Motorola's A920 - Not exactly a pocket sized handset

YESTERDAY THE INQ had a quick play with the A920, Motorola's latest W-CDMA (3G) handset which has been developed specifically for Hutchison's 3G network - 3. The pair clearly have concentrated on its video capabilities to the deteriment of other facilities.

Although built into the body of the phone, the A920's camera is still able to swivel through 180 degress and provides the best yet images for video telephony that 3 can offer. Unfortunately the A920 is also on the large side - not the sort of mobile phone that slips easily into your pocket. More impressive, though, is the fact it sports an Assisted Global Positioning System (AGPS) capability for location based services - the first 3 handset to do so. For example, it was able to provide a map and detailed instructions on how to get from the 3 store in London's Kensington to a famous French restaurant six minutes walk away. However, a 3 employee revealed that AGPS isn't switched on yet and the handset was still using Cell ID for positioning!

The handset boasts a 65K colour display which can switch from portrait to lanscape mode to play video clips - hence the A920's length problem. It also makes a pretty impressive games machine or MP3 player. What gets completely overshadowed is the fact that it's also a fully fledged PDA using the latest version of the Symbian OS (v7.0) and incorporates Symbian's latest pen-based user interface. Java and C++ applications can be downloaded while the user is still able to make or receive calls at the same time.As far as storage goes, the INQ expects it to ship with a 64 Mb SD memory card, although it will accept anything up to 256 Mb.You can also change the card without switching the phone off. Another bonus is that, thanks to its suppport for triband GSM, consumers can use it overseas including North America.

Although the A920 can act as a full touch screen PDA and sync with Microsoft Outlook, for example, this has to be done via a USB cable. That's because neither Bluetooth or an infra-red port are provided. So our greatest criticism of the A920 is that cannot act as a 'cellular modem'. You can't take advantage of 3's impressive data throughput speed - which on paper should be around 384 Kbit/s - to download emails to your laptop. We think that's a major oversight. 3 says the Motorola A920 will become available in September (2003) but didn't give a price. The INQ suspects this is because 3 is planning yet more changes to its tariffing structure. µ