I have been lucky enough to play around with both these phones for the past few weeks. I know many people are debating between the two phones. As you might have seen from another post I made in the For Sale forum (MPX 220 for Sale) I have chosen the c500.

The MPX220 is a very good phone. It is faster then the c500. When opening contacts for example (both have the same number of contacts and exact info) the mpx220 was about 1 sec faster. It moved around from screen to screen a bit faster also.

Even though the MPX220 has a 262k(something like that) vs the 65k for the C500, I found the C500 to be much brighter and crisper. The mpx220 has a screen size of 2" compared to 2.2" for the C500. You can tell the difference.

Camera is not good on the MPX220 (no ROM update will help it), The c500 camera is better. The flash was ok on the mpx220 but not very helpful in low light situations.( I will post pics later from both).

Battery life is 1-1.5 days tops on standby with the MPX220. This should be improved in the final ROM (my ROM is a late ROM but not the final). If you use bluetooth and web browse, expect about 1/2-1 day. I have been able to get 2-3 days with bluetooth, browsing on the c500 and 4-5 days in standby with light usage.

There is no bluetooth voice dialing through a headset on the MPX220. The C500 has this feature. You can answer and end calls with the headset but that is it.

I prefer a flip phone but the small form factor and the fact that even if I carry the c500 in my hand I don't accidentally hit buttons makes the c500 almost as good as a flip phone.

Neither phone has crashed on me. I found the RF reception to be good on both.

I have chosen the c500 for its battery life and bluetooth capabilites.
Here are some photos of both:

Attached File(s)

 

Thanks for your polite opinion.

I hope I am more happy with my 220 then you were

Bryan

I was not unhappy with the phone. There are a few areas that are important to me and the c500 performed better in my opinion in these areas.

The main areas where I found the MPX220 lacking were the lack of bluetooth dialing, battery and screen. I like the flip desing better as well as the speed of the phone.

It seems like the phone manufacturers never get it completely right. There are always 1-2 small flaws in the phone that keep it from being the perfect phone at the time. But, is probablt done on purpose so we have to buy the next bigthing to hit the stores.

Mark

Must admit, I have had many a phone over the last few years and I must say that the C500 is easily one of the best handsets that I have ever owned. Its just an all round great phone, only weak point being the joystick. But to be fair I have got quite used to it now

Must admit, I have had many a phone over the last few years and I must say that the C500 is easily one of the best handsets that I have ever owned. Its just an all round great phone, only weak point being the joystick. But to be fair I have got quite used to it now

What about getting dust under the display cover? is that a problem?

And the GAPI gaming issue? is that a problem?

I have the MPx220 too, but my screen looks much better than the C500's one!

The screen on the MPX 220 I had was ok. It was darker and of course smaller then the c500. When using IE or Thuderhawk, the extra space comes in handy. Even playing solitaire was clearer on the c500.

You can see my side to side pictures that the mpx220 almost has a yellow tint to it.

I have had the following phones in the past 3 months:
Samsung i600
SPV ae200
Nokia 7610
Motorola MPX220
c500

To me, and this comparing it to the phones I have had and used recently, this my order when it comes to screens c500, Nokia 7610, Samsungi600-SPVe200, Mpx220

I do not play games on my phone that require multiple press buttons so It does not bother me. I do not believe the Moto has this problem.

I have not had any problem with dust.

The phone is a nice little phone. It has some bugs like the c500. It all comes down to which ones you can live with and which one you can't.

Mark

The thing that surprises me most about this review is the suggestion that Motorola's improvement in battery life over the MPX200 has been so small.

2 days with heavy use? I heard the C500 does 5. Pretty major flaw (although maybe the Orange GAPI fix for the C500 will manage to slaughter the battery life at the same time!).

Thanks for the review. You're absolutely right, a lot of people (including myself) are debating which phone to get. As you've already said, it's just so sad that these companies cant EVER get it 100% right. Sadly, there's ALWAYS something missing/wrong with these phones.

As far as the camera goes, how do you know for certain that the quality cannot be improved? From what I've seen, it's truly horrendous... so I'm praying you're wrong here.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

The reason I say the camera will proably not see major improvement is beacuse I have talked with people with a ROM 1 later then mine. They have the same thing to say about it.

It seems more of hardware issue. I can understand if the camera was ok but it is bad for a 1.3mp. The images are not as clear as the c500 (640x480). Usually you will not see software improve hardware by the amount needed to get the camera up to snuff.

These phones I have now.



MPx220's screen vs. MPx200 screen. In my case the MPx220 screen is no greenish at all and looks in comparation with the C500 better.



External screen is fanastic, too. This wallpaper looks great!



My favorite (own-made) theme.

I might be missing something, but I thought the lack of voice dialling in the MPX220 was to do with a flaw in windows Mobile 2003. So can someone confirm if theC500 does have this feature or not please

Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphones (1st and 2nd editions) does not support voice dialing through blueooth.

Motorola has voice dialing program that you can sesto open applications, dial by digit and dial by name but no bluetooth voice dialing. The c500 has a program that has added the ability to voice dial through bluetooth. It does not have an application to open programs but you can download Voice Commander for example to do that.

The program that does this for the c5oo is not eve nin the programs menu and I have not been able to find out who makes it.

Mark

Sorry for being ignorant, but we have c500, MPx200, MPx220, and ?

The c500 can oprn programs through voice control (using bluetooth also). Just found out how to add vocietags to programs.

Mark

just read this... good comparison on both, thanks! Sounds like the C500 is better than I thought... I'm going to wait for the SDA from TMobile. I believe this one with a joystick will be great! I really hope they fix the gapi and multi key press though

great work and nice pics

I hope they fix GAPI/keypress too, but I wouldn't hesitate to buy a US version of the T-Mobile SDA even if they don't.

I'm so tired of manually setting up everything on unbranded phones everytime I do a hard reset. OTA programming will be soooo nice!

Thank god the new 7100t BlackBerry did crappy with RF at my house -- I was very tempted by that!