New Motorola Cell Phones: W385 and W355

Motorola has announced officially that they will be releasing several new handsets in the next month. They made the announcement at this year's CTIA Wireless trade show which was late in March. The CTIA trade show is the largest wireless trade show of its kind, and Motorola is known for unveiling their new handsets there, and this year was no exception. Motorola announced 8 total handsets.

The W385 was one of the new models unveiled by Motorola. The model has a sleek, sophisticated design and was built on Motorola's Krzr platform. The model is very Krzr-like although it was built to be a much lower-end model. The major differences between the W385 and the Krzr are that the W385 doesn't have a color screen on the outside and has diminished camera resolution. The resolution of the W385 is VGA and the resolution of the Krzr is 1.3 megapixels.

The model was designed to be an entry level, but still has a fairly nice feature set including the camera/camcorder and Bluetooth. The models also sports voice-activated dialing allow the user to prerecord names of people they would like to call. They can later call these contacts by simply saying their names into the handset. It's a really nice feature for people who drive a lot.

The model has a very slim design and is one of the smallest models around. The dimensions of the W385 are an astounding 45 x 99 x 18.2 mm. The screen size of the model is 1.8". Motorola will be releasing the model with Verizon service later this month.

The W355 is another Motorola that was designed on the Krzr platform. Its dimensions are very similar to the W385. The W355 was created to be a true entry-level handset; the model doesn't even sport a screen on the outside. It does, however have indicators on the outside that will show the user when they have received voice mails and text messages. There is also an outer indicator that shows the user the state of the battery.

Those interested in purchasing the W355 should expect the model to be free with service. Motorola created the model so that they could have a more powerful presence in the entry-level market. The model is quite sleek and looks amazing, but lacks the expensive features that drive up Motorola's cost.

The model's main features are its FM radio, speakerphone, and text messaging. The model can't do picture and video messaging, however. As you can see, the model doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but it was created for people that don't want to pay for them.

Motorola has definitely shown that they are committed to taking a bigger share of the cell phone market. They have spent a lot this last year to develop some new handsets, and seem to be on the right track. In the past, their successful handsets have almost all been high-end. Now they have announced a series of low-end models that look just as good as the high-end, trendy ones. Watch for Motorola to gain market share on Nokia this year.