Motorola finally lets it go: the MPx is no more
posted Apr 18th 2005 3:47PM
We've seen some harsh to handle stillborn products (especially in the MPx line), but we're going to admit we were a bit saddened to hear Motorola confirmed that the MPx is going to be no more. Well, not entirely no more, but that limited-release basis it saw in Southeast Asia is going to be status quo for the issue-riddled device, and we can definitely not expect to see it Stateside except through import shops who like ringing 'em up for a G or more. Of course, we'll be willing to let this roll of their shoulders if the RAZRberry we've been waiting for so patiently can quickly slide into the qwerty-keyboard equipped smartphone slot we'd been saving for the MPx, but it looks like this makes Motorola 2 for 2 on Windows Mobile devices right now (the MPx200 and MPx220 vs. the MPx and MPx100). But who's keeping track? Oh, us, right.
So basically Motorola produced a big pile of crap.
Well again it shows that marketing people are nearly as worse as car dealers :)
Yeah, $1000 for a 32MB pocket PC? For $609 you can get a 64MB iMate JAM, and for less than $200 you can upgrade it to 128MB. The JAM is smaller in all three dimensions and weighs less too.
Who the F@$k did motorola think was stupid enough to buy this late to market, underfeatured, overpriced, HUGE piece of s$@t? Wow, it's got a really really cool hinge (true!), but I just can't justify an extra several hundred dollars for a worse, bigger device just because it has a cool hinge.
Sorry motorola, get with the times or die out already, will you?
What a g****mn shame. The form factor on this phone was awesome.
Fix the issues, up the memory, put a faster CPU on it and I'd go for it.
Why is it so difficult for the phone companies to produce a good wifi smartphone with a kbd???
Sure it sucks, but doesn't that make them 2 for 4 or in other words Motorola is batting .500? Unless it's like 2 vs. 2 on making it to market or not?
Well, if it was as stable as the (four) v600's I've had in the last year, I'm GLAD they're yanking it.
what a shame. could have been an awesome product had it been priced correctly in the $400-500 dollar range. I for one was eagerly anticipating the release of this phone.
Many phones dont make it to world wide release, and perhaps the limited sales in SEA helped them determine the market for the rest of the world. Look at the sales of other keyboarded MS phones here - do they sell? Not as much as you would think - moto defined a market with their RAZR so i think they are going to fly with that - Enter RAZRberry.
By they time MPx entered into the US at any level, it would have been a past-tense product for sure.
I'm a Sidekick user, but I'd get a RAZRberry in a heartbeat if they don't ask people to bend over for the pricing.
I've had the pleasure to use this baby and it really sucked! The Ipaq h6315 also has a similair processor but the mpx took about 5 seconds to only open pocket word or excel. Any other ppc can just zip through all of that. And the hinge is cool but it is just so complicated to use. You have to struggle a lot to switch sides. It is a real pain in the ass.
I like my MPx220 with my 512mb mini-sd card.
Screw qwerty and wifi. It (wifi)eats batteries.
Complicated... you are kidding. Press one button for landscape and none for portrait. I'm happy with my MPx.
What the heck is wrong with Motorola? It is not like they are building a car! Figure it out, and sell the darn thing.
My company had a couple of these in for software development. Moto just plain got over-ambitious with the number of custom features they thought they could build into the SP2003 integration layer, and it bit them hard. Pretty typical failed IT project, from that point of view.
Besides, it *was* underpowered, especially when you add the overhead of the telephony-management subsystem running as a max-priority process all the time. Most SP2003 devices exhibit occasional schizo behaviour where the telephony half of the brain would get a bit out of sync with the PDA half, but the MPx was the worst I've seen. (Engineering samples, mind you, but it was still awful.)
I do hope Moto learns from this and produces a solid replacement. Other solid QWERTY-keyboard devices are coming to market this year, and Moto is going to look pretty silly if they don't have something to show.
Trust me. If you'd gotten a chance to hold this thing in your hand at Digital Life and play with it, you wouldn't lament its loss at all. Slooowww. And it felt cheap. It was a pre-build, but it caused me to lose all interest in it.
They still have the phone for sale here in Malaysia, no one seems to be buying them as it costs almost the same as the Nokia 9500. No one is going to bother with that vapourware of a product.
Easy everyone, these reports are as yet unconfirmed. Motorola knows they can sell tons of MPx units if they market it properly.
I expect they will, but until THEY (Motorola) actually indicate otherwise, it's just conjecture. I imagine they want to move more Razors before diluting the upscale phone market with another +/- $500 entry.
Both the MPx200 and MPx220 models were going for twice their eventual street price at initial release, so it stands to reason that the MPx would do the same (if it ever ships).