Motorola MP BriX 220

[jimfee]

Ok,

One week out of the manufacturers 12 month warranty my MPX200 Bricked up after some emergency usage of a car charger (Motorola OEM equipment). It didn't happen right away but immediately after usage, the charging routine and the resource manager failed to agree on the status of the phone and battery and eventually it seem to have allowed an overcharge or some other situation that rendered the phone absolutely inoperable.

I had avoided car charging because I thought I had seen posts describing similar situations but I cant seem to search them out. Was this issue ever addressed by Motorola or was it just accepted as one of the many reasons this phone transforms itself into a paperweight?

I had a choice of V551, SMT5600, or another MPX220 from the insurance company only to log on and see the new 2125 online for the same $199. with activation.

If the replacement is new instead of a refurb it might be going to the great autcion site in the ethernet.

I really liked this phone and suffered all it's qwerks but there is jsut too much reisk in owning it.

[Mike Temporale]

Eek! That sucks. If it's only a week out, I would call and complain. I don't know if it would do much, but I would feel better for trying. :)

[Kris Kumar]

Thanks for the heads up. I will have to tell my wifey not to charge her MPx220 in the car for too long.

Sorry to hear about your fiasco.

[jimfee]

I figured I would update this post since the Motorola forum is looking like a ghost town,

I had my dead MPX220 replaced through insurance, but left the new unit in the box. I was never charged the $50 deductible, which I chalk up to someone realizing that the phone was arguably still under the 12 month warranty, or that there was a legitimate manufacturers defect. (the diode issue on the MPX 220).

I packed up all my accessories BT GPS, Chargers, Pouches, BT headset and auctioned the whole lot on eBay. Seeing how I had originally gotten the MPX220 at the 2004 Black Friday Best Buy sale, I made back 85-90% of my sunk cost.

I briefly had an ipaq 6510 but the microphone cut out on me, and now I have a Cingular 8100 (HTC Wizard). I am still a lurker her at SPT and also over at the PPCT. I find it funny how the analyst are predicting the death of non converged devices but the guys over at PPCT only have a single forum for PPC PE.

Transitioning away from a Smartphone I though I was in for a more complete PC experience with a PPC WM5 device, but in the end I was more impressed with the capabilities of WM-SP than anything I have seen from my "more capable" PPC-PE. I guess I will just have to wait for the ORAGAMITHOUGHTS.com

or snag the wife's SMT5600 :wink:

[Jerry Raia]

EBay is the best thing for any MPx220 as you have found out. :lol:

[jimfee]

Jerry,
I know you have owned an MPX220 and an 8125, so you will probably think I am crazy for saying that I miss the MPX220. The fact that it would have catastrophic failures was unfortunate. I thought the from factor was unique, and Motorola did a good job with features like voice command. I was mad to find out that capability was not standard in windows mobile devices. You have to buy the MS application.
I accepted the idiosyncrasies of WM Smartphonne 2003 SE because there was just so much packed into a phone. I am totally unimpressed with the maturity of WM5 as a product, I think things like this tend to give MS a bad reputation and cause people to lament the lack of competitive choices. I actually had used recently, and still reference as a benchmark for user interface and intuitive OS design, a Visor Prism with a Visorphone module.
If the upcoming Q had a touchscreen, I would have no second thoughts about buying one. I have had enough good experiences with other Motorola products to weather the MPX220.

[Jerry Raia]

I agree with everything you wrote. I really liked the Mpx220 form factor which is probably why I'm so mad at Moto for messing it up! As far as the maturity of the OS I agree but, I will cut MS some slack here. Look how long it took to get Windows desktop OS to this point and still there are issues. The mobile OS that we like here is still an infant. The other phone OS's are primitive in comparison even though they seem more user friendly. Look at how many applications are already running on Windows Mobile. I have spent more money on software than for any phone I think, maybe even a couple of phones by now. Besides if it all worked great we would have nothing to talk about here. :lol: