Motorola MOTOFONE F3

Motorola has been making phones in a reverse order of sorts lately: they had their uber-expensive, fashion-conscious RAZR V3 (Rs. 30,000 at one point in time), followed by the mid-level SLVR series, and most recently, the cheap, budget-conscious FLIP W220. But their latest phone—the MOTOFONE F3–takes ‘cheap’ to a new low: Rs. 1,649.

The MOTOFONE F3 is based on the SCPL platform. SCPL is a new platform by Motorola that will pave the way for devices a lot thinner and sleeker providing better quality audio and network reception, and also extremely low power consumption. The devices will also offer options for a special user interface for different regions and a low price. The SCPL devices will also run a (heavily) trimmed version of Linux, instead of the proprietory P2K OS found in all Motorola phones (except the ones that already run Linux). If you want to make an association, an SCPL (‘scalpel’) is a more refined version of a RAZR (‘razor’), and that’s exactly what this line of phones is trying to convey.

India is the first target region for the ultra-low cost MOTOFONE F3. The phone is being launched by BSNL and Airtel at the moment. The F3 isn’t meant for the metros where all of us take features like MP3 playback, cameras and internet access for granted. It is meant for rural areas where the main requirements are a prolonged battery life, high durability, better network performance, and of course, accessibility. The F3 addresses all these issues very well.

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This is a really slim phone—its just 9mm thin, which is the thinnest from Motorola, though not as thin as the Samsung Ultra Edition 6.9 (which has a 2-megapixel camera and MP3 playback support). But for its price, the F3 is the slimmest yet. It has a flat keypad with raised lines demarcating the rows. I felt that those lines came in the way when using smaller keys like the OK/Menu key and the dedicated phone book key, but not for the rest of the keys. The fact that the keys are flat and not cut outs should prevent the dust from entering the phone. This is a pleasantly attractive phone to look at, and equally pleasant to hold.

The Build quality of the phone is nothing outstanding, though it doesn’t feel cheap from any angle. The battery cover did creak a little on firm gripping, but we think it’ll do just fine. We didn’t have the heart to drive a bullock-cart over the phone and see if it still worked fine.

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First, we’ll take a look at the display. The new, ClearVision display used in the F3 not an LCD screen. It is ’electronic paper’ developed by US-based E Ink. that doesn’t need power to constantly display an image on the screen—it only needs a little charge when the text (or whatever) needs to be changed. The display stays on even when the battery is pulled out! Hence, the battery life is automatically prolonged as conventional LCD displays are one of the most power hungry component of the modern mobile phone. Also, another added benefit of this technology is that it’s easily readable in harsh sunlight as well, since it’s quite basically just paper. You can read more about the technology here. We tried it out in different lighting areas and noticed that the readability is very impressive in all areas, though the center column of the phone gets a little dim because it has two columns of low-power LEDs on either sides of the phone’s front. These LEDs also illuminate the keys in the side columns well, with the center column being dimmer.

On the other hand, the display isn’t any standard 128x160 or even 128x128 pixel resolution that most low-end phones have these days. It’s a two-line, digital clock-style display with a few icons around it. This is partly an exercise in cutting costs, and partly aimed at making the display more accessible to illiterate users who would prefer pictures to text. The pictures part works, and the larger display of numbers is also easier to read, but I think it’s really inconvenient to read text in that digital clock-style display. Accessibility should make it easier for people to read the text, not to learn to decrypt seven-segment. A lot of the target users may already have seen or used phones with monochrome displays that show sharper, more readable text.

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The F3 also has voice prompts for all the actions in the phone. The main menu has six simple options, each with a voice that tells you what it is and/or what you need to do. The phone supports multiple languages and up to three per phone. The F3 that we received had Hindi, Punjabi and English. Other regional phones will include languages such as Tamil and Bengali. We found the voice prompts to be clear and consise, like “Read your messages”, but we think that the users (those who need voice prompts, speficially) are probably going to get confused at the second step which involves reading/writing in just six blocky characters. One thing I noticed was that all the voice prompts and even the ringtones are set in an ascending mode, so the they all start off in a low volume and increase gradually. This is okay for ringtones, but the first menu item (“Send a message”) is always in a low volume the first time you highlight it. Another argument is the language of the display itself. If people need to be told what to do in their local language, don’t you think they’d need to take classes in English if they have to read/write messages on the F3?

The six menu options are as follows:

1. Send a message
2. Read your messages
3. Call history
4. Change ringtone
5. Set Alarm
6. Change time

The phone has no iTap or T9, so you’re forced to use the multi-tap method to type your messages. Pardon me if I’m wrong, but I think T9 would be of use when you’re trying to make a phone that’s more accessible. Reading messages is also a bit painful because only one line is used to display the text, while the other one stays blank. Eh? Call history probably makes the best use of the available display: the entire number wraps up in the two lines, with the right arrow taking you to the next screen that shows you the date and time of the call. Simple and effective. The ringtones have no names, just numbers from one to seven. The tone preview also takes a little while to start. Alarm setting is simple – just enter time and press the OK/Menu key. The last icon, that looks like a settings icon, is to change the date and time. There’s no option to retrieve time from the ISP, which would have been a good feature for rural areas.

Overall, I think the UI makes fair use of the limited resources, but the same can’t be said about the display. Also, I’m not sure that Linux was really necessary in this phone. It works for the MING or the ROKR , but I think the FONE would have been better off with a cut-down, native UI. Not that it affects performance, but perhaps it would take lower power to run a proprietary native UI than a customized version of Linux.
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Network performance of the F3 is aided by two separate antennas incorporated in the phone. The idea behind two antennas is to ensure that at least one of them is free of obstruction, for eg. your hand covering it. The way people tend to hold the phone, an internal antenna almost always gets covered. Having an external antenna doesn’t fit into the sleekness of the series, so having dual antennas is a good approach. Two antennas cost more than one, but seeing the final price of the product, I don’t see that as a problem. We noticed that the network indicator was 100% at almost all the times, except in our sound proof room where no mobile phone has ever received any signal! The phone is a dual-band handset, by the way.

The other main feature of the MOTOFONE F3 is its extended battery life. The F3 is expected to offer up to 8 hours of talk time or 12 days of stand-by time. Now, I don’t really use the phone much – probably not even half an hour worth of talking per day, but the phone didn’t seem to work for more than 5 days. If I don’t use the camera or MP3 player in my Samsung E880, I get at least 4 days, so I honestly don’t see the big deal out here. I’m going to give it another go and let you know about the actual talk time that this thing can pull off.

In the end, I have mixed feelings about the SCPL-based MOTOFONE F3. I like the way it looks, the display technology, the audio quality, network performance and of course, the price of the phone. However, I’m not sure about the way the display has been utilised and the battery performance doesn’t seem to be as impressive as it should be – considering all the cutting edge, power-efficient E-Ink technology that they’ve used.

Rs. 1,649 is a great price for a phone this slim, but it’s not something that hasn’t been achieved before. Motorola’s own C118 ultra low-end phone costs Rs. 1,500, has iTap and a 96x64-pixel LCD display. The C118 doesn’t speak to you and it’s not very slim, but it does tout 11 hours of talk time. The SCPL platform should make way for better phones in the higher segments for urban areas (replacing the RAZR), but as of now, the MOTOFONE F3 isn’t enough of a phone.

Having said that, I’d still go out and buy the phone just for the heck of it!