Almost two weeks after leaking details about its new line of Ming PDA phones, Motorola made it official with a formal launch. Shipping now in China, the line includes a Linux-based Ming A1600 model offering GPS, handwriting recognition, and a 3.2-megapixel camera with business card reader.

(Click for larger view of Ming A1600)

The new Ming models include the low-end, candybar format A810, the dual-mode (GSM/CDMA) A1800, and the Linux-based A1600. As a Linux-based device, the A1600 is heir to the popular Ming A1200, which remains a popular phone in China, according to Motorola. The largest U.S. mobile phone vendor claims to have sold more than eight million Motorola pen-based PDA handsets in China, including more than three million A1200s.

The A1600 is a quad-band GSM/GPRS phone (850/900/1800/1900MHz) that supports EDGE class 10/12 and GPRS class 10. The 2.4-inch display offers 240 x 320 resolution, with 262K colors. It includes handwriting optical character recognition (OCR), an especially valuable feature for pictographic languages like Chinese. OCR also powers a business card reader. The 3.2-megapixel camera includes an 8x digital zoom mode. Other features include support for up to 4GB of storage via a microSD slot, as well as GPS and Bluetooth capability. There is no WiFi or 3G support, however. For more details, see our earlier coverage, here.

Stated Ray Yam, VP and GM at Motorola Mobile Devices, China, “Designed specifically to reflect the Chinese preference for writing characters by hand, our pen-based PDA series has met with incredible success in China.”

Availability

The Ming PDA A1600 is shipping now in China at an undisclosed price, says Motorola. More information on the A1600 may be found here.

For a complete history of Motorola's five-plus history with Linux phones, be sure to catch our special report on Motorola Linux phones.

 
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