Amid all the excitement at 3GSM Cannes, France, Motorola announced the Motorola A1010, an update to their A1000 smartphone.
The A1010 is a quad-band GSM phone running on the Symbian 7.0 operating system with the UIQ v2.1 user interface. Although it won't be out until later this year, the A1010 looks like it will be a full featured addition to the growing smartphone scene.

The A1010 is built around a 280X320 color display. The phone's features seemed designed to take full advantage of the screen's generous real estate. Point-to-point video conferencing is included, as is an HTML browser with both small screen and full screen rendering. There are two built-in cameras: a VGA quality camera for video conferencing and a 2.0 megapixel sub-camera for still pictures.

Surprisingly, the A1010 does not seem to have any special text entry tricks up its sleeve. Photos of the A1010 do not show a numeric or a hidden QWERTY keyboard, so users will have to make use of Symbian's support for handwriting recognition and on screen text entry. There are dedicated phone keys on the front, and an input device that appears to be designed for one handed operation.

The A1010 is designed to work with high-speed WCDMA 3G networks, and its capable of using voice and data services simultaneously, a feature that will probably become more common as more 3G compatible smartphones are released. Bluetooth is also included.

There appears to be a robust lineup of messaging and communications support, including instant messaging, SMS, MMS, IMAP4 and POP email. For corporate users, the A1010 supports VPN and push email services.

The A1010 includes Picsel Document Viewer, an application which lets users work with everyday office applications including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, zip files, and PDFs. A full 48MB of memory is standard, and the phone includes a slot for removable TransFlash memory.

Motorola expects the A1010 to reach the market in the fourth quarter of 2005, by which time it's likely to face a few new smartphone competitors. Pricing and geographic availability was not announced.

Source: MobileBurn

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