Motorola Ming A1200 hands on

I christen thee the “MotoMing!” Sure took a while. I have a unit on review straight from China. The Ming (whose boring name is the A1200) is a Linux based PDA phone that hails from the old Motorola smartphone designs. The new Ming looks absolutely fantastic. If we were to grade the Ming’s aesthetics, it would have to rate a 5/5, 100%, 10/10 .. well you get the picture. If you want to see the complete specs of the A1200, then click here.


Seriously, the Ming’s form factor is to die for. Take a look at the sleek semi-see through protective flip case that isn’t just an aesthetic boon. The Ming’s flip actually shows off the antenna which leads to the earpiece hardware. See that? Wow.

The Ming is subject to fingerprints and other icky stuff because of its material, which is some sort of hard, smoked transparent plastic. Take a look at the picture below to see what I mean. These particles were highlighted after an hour’s commute in my pocket.

Text messaging is probably the worst with this phone if you have small fingers. The stylus itself is rather small so you may want to buy a larger one. I’ve managed with my little Asian fingers though. SMS input can be done in a variety of formats:

- English Keyboard (QWERTY)
- Numeric Pad
- Handwriting Recognition
- Pinyin Board
- Zhuyin Board

The highlight of the Ming is its 2MP camera that can also record video. It has a very innovative user interface for taking shots. Tap the screen and panels that display camera options such as effects and brightness spring out from the side in semi-transparency. Tap it again and they disappear with a cool animation.

Here are some samples of pictures taken at hi-res. The shots are actually a lot better in quality compared to what other smartphone / PDA cameras can take.

Pictures are at 1600×1200 size (resized here) and take up around 500kb of space.