The Motorola A1000 is a 3G

3G

3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...

 smartphone

Smartphone

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

 from Motorola

Motorola

Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...

 using the UIQ

UIQ

UIQ by UIQ Technology is a software platform based upon Symbian OS. Essentially this is a graphical user interface layer that provides additional components to the core OS, to enable the development of feature-rich mobile phones that are open to expanded capabilities through third-party...

 platform based upon Symbian OS. One of the most notable features is its built-in A-GPS

Assisted GPS

Assisted GPS, generally abbreviated as A-GPS or aGPS, is a system which can, under certain conditions, improve the startup performance, or time-to-first-fix of a GPS satellite-based positioning system. It is used extensively with GPS-capable cellular phones as its development was accelerated by...

. The A1000 is the successor to the A925

Motorola A925

Motorola A925 is a 3G smartphone from Motorola using Symbian OS. Among the most notable features is its built-in A-GPS. The A925 was preceded by the featurewise essentially identical Motorola A920, and was succeeded by the Motorola A1000....

 and A920.

A variant device, named the M1000, appeared in 2005 for the Japanese market, distributed by NTT DoCoMo. The M1000 has a similar spec to the A1000 but supports Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...

 instead of GPS/A-GPS.

A1000 History

The A1000 was released in Q4 2004, but was available only on contract through 3 Network, in just a few countries (mostly Australia, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Singapore[SingTel], Sweden and the UK). Although it was presented in two colour schemes, the 3 network offered it only in the dull matte dark-grey / light gray combination. Also, the phone firmware was locked and branded for 3 Network and presented various limitations, like the impossibility of changing internet connectivity accounts.

Fortunately, the phone raised interest of enthusiasts due to its advanced capabilities, and a few dedicated forums appeared. A generic, unbranded firmware became available in these forums, but presented multiple problems and was considered by many as being in fact a leaked beta version.
Also, various software was developed to overcome limitations of branded firmware (Application Picker http://www.nop.at/nopex/, GPRS account editor http://www.nop.at/dge/, installation of software on external memory http://www.nop.at/nopex/).

When, after a whole year, the unlocked and unbranded A1000 appeared, its new firmware version made most of these applications obsolete, as it included their facilities. The phone was also available in its glossy black finish.

As it was among the very first phones to use the TransFlash (now microSD) memory format as external storage, it was limited to the small capacity of these cards. As this card is perfectly compatible to Secure Digital

Secure Digital

Secure Digital is a non-volatile memory card format developed by the SD Card Association for use in portable devices. The SD technology is used by more than 400 brands across dozens of product categories and more than 8,000 models, and is considered the de-facto industry standard.Secure Digital...

, it didn't take long for a Transflash-to-SD adapter to appear http://www.planetmobile.it/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=33 (free registration needed). In this way, a Transflash card of any available capacity could be used in the SD Card adapter, but the phone only supports Transflash I cards.

Presently, the latest available modded firmwares combine the stability of the first branded firmware with the facilities and speed of the generic one, and also include some pre-installed and ready-to-install third-party freeware applications.

A1000 Features

• Java
  • Java ME
    Java Platform, Micro Edition
    Java Platform, Micro Edition, or Java ME, is a Java platform designed for embedded systems . Target devices range from industrial controls to mobile phones and set-top boxes...
    
     MIDP
    Mobile Information Device Profile
    Mobile Information Device Profile is a specification published for the use of Java on embedded devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. MIDP is part of the Java Platform, Micro Edition framework and sits on top of Connected Limited Device Configuration , a set of lower level programming...
    
     2.0, CLDC
    Connected Limited Device Configuration
    The Connected Limited Device Configuration is a specification of a framework for Java ME applications describing the basic set of libraries and virtual-machine features that must be present in an implementation...
    
     1.0
  • PersonalJava
    PersonalJava
    PersonalJava was a Java edition for mobile and embedded systems based on Java 1.1.8 . It has been superseded by the CDC's Personal Profile which is not yet widely deployed.-External links:*...
    
    
• Opera 7.5 Internet browser (735 for English version, 744 for Chinese version and 817J for Japanese version)
• Cameras:
  • Outer: CMOS camera
    • Effective resolution: 1.31 megapixels
    • Recorded resolution: 1.22 megapixels
  • Inner: CMOS camera
    • Effective resolution: 310,000 pixels
    • Recorded resolution: 300,000 pixels
• Built in Picsel Viewer to open Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, PDF, etc. files
• Works with multiple e-mail accounts
• Bluetooth compatible for hands-free telephone calls (using wireless headset) and wireless connection to PCs
• Preinstalled with personal information management (PIM) software
• Free software development kit (only beta version available)

Major bugs

• Autoformat - Early firmware releases (e.g. 51.14.15) have a bug which cause the formatting of phone filesystem as soon as free memory falls under around 4-5 MB; user is not asked for confirmation, so any data in the phone memory is lost in this case. Further firmware releases fixed the problem (maybe starting from 51.92
• Outbox bug - If an SMS sending fails, SMS get stuck in the outbox and no more attempts are made by the System to send it again. No fixes are available for this bug.
• Memory card size limitation - Although a1000 is compatible with microsd, which should allow size up to 2 GB, no users report to be able to go over 1 GB limit
• AT commands incompatibility - most of standard mandatory AT commands are actually not supported, implemented or working (SMS access, phonebook access,...)

Hardware known issues

• Charge connector - charge connector doesn't always connect to the phone, so it doesn't charge properly.

Known limitations

• Memory card lock - Early releases of firmware do not allow installing applications to memory card, and stops memory cards from going over 1GB, but "NOPEX" 3rd party application fixes this issue.
• Missing autoconnection - Unlike other UIQ phones, a1000 is not able to auto-connect to PC when USB cable is connected: user intervention is required to tap the screen to activate connection; this makes it impossible to recover data from phone in case of screen damages/crash.

External links

• Motorola A1000 - Full phone specifications