Motorola unveils new SCPL phone, switches OS to Linux and Java
At a financial analysts’ meeting late on Tuesday Motorola’s head of mobile devices Ron Garriques unveiled their new SCPL phone which according to him will redefine even basic phone performance. Now that’s nice but more noteworthy is the fact that Motorola will abandon their old OS on their feature phones in favor of a Linux and Java based solution. My personal experience with a Motorola phone was all but enjoyable. I don’t recall the exact model but it was the black tri-band business phone. Coming from the Nokia world with its excellent menu structure and navigation it was pure torture trying to get around the menu of this Motorola phone. Even something as simple as writing and sending an SMS message required going through several menus. And don’t expect to be able to save a number someone sent you in an SMS message because that was not possible. So I can only hope that Motorola’s switch to Linux and Java will result in a complete overhaul of their menu structure and navigation. I mean, how difficult can it be to get some Nokia phones in the lab to see why everybody seems to like the way they work. On a positive note, I think Motorola deserves considerable bling points for making such a bold switch and designing such a cool phone. If Motorola’s new Linux based phones can sync with the popular mail applications from the Linux world then I will definitely put the RAZR or SCLP on my shortlist. Nokia totally dropped the ball with the 6230 because you could not use bluetooth to sync it to Evolution or any other mail application on a Linux box. As a result I lost the 6230 and bought a Sony Ericsson K750i which is a very nice phone that does work with Linux. Customers, easy come, easy go. I see an opportunity for Motorola…