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Motorola MOTOSMART Preview

The Good

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The Bad

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Motorola are an active manufacturer in markets such as the US, featuring a successful line of devices under the US-only ‘Droid’ brand. Elsewhere in the world however, in markets such as the UK, their presence is far less prominent, that was at least until recently.

Motorola have brought two new handsets to the UK market in recent months, one for the higher-end and one for the lower, the latter being the Motorola MOTOSMART.

The Motorola MOTOLUXE arrived in February aiming to provide some affordable quality to the company’s existing UK portfolio, but now the MOTOSMART takes its place as the company’s new affordable Android smartphone at around £100.

Motorola motosmart

It’s not hard to see why the MOTOSMART is the MOTOLUXE’s successor. Aesthetic styling is similar although the newcomer doesn’t feature the backplate grille pattern or the notification light found on the LUXE amid its soft-touch plastic body. Our original hands-on time with the MOTOSMART revealed that despite its price, it felt very well made.

The conservative nature of the MOTOSMART, reflected by its low retail price means that internal hardware won’t turn heads, but is wholly usable. The 3.5-inch HVGA display sits above four capacitive keys, confirming the presence of Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread, although Motorola say the MOTOSMART will make the jump to Ice Cream Sandwich at some point.

There’s also the company’s MotoSwitch overlay which features on their lower end Android devices, it prioritises content based on frequency, including apps and contacts, making them easily accessible from the phone’s homescreens.

Performance comes courtesy of an 800MHz single-core processor along with 512MB of RAM, but just 165MB of internal storage, meaning that the expandable microSD slot is likely to see immediate use, once the phone is out of the box. The final notable component is the 3-megapixel camera on the back which despite lacking the LED flash of the MOTOLUXE is most likely better for it.

As was mentioned earlier, the handset retails for around £100 SIM free and is available for free on contracts as low as £7.50 a month.

Specification

OSAndroid

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