Motorola revives the spinning phone
Remember the Motorola V70 – the cute little phone with the flip round rotating cover? Well in what looks like an inspired move Motorola has revived the spinning case concept in a top-end camera phone the V80.
It features an oval-shaped design is finished in black and sports a large-ish 220×176 TFT LCD screen with 65k colours on its front.
Spin open the front to 270 degrees and its VGA camera automatically fires up enabling for the first time, users to take images in landscape as well as portrait mode. With the screen spun round fully the screen reverts to its standard interfaces.
Unlike the V70, which was shorn of all but the most basic facilities, Motorola has stacked the V80 with a large selection of features.
These include
Java
Polyphonic ringtones
Wap browser
Pop3 e-mail
Pic colour ID
Video playback
MotoMixer -ringtone creator
At first glance the handset’s combination of innovative styling and features looks like a real winner – maybe even this year’s equivalent of the Sony Ericsson T610. It will certainly appeal to female phone buyers. Its only real drawback is that its four menu buttons are a tad fiddly.
It goes on sale in March retailing for around £150 with a contract.
Motorola also debuted the V220, which is essentially a cut-down version of its V600/V525 clamshell camera phones and a model without a camera, the V180.
Both are designed for the budget-end of the handset market.
