The Sad Death of The Motorola MPx

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=2347' target='_blank'>http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=2347</a><br /><br /></div><i>"While I was pretty happy to announce - back on 3GSM Congress - the European availability of the MPx, last week we have heard of the official end of Motorola's MPx Pocket PC Phone Edition (which started its career in Cannes also, but one year ago). Also last Friday I got my MPx updated - officially to the latest ROM and it's sad to see it will never make it to the market anymore since Motorola worked hard over the past weeks to get it updated and workable as good as possible and as much as the limited 32 MB allows it."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/westfall-20050503-mpx.gif" /> <br /><br />Arne at PPCW... err, I mean the::unwired (it's going to take some time to get used to the new name!) has posted a few comments on the death of the Motorola MPx. I share his sentiments, as I dearly loved the promos for this machine, and when I was able to grab one in March of this year, I quickly did. I used it for about two months straight (Actually, I just switched off of it last week for an upcoming business trip), and have a few usability comments about this soon-to-be-forgotten device<!>:<br /><br />• The usability of this device as a phone is very high in my opinion. I had no problem making or receiving calls<br />• However, the memory is way to small to do anything complex on this device. Quick checks of email, logging into servers via PocketTTY, and surfing some web pages were about all I could realistically do<br />• The styling of the device was nice and distinctive, and I will really beat people up to get one of the rumors about an Mpx with Razr styling is true, providing more memory is given!<br />• All in all, this device was great for a simple PPC user (Or a complex one who is too busy to play all the time!)<br /><br />Now I've got a quandary as well: What to do with my Mpx. I may go back to it periodically throughout the summer, but I"m not sure since I'll be having a lot more time for "playing". What are your suggestions? And please don't say "Burn it" :)

[Chris Spera]

What are your suggestions? And please don't say "Burn it" :)

Sell it if you can. You're an Uber Geek. Its not going to be enough device for you; and it was likely too expensive to just let lay in a drawer and collect dust...

Too bad it was such a stinker. I wanted one just as badly as every one else...

[EnsignRam]

You can give it to me! :wink:

[KTamas]

You can give it to me! :wink:
Or me ;) just kidding, Chris is right, you should sell it.

[MitchellO]

Memory was the failing of that device. With 64Mb memory, it would have been in the market, but nope. Have any pics of it?

[Jerry Raia]

A merciful death I would say. A better death would have been for it to come to market and enrage millions more people. Moto deserves it.

[Kowalski]

a sad story for motorola! they have worked on this device for months but in the end the device has been canceled.
i am just curious, how many engineers and managers are fired :roll:

[MitchellO]

The one that said "23mb of RAM is more than enough! My palm has only 2mb, what an upgrade!!" :lol:

[TheZodiac]

That phone was just simply too big and too clumsy for it to be used in a successful manner. There are and were better options out there now. Im sure Moto (as Nokia with the 7700/7710) has a backup plan, and will reveal it soon.

Perhaps they will make one with RAZR styling, which would be a good idea, since it DOES look more pro and stylish at this point.

Although the RAZRberry will suposedly have MS mobile, its really not the same without a KB. So, I suspect Moto has been working on a new KB'd device.

[griph]

Last week we have heard of the official end of Motorola's MPx Pocket PC Phone Edition

That would be the totally predictable end of the MPx.... :wink:
I am not at all surprised - and predicted months ago that it was a product dead in the water! Hopefully Moto will learn from these short sighted mistakes, sack their product development Director and ensure their next product is designed to have more realistic expectations in the VERY competitive Global market of PDA's and SMart Phones.

[kozak]

Contact PPCTechs, see if they can upgrade it for you.

[DaleReeck]

The one that said "23mb of RAM is more than enough! My palm has only 2mb, what an upgrade!!" :lol:

If it only had that much memory :) It actually had only 11MB of available RAM on startup due to the requirements of the OS and phone.

Also, I don't think PPCTechs can upgrade it. These OMAP processors have the RAM integrated into the processor or something similar to that.

[whydidnt]

The funny thing (or not depending on perspective) is the PPC community has been telling Motorola for a year that the device HAD to have a minimum 64 MB RAM. For some insane reason they just kept moving forward, deaf to their own market. :bangin:

If it is/was not possible to add RAM to the design it should have been killed long ago. They've just been throwing good money after bad for the last 9 months trying to bring this to market, only in the end to find out what they were told a year ago is a show stopper!

[bobmay]

I still want one! I will trade you a 2 month old TREO 650 w/camera(Sprint CDMA) for it. I use Sprint's Business Connection personal, and I couldn't justify the MPX's $900 to $1200 price, so I settled for a Palm smartphone to replace my Sanyo 5300 cell, and HP 4355. Started with the TREO 300 I bought used for $65, then took the $600 plunge to the 650. Now I am being issued a Blackberry at work(data only), so I won't need a Sprint BC capable phone. I will have to carry 2 devices no matter what, and I need something that is capable of running Citrix. I probably should get the 6500 right?

[MitchellO]

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/pda.htm

Look at this! The howstuffworks site for PDAs has a pic of the MPx on it!

[MitchellO]

The one that said "23mb of RAM is more than enough! My palm has only 2mb, what an upgrade!!" :lol:

If it only had that much memory :) It actually had only 11MB of available RAM on startup due to the requirements of the OS and phone.

Also, I don't think PPCTechs can upgrade it. These OMAP processors have the RAM integrated into the processor or something similar to that.

Yeah, i forgot about how what ever RAM there is is HALVED for system and storage memory. And I do remember reading that the MPx RAM couldn't be upgraded.

[sofene]

With all the memory limitations, a lot of people are gobbling it up on ebay at over 1G. Amazing!