Motorola in Barcelona: Z6w and two entry phones

Amidst recent talk of unrest and uncertainty, Motorola keeps a low profile at the WMC with an unimpressive trio of newcomers featuring a mid-range update and two entry level handsets in Barcelona. The new phones revealed are Motorola Z6w, W181 and W161.

Motorola Z6w

Motorola Z6w is a quad-band GSM/EDGE running on the MOTOMAGX, Motorola's Linux-Java OS. With the absence of HSDPA, the most notable feature of this slider is the UMA support and Wi-Fi, which by the way is the only upgrade over the ROKR Z6.

Motorola Z6w

Having UMA at your disposal means that whenever there is an accessible Wi-Fi hotspot near you, be it your home, office or university, or simply in the street, the device can connect to it and use the connection for making and accepting calls and sending and receiving data similarly to using wireless VoIP-telephony on your GSM mobile phone. The handset would be able to switch connections between the licensed cellular radio access network and the Wi-Fi network even in the middle of a call without the user ever noticing. The most important difference from the widely known VoIP technology is that UMA is after all tightly linked to the mobile radio network, which is used for routing, authentication and billing. A call initiated using the Wi-Fi interface eventually reaches the 2G core network through the UMA network and, once the signal is transferred, it becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the cellular traffic. Subscribers using UMA can take advantage of improved indoor coverage and higher data rates, when accessing the local WLAN. The technology allows the UMA-enabled devices to be used as regular VoIP handsets.

Other than that, Motorola Z6w has a 2" QVGA TFT display. As a music-oriented phone, Z6w supports Windows Media Player 11 with DRM compatibility. The Z6w carries other media must-haves like instant messaging, a 2 megapixel camera without autofocus, MP3 and MPEG-4 video player. Listening to music over stereo Bluetooth headphones is possible thanks to the Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP support. Built in storage space is 64MB, expandable via microSD cards.

The phone is expected to start shipping during 2Q 2008, the retail price is still unknown.

Motorola W181 and W161

The other two handsets are the low-end Motorola W181 and Motorola W161. They cover the basic phone features, and come in unassuming candy bar packages.

Motorola W181

Motorola W181 and W161 will be available in two dual-band versions. The key differences between units are in the display, dimensions, phonebook and SMS entries.

Motorola W161

W181 has a 65K 128 x 128 pixel CSTN display, while W161 carries a monochrome display in the same resolution.

The phonebook of W181 stores up to 500 entries, while the other handset has only 200 entries. The number of stored messages varies from 750 to 200, again in favor of W181.

In terms of design, W181 has slightly elevated keys, while the W161 offers the typical flatbed keypad.

The other features and applications that both phones integrate are CrystalTalk, speakerphone, FM radio, calculator, currency converter and calendar. The phones also support 7 African languages, as along with Hindi and English.