If yes, it should be available in China

Mar 4, 2009 10:49 GMT  ·  By

Following the astonishing slump in sales and the recent financial crisis, Motorola quietly made its appearance on the mobile phone market with a new slider – Motorola ZN300. Leaked somewhere back in January, the ZN300 has yet to be officially announced by the US-based company. While this official press release is still missing, the device has already been listed on the company's website.

Perhaps the phone maker lost interest in the handset market or simply doesn't have enough money to sustain a substantial advertising campaign for its new slider. Nevertheless, it is said that ZN300 could be the first mobile phone able to support dual-mode network: GSM and TD-SCDMA.

The TD-SCDMA network is specific to China, where the 3G one is still not fully functional, and it is simply an attempt to avoid the payment of patent fees for using Western technology (UMTS). TD-SCDMA is based on spread spectrum technology, which makes it unlikely that it will be able to escape completely the payment of license fees to western patent holders.

The first carrier to use this technology is China Mobile, which received the TD-SCDMA 3G license on the 7th of January 2009. Also, there are other two important network carriers, China Unicom and China Telecom, which intend to implement 3G standards WCDMA (UMTS) and CDMA-2000.

Still, Motorola's official website doesn't confirm the fact that ZN300 could be dual-mode compatible, but hopefully we will receive some press announcement shortly. Without impressing too much through its design, Motorola ZN300 seems to be targeting people who are looking for a mid-budget camera phone. Bulky and 'uninteresting', the new slider from Motorola features a 3.1 Megapixel camera with LED flash, 8x digital zoom and video capabilities, Bluetooth 1.5, 8 MB internal memory, microSD slot card for memory expansion (up to 32GB) and 940 mAh Li-Ion battery (400 hours standby time and 435 minutes talk time).

There are also some popular social media services pre-loaded, such as Facebook, Myspace, Photobucket and YouTube, that let users publish photos, videos and blog postings, with just one click. Unfortunately, the small QVGA display (240x320 pixel resolution) doesn't quite recommend the device for heavy Web browsing or movie playback. There is no word on its price and availability yet, but the phone will most likely start selling in China.

Photo Gallery (5 Images)

Motorola ZN300 front closed
Motorola ZN300 front openMotorola ZN300 angle
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