Motorola A1000

The Motorola A1000 is a 3G Symbian smartphone announced in early 2004. Some of the phone's most notable features are its built-in A-GPS, and the ability to read Office documents on the go. It was also among the first phones to use the TransFlash (microSD) memory format as external storage.

The A1000 was released in Q4 2004, but was available only on contract through the 3 network in just a few countries, including Australia, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Singapore (SingTel), Sweden and the UK. Although two colour schemes were available for the device at the time of release, 3 only offered it in the matte dark & light grey combination. Also, the phone was locked and its firmware contained 3 branding.

The phone raised interest of enthusiasts due to its advanced capabilities, and a few dedicated internet forums appeared. An unbranded firmware became available in these forums, but presented multiple problems and many considered it a leaked beta version. Also, software was developed to overcome limitations of the branded firmware, including an 'application picker', a 'GPRS account editor' , and the ability to install software on external storage.

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 functions. This version of the A1000 was available in a glossy black finish.

Issues

 * Early firmware releases (e.g. 51.14.15) have a bug which cause the formatting of the phone filesystem as soon as free memory falls under around 4-5 MB; the 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).
 * If sending an SMS fails, the SMS gets stuck in the outbox and no more attempts are made by the system to send it again. No fixes are available for this bug.
 * Although the A1000 is compatible with microSD, which should allow sizes up to 2 GB, no users reported to be able to go over the 1 GB limit. Early firmware versions do not allow installing applications to the memory card.
 * Most of the standard mandatory AT commands are actually not supported, implemented or working (SMS access, phonebook access, etc.)
 * The charging connector does not always connect to the phone, so it does not charge properly.

Variants

 * M1000: Variant of the A1000 released in 2005 for the Japanese market, distributed by NTT DoCoMo. The M1000 has a similar spec to the A1000 but supports Wi-Fi instead of GPS/A-GPS.

Reviews

 * 1) https://www.cnet.com/reviews/motorola-a1000-review/
 * 2) https://mobile-review.com/review/motorola-a1000.shtml
 * 3) https://mobile-review.com/review/motorola-a1000-2.shtml
 * 4) https://mobile-review.com/review/motorola-a1000-camera.shtml

Related phones
Predecessors:


 * Motorola A920 (2003 Q1)
 * Motorola A925 (2003 Q4)

Successors:


 * Motorola A1010 (2005, not released)
 * Motorola FOMA M1000 (2005, Q3)

Apps

 * Opera 7.5 browser
 * Picsel Viewer (document viewer)

Games
Source:
 * Shane Warne Cricket

Batteries

 * Motorola SNN5697A (1600 mAh Li-ion)