The Motorola A1000 is a 3Gsmartphone from Motorola using the UIQ platform based upon Symbian OS. One of the most notable features is its built-in A-GPS. The A1000 is the successor to the A925 and A920. A variant device, named the M1000, appeared 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.
A1000 history
The A1000 was released in Q4 2004, but was available only on contract through 3, in just a few countries. Although it was presented in two colour schemes, the 3 network offered it only in the dull matte dark-grey / light gray combination. Also, the phone firmware was locked and branded for 3 and presented various limitations, like the impossibility of changing internet connectivity accounts. The phone raised interest of enthusiasts due to its advanced capabilities, and a few dedicated forums appeared. A generic, unbranded firmware became available in these forums, but presented multiple problems and was considered by many as being in fact a leaked beta version. Also, various software was developed to overcome limitations of branded firmware. 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 facilities. The phone was also available in its glossy black finish. As it was among the very first phones to use the TransFlash memory format as external storage, it was limited to the small capacity of these cards. As this card is perfectly compatible to Secure Digital, it didn't take long for a Transflash-to-SD adapter to appear . In this way, a Transflash card of any available capacity could be used in the SD Card adapter, but the phone only supports Transflash I cards. Presently, the latest available modded firmware combines the stability of the first branded firmware with the facilities and speed of the generic one, and also include some pre-installed and ready-to-install third-party freeware applications.
Autoformat - Early firmware releases have a bug which cause the formatting of phone filesystem as soon as free memory falls under around 4-5 MB; user is not asked for confirmation, so any data in the phone memory is lost in this case. Further firmware releases fixed the problem
Hardware known issues
Charge connector - charge connector does not always connect to the phone, so it does not charge properly.
Known limitations
Memory card lock - Early releases of firmware do not allow installing applications to memory card, and stops memory cards from going over 1 GB, but "NOPEX" 3rd party application fixes this issue.
Missing autoconnection - Unlike other UIQ phones, a1000 is not able to auto-connect to PC when USB cable is connected: user intervention is required to tap the screen to activate connection; this makes it impossible to recover data from phone in case of screen damages/crash.
