Motorola Rival A455

A bit theatrical with the model name, the Rival seems to be a distant successor of the Motorola Rcker. This phone came with the premise to cater to the younger generation, often referred as the ‘tactile’ generation, with the metallic, fun colored design.

But it has so many issues that it failed completely, a disastrous public relations nightmare. For instance, you can’t really hold it close to your ear because the extremely sensitive touch screen will trigger all sorts of unwanted functions, causing havoc and chaos during calls, which is hilarious, if you didn’t buy one ever.

Motorola Rival A455 features

The features that make up for it, however, are the sound quality, the capacity for downloading and storing music and the long battery life (21 hours!). The phone can be used as an mp3 player with ease, keeping it in your pocket and going for long runs.

The screen is LCD with a 176×220 resolution and a 65,000 flashy color display. There’s a round directional control surrounded by the talk and end keys. Don’t know how this exactly improves user interface, it’s actually difficult to get used to.

The QWERTY slider-type keyboard will help you to understand the interface further as you can easily type text, IM messages or emails in the dark as well as send pictures and videos, with one key access to emoticons and symbols. There’s plenty of space to store around 500 messages.

As mentioned, the sound quality is great and the phone supports MP3, WMA and the always necessary AAC/AAC+ format, which you can store in an additional 8GB SD card. It comes with a 3.5 mm jack that works fine.

Motorola Rival A455 issues

The 2 megapixel camera is not anything otherworldly. It can take pictures in 1600×1200, 1280×960, 640×480 and 320×240 resolution, but what is the point if they’re often blurry? A significant feature is the 7X zoom, the self-timer and special effects filters. Videos can be taken in a 176×144 resolution.

If there is a downfall to this phone it would be the speed dial; you have to open up to the QWERTY key-board to use it, it will not work from the touch keypad for dialing numbers (at least I haven’t figured it out if you can).
The Bluetooth has a profile system in which you can select how to use it, either as headset, handsfree, enabled dial-up networking, phonebook access, basic printing and imaging, vCard and vCalendar & File Transfer.

As you see, this cellphone is a mixed bag. I haven’t even mentioned that the fabric makes it easy to slip and fall anywhere. I don’t know what Motorola was thinking here but at least it serves them well for future revisions and designs.