Motorola Fire XT
Motorola Fire XT 
9,500 buzz rating 6/10
The Fire XT is a full touchscreen mobile phone with a decently sized 3.5-inch capacitive screen. The rounded corners and tapering edges give the phone a sleek and classy look. The fit and finish of the phone is good and the plastics used are of good quality. The power and volume rocker buttons sit plush with the chrome trim on the sides and this causes a slight problem since you can’t easily feel them with your finger without looking. The front facing camera and capacitive shortcut buttons take their usual spot on the phone as well.
Curvy design gives it a good look
The screen resolution is just 320x480 which is low for this size. Along with the proximity sensor, we also have a ambient light sensor placed next to the earpiece. The memory is expandable up to 32GB and the XT supports hot-swap. We noticed the screen tends to get greasy very easily so you’ll have to keep wiping it constantly. Overall, at 114g, the Fire XT is reasonably light weight and looks presentable as well. The only niggle we have here is with the physical buttons on the device which could have been raised a little more for a better feel.
Features
Interface
The Fire XT is powered by an 800MHz Qualcomm processor and runs Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread. Despite this, the interface feels quite laggy and unresponsive. This is very evident when swiping through the home screens. The phone features MotoSwitch UI, which is a lightly skinned version of the stock interface. One handy feature is the ability to group apps according to various genres. Creating new groups is fairly simple and straight forward and you can organise your apps a lot better. Motorola haven’t modified the notification bar so you don’t get any toggle switches here. You can choose between the standard Android keyboard or Motorola’s own version, which is quite bad so we recommend sticking with the default. Swype is also present if you choose to use it. Inputting text cannot be done quickly as there’s a significant lag between each key press which makes it a painful experience.
Group apps based on genre or your usage needs
The biggest issue we faced was with the quality of the screen itself which was horrible. Not only are the colours muted and pale, it doesn’t seem like it supports a wide colour gamut and there’s very noticeable banding in wallpapers. Ghosting is also a big problem which is evident when you try to move icons around. Scrolling through the settings causes the text to streak and distort quite badly, in fact the light blue text turns navy blue when you scroll up or down. Messing up the screen on a touchscreen phone is like messing up the steering in a car, it just ruins the whole experience.
Media
Motorola has borrowed the music player from TuneWiki and customised the look of it. Thanks to this, the audio quality is a lot better with decent earphones and the player will automatically download the lyrics of the song. You can even create play-lists and see what songs are trending around the globe. The format support is still limited to MP3s, WAV and AAC+ though.
Integrating TuneWiki was a brilliant idea
The video player is a plain old stock Android player and supports MP4, H.263, H.264 and WMV. SD videos play just fine but due to the poor screen quality, you won’t be really enjoying anything. Even in animated flicks, the picture is quite dull and the colours are muted. Finally, we also have FM Radio support.
Technical Specification of Motorola Fire XT
| Display | |
|---|---|
| Type: | TFT |
| Size: | 3.5 Inches |
| Resolution: | HVGA, 320 x 480 Pixels |
| Colors: | 262 K |
| Camera | |
| Primary Camera: | Yes, 5 Megapixel |
| Secondary Camera: | Yes, 0.3 Megapixel |
| Video Recording: | Yes, 24 fps |
| Zoom: | Digital Zoom |
| Flash: | LED |
| Other Camera Features: | Auto Focus |
| Dimensions | |
| Size: | 61.9 x 114 x 11.9 mm |
| Weight: | 84.3 g |
| Battery | |
| Type: | Li-Ion, 1540 mAh |
| Talktime: | 7 hrs (2G), 5 hrs (3G) |
| Standby Time: | 504 hrs (2G), 480 hrs (3G) |
| Memory and Storage | |
| Internal: | 150 MB |
| Included Memory Card: | 2 GB |
| Expandable Memory Slot: | microSD, upto 32 GB |
| Memory: | 512 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM |
| Internet & Connectivity | |
| Internet Features: | |
| GPRS: | Yes, Class 12, 48 kbps |
| Edge: | Yes, Class 12 |
| 3G: | Yes, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA; 384 Kbps HSUPA |
| WAP: | Yes, v2 |
| Wifi: | Yes, 802.11 b/g/n |
| Tethering: | Wi-fi Hotspot |
| USB connectivity: | Yes, micro USB, v2 |
| Bluetooth: | Yes, v2.1, Supported Profiles (EDR) |
| GPS Support: | Yes, A-GPS with Google Maps |
| Audio Jack: | 3.5 mm |
| Multimedia | |
| Music Player: | Yes, Supports MP3, WAV, MIDI, eAAC+ |
| Video Player: | Yes, Supports MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 |
| FM: | Yes |
| Ringtone: | MP3 |
| Platform | |
| Operating Freq: | GSM - 900, 1800; UMTS - 2100 |
| Java: | Yes |
| OS: | Android v2.3 (Gingerbread) |
| Processor: | 800 MHz Qualcomm Scorpion |
| Graphics: | Adreno 200 |
| General Features | |
| Form: | Bar |
| SIM: | Single SIM, GSM |
| Touch Screen: | Yes, Capacitive |
| Call Features: | Conference Call, Speed Dialing, Loudspeaker, Call Timer, Call Divert |
| Business Features: | Document Viewer, Pushmail |
| Other Features | |
| Call Memory: | Yes |
| SMS Memory: | Yes |
| Sensors: | Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Accelerometer |
| Additional Features: | Flight Mode, Predictive Text Input, Caller Groups, Picture ID, Ring ID, Calendar, Alarms, Calculator, Voice Input |
| Important Apps: | Instant Messaging, Facebook, Twitter, Google Latitude |
Comments
Post a Comment