Digital Trends

Motorola Timeport 270c

March 7th, 2003 | by Ian Bell

Introduction

This is the first Motorola cell phone based on the new wireless Bluetooth technology. With a variety of features including speakerphone, voice recognition, and voice activation, the Timeport™ 270c pretty much allows you to have the conveniences of a pager, cell phone, and limited laptop features all in one little device. Entering the market at around $350.00, you will pay a hefty price for these conveniences.

I have to admit that I was a little skeptical about the Timeport™ 270c when I first heard about its promises. It is not very often that a manufacturer touts such enhanced features and is actually able to deliver them. The Timeport™ 270c is, in actuality, a lot smaller than its picture indicates. At 4.7 ounces with a stock battery, the 270c has an average weight when compared to other cell phones, although newer cell phones entering the market are considerably smaller and lighter. As companions to the Timeport™ 270c cell phone, we also received the FM radio headset and the Bluetooth Connectivity Kit.

The Timeport™ 270c should be available September 2001 and works on the CDMA 800/1900 and analog 800 MHz networks. Our service was provided by Verizon and we know Alltel will be providing service as well.

Bluetooth Technology in a cell phone?

For those who are not familiar with what Bluetooth technology is and why this phone is revolutionary, here is a short lesson. Take a look around your computer, you have your keyboard connected to the computer, as well as a printer, mouse, monitor and so on. What (literally) joins all of these electronics together are cables. Cables have become the bane of many offices and homes. Most of us have experienced the “joys” of trying to figure out what cable goes where, and getting tangled up in the details. Bluetooth essentially aims to fix this problem; it is a cable-replacement technology.

Created initially by Ericsson, before being adopted by a plethora of other companies, Bluetooth is a data-transferal standard for small, cheap radio chips to be plugged into electronics such as computers, printers, mobile phones, etc. Bluetooth is designed to replace cables by taking the information normally carried by the cable and, instead, transmitting it at a special frequency from a transmitting Bluetooth chip to a receiving Bluetooth chip, which will then give the information received to the appropriate device. While Bluetooth technology is not taking off as fast as earlier predicted, there are more electronics entering the market with the new technology. We would predict that towards the middle of 2002 is when you will really see the technology take off.

In order to use the Timeport™ 270c's Bluetooth capabilities, the Bluetooth Connectivity Kit must be purchased and a laptop computer is the only type of computer system to accept this kit. We found the price of $299 for the connectivity kit to be quite expensive. Its lack of options for desktop users was another strike against the 270c. In the information we received from Motorola, they suggest that you “insert the PCMCIA Card into your Windows PC or laptop”, however we found there was no adapter card included in the Bluetooth Connectivity Kit that enables the PCMCIA Bluetooth card to fit into a standard desktop computer. The Bluetooth Connectivity Kit comes with a PCMCIA card, a cell phone battery with the Bluetooth chips inside, TrueSync Plus for synchronization, TrueSync Desktop for Personal Information Management, and Bluetooth Neighborhood for managing your Bluetooth devices.

With the Bluetooth Connectivity Kit, we were able to wirelessly sync our e-mail and phone book addresses with our laptop relatively easy — even through the wall separating the two rooms. Bluetooth technology has a range of up to 30 feet and you can even surf the internet with the 270c using your home pc's internet connection. How many phones do you know of harness that ability?