it for $110 off eBay, a highly subsidized AT&T version which was locked for use with AT&T, but could be cracked by firing it with a clean version of the Windows Mobile 2002 OS (which is what I did). It looks and feels pretty sturdy, which contributes to its good looks (I'm the sort who would find a Samsung D500 a tad tacky with an impractical keypad).

The model is rather old (2.5 years to be precise), which is also a good thing. Any problem you encounter using it, someone out there would've already faced it and solved it, and all you have to do is google! It has a nice big color display on the inside with decent resolution, and a small, well-placed mono display on the outside to tell you the time, signal, battery, volume, and caller id alerts.

The WM2002 comes with standard features that include support for email, msn, organisers, and a media player that plays mp3/wmv/avi/wav/midi formats. Internal memory isn't much at 32MB. No camera.

But what the MPx200 lacks in standard features, it makes up for with flexibility. The internet is teeming with software you can download for free and load it with. I have a cool collection of games and themes. You can even install an e-book reader and load the phone with content to read on the move. It is perfectly compatible with your Windows PC. You can just plug in your USB cable and transfer contacts and email from outlook to your phone.

The phone comes with a standard mini-USB port, so you can use your camera's cable even if you lose your mobile's. It charges through the same port, so your phone charges even as you transfer content to/from it. The external memory supports standard SD/MMC cards, which (being industry standards) keep crashing in prices.

The external memory slot slips in from the side like a floppy, and can be plugged in/out on the fly. I got a 512MB SD card for INR 1600, making my phone a cool MP3 player. The audio speaker in the phone is loud enough to fill a large living room, so you dont have to bother with ear-plugs if you dont like them.

Being an older model does have its disadvantages. The processor isn't a blazing speedster, so you can forget about loading your card with a codec-encoded FRIENDS episode and watching it on the move. You might end up with a frame-by-frame spectacle. It does play standard-encoding avi video files decently, and other file formats can be supported by installing another player from the internet.

If you're still cribbing about the lack of a camera, maybe you should wonder if you'd really find much use for the 0.3MP standard camera u get on phones these days, or whether the INR 10-grand premium you pay for a 1.3MP mobile is worth the cost. I'd say camera miniaturization hasnt yet reached the stage that makes economic sense, unless you have a lot of cash to burn. If you do, wait for the Nokia N91!