Thursday, April 12, 2012

Motorola GLEAM+ last feature phone before Moto turn into an all smartphone company

The Motorola GLEAM+ is just possibly Motorola's last feature phone before Moto turn into an all-smartphone company. It is based on last year's GLEAM which was a direct descendant of the original RAZR, and the GLEAM actually won an award from What Mobile as the best non-touchscreen phone of 2011.. although there probably wasn't a huge amount of competition.

At the moment the GLEAM+ is only confirmed as being available in Germany for around €100 SIM-free from March 2012 onwards, but we hope to see it in other European countries too. Yes.. the specification is a bit basic, but it has some nice features and the GLEAM+ is a very elegant device to look at.

Clamshell phones are very rare these days, but the advantage is that you can open them up to have a relatively large keypad and screen in a small space. In this case, the GLEAM+ sports an impressively large 2.8" 400 x 240 pixel non-touchscreen display on the inside. On the outside is a semi concealed matrix display that provides notifications and can show the time, plus a basic 2 megapixel camera with some simple video capture capabilities.

The GLEAM+ supports microSD cards of up to 16GB, comes with an FM radio and MP3 player, a web browser, email client, Bluetooth and USB connectivity.

This is only a GSM / GPRS phone with no support for high speed data, so web browsing is likely to be very slow. Still, the large screen should work well with mobile sites, they will just take a while to load. The GLEAM+ is probably more use as a music phone, with a 3.5mm audio socket complementing the music player and radio.

Inside is a 750 mAh battery capable of giving almost 5 hours talktime and 17 days standby time.. and with a phone like this, those are realistic figures. It's a fairly light handset at 105 grams and the GLEAM+ measures 107 x 53 x 13.5mm. The GLEAM+ will be available in white or silver colour schemes.

If you are looking for a basic but fun handset, then the Motorola GLEAM+ looks like a good device to consider. Who knows.. elegant clamshell phones like this are really uncommon these days, and your GLEAM+ might just get a few admiring glances from owners of nearly identical black slabby smartphones.

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