I feel like laughing at the fact that people are still talking about the Motorola MPx200 as a viable option for people choosing a smart phone at the moment. The only mobile phone carrier that I can find offering the phone in the USA at the moment is AT&T Wireless. The MPx200 is an 1800/1900 mHz GSM handset, which is incompatible with the GSM 850 service that AT&T Wireless is concentrating on rolling out in many of its major markets.
Into the teeth of this comes an article from John Morris of ZDNet that focuses on the MPx200. It’s called Why Microsoft’s Smart Phone Ain’t So Smart. My question on this article, is why publish it at all right now, given the fact that the MPx200 is effectively obsolete on the only network that it’s currently available on in the U.S.? I mean, who cares that it has “voice dialing, three-way calling, and a great speaker phone” if its performance is going to get steadily worse from here on out?
Morris only hints at the life of pain that new buyers of MPx200 will endure if they go ahead with a purchase now. Let me lay it on the line for you: if you buy this phone and stay on AT&T Wireless, you will end up hating yourself for the decision. In places like the New York City area, Los Angeles, Seattle, the Bay Area, or Las Vegas, you’ll end up trading in this phone sooner or later. If you want a GSM phone of any kind to run on AT&T Wireless, please wait until they start selling 850 GSM-compatible phones in mass quantities.
As far as I’m concerned, AT&T Wireless has turned the MPx200 from a commercially-released phone back into a reference platform. Hopefully, people who are stuck using an MPx200 are savvy enough to know that Motorola’s design skills and manufacturing quality are not the problem here. But, why this phone is still in stores in the major U.S. cellular markets is a big question in my mind.