Motorola Motoming A1200

The best part about this phone is the 'Talking Phone' feature that uses Motorola’s 'ClearTalk' technology. What this essentially does is actually read out your mails or SMS and also let you know what menu option you’ve chosen. Now personally I wouldn’t want some weird voice reading out my private messages while in public, but this would come in real handy while driving, when I should ideally NOT be interacting directly with my phone. It can also come in handy for the visually impaired. Although the pronunciations of some words are a little robotic at best and I don’t have to tell you how it voices out SMS short forms. But it is good for a laugh.

Similarly the voice command function is also a bit odd. If I were to say a persons name to be dialed it would call out the name or command it recognized (most times a name other than the one I used) and ask me if that's correct. I would then have to answer with a "Yes" or "No" for it to follow though and dial the number or execute the command. A rather lengthy process. And if you have a bad throat forget about using this function altogether.

The good thing is, you don't always have to use the stylus to navigate through the menus. You could simply use your thumb or finger. Even to type messages. I don’t recommend this option to be used frequently as it just may damage the screen. But this is just so you know it’s not difficult. So if one of your hands isn’t free, texting or navigating through the menus can be easily done 'by hand'.

Now like I said, I’m not particularly fond of the whole 'remove stylus-use both hands' navigation system. But I did find that I could type messages using the screen keyboard, without the stylus. It’s not too easy, but it’s doable. Another option is the handwriting recognition tool which is actually a real pain to use since it accepts only one character at a time and also requiring you to draw the characters in a specific format. This takes too much of time. I don’t have the patience and nor would a businessman. Other options are keyboards in Pinyin and Zhuyin. Why not Hindi or Marathi?

The business card reader is a great feature to have. But the only problem is that it’s not very easy to use. The camera is switched on and needs to be set to macro mode. The card needs to be aligned with the markings on the screen and you could either click on the red dot to capture the image or if the markings turn green it’ll automatically capture the image. When it comes to names and numbers it’s quite accurate but not with email addresses. I haven’t been able to capture an email address successfully. But that’s probably because I couldn’t keep the phone steady. I’m not sure anyone can. It also needs a sufficient amount of light. But it is pretty darn useful nevertheless.

The search feature is excellent for when you’re not sure where your files are. Simply click on the type of file you’re looking for and if you want the name. Let the phone do the rest. It’ll scour the passageways of the phone and the external memory card till it finds what your looking for. Much like a search on a PC.

Other features are pretty standard as mobiles go like calendar, alarm, converter, notes, calculator, file browser, tasks etc.