Motorola FLIP W220

Motorola’s latest RAZR offspring needs no introduction—the FLIP W220 has been all over the city, in all shops, over all hoardings and almost everyone’s already got one. But are they happy? Let’s find out.

The first RAZR V3 was initially launched at Rs. 30,000 and then gradually tumbled down to around Rs. 12,000 when the V3i came in. Now, the V3i itself costs around Rs. 9,000—and everyone including the panwallah in my area has one—but Motorola still felt like it needed to bring down the price and make it even more widespread than it already is. Thus was born the MOTOFLIP W220.

At Rs. 3,990, it’s extremely difficult to find faults in this phone. But the nitpick that I am, I’ll go ahead and try anyway.

Basics and Ergonomics
The phone is a simple dual-band GSM/GPRS phone. There is no EDGE support and—I shouldn’t even mention this—no 3G. WAP 2.0/XHTML is supported for browsing.

The phone actually looks as good as it does in the pictures. The entire casing is made of plastic, unlike the metallic RAZR, but it doesn’t feel cheap or tacky at all. I had my own doubts about the shiny, black part on the top, but it’s survived my somewhat rough usage (I dropped it once) and it isn’t too prone to smudging. The fall did chip a tiny bit off the silver part, but that’s expected from any phone.

The phone is 1.67cm thick, which is a bit thicker than the RAZR’s 1.39cm, but the phone’s height and width are lesser, making it seem more compact and more KRZR-like. The clamshell hinge is not flush with the rest of the body, so while the RAZR opens up to be almost entirely flat, the W220 has a wee bit of a difference in the levels, but this doesn’t come in the way. The phone is lighter than the RAZR and I’m very pleased with the way it feels.

Display
The display on the inside is a 128x128, 65k color TFT. The screen is physically larger than most other phones with displays of the same resolution, and that makes the W220 display appear a little low-res and blocky, but the screen has been utilized well by tweaking the size of the text and icons—however, it may be a little difficult for the elderly to read. Sunlight can have an adverse effect on the visibility of the display.

The W220 has no external display, but instead, has three LED 'status icons' that light up bright whenever you have an SMS, a missed call or if the battery is low. The incoming call is denoted by green, if the caller is from your phone book, or orange, if it’s an unknown number. This is a very simple method of providing information and I really appreciate the effort. In fact, I find this more convenient, as I can now tell—from even ten feet away—whether the caller is someone I know or not.