3GSM: The E8 and Z10 - a Second Breath for Motorola?

Motorola hasn’t been doing too well lately. The manufacturer is even thinking of abandoning its mobile division. Another significant sign: among the major mobile phone industry companies, it’s the only one that didn’t hold a press conference for the Mobile World Congress, relying only on its booth.

Quiet launches

The absence of press conference doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of new products. Far from giving up without a fight, the firm from Schaumburg presented, among other things, the ROKR E8 and MOTO Z10. The first one is a music phone limited by an EDGE connectivity. It includes a 2” QVGA (240 x 320) screen and 2 GB of upgradable memory by a Micro SD slot. It also integrates a 2 Megapixel and 8x digital zoom camera. We noticed the presence of a phone jack and an option to disable the numerical pad when the music mode is on.

A Z10 instead of a Z12

For some time now, Motorola launched a huge teasing operation around one its future product: the Z12. It was reasonable to think Motorola would show it during the MWC, but that didn’t happen. Instead, we have the Z10, a slider, nicely designed.

The Z10 uses a 3.2 Megapixel camera and a UMTS or HSDPA connection. Running Symbian, it’s been optimized to run social websites like Facebook, Myspace, YouTube or Flickr. With this model, Motorola aims at the multimedia market. To help it reach its goal, Motorola added a video editing application allowing the user to create its own movies, add music or subtitles.

Rebirth?

The question one may ask is whether those phones will be enough to give Motorola a second breath. In a time when competitors focus on touchscreen or GPS, it doesn’t look too good.