Earlier this year, when Nokia, Samsung and other phone makers were busy launching handsets, we heard little more than a squeak from Motorola. The US giant sat out the early skirmishes in the camera-phone market, and we wondered if it would ever catch up. Now that it has finally delivered its first imaging phone, we breathe a sigh of relief while keeping our fingers firmly crossed: The E365 demonstrates that Motorola can recover--but only if it really wants to.

Break From The Past
The E365 is a phone quite unlike the ones that have defined Motorola in the past. You won't find slick, swiveling flips or thin, sexy frames here. Instead, this handset comes with a somewhat blocky outline and a 100g weight, perhaps a sign of Motorola's new focus on quality features at mass market prices.

Last year, the company revamped its old clunky user interface, making way for a more intuitive experience. The E365 continues in much the same vein, harnessing an icon-based and shortcut-laden software system. Improvements have also been made to the messaging interface, where Motorola's predictive text program additionally offers word completion capabilities. So if you type "ele", you get to choose from words such as "electric" and "elements". However, overall navigation is still pretty slow, and the SMS engine will be struggling to keep up if you're a fast texter.

Impressive Imaging
As mediocre as it looks initially, the E365 quickly won us over with its large 128x160-pixel screen, which supports up to 65,000 colors. This beautiful active-matrix display is ideal for showcasing picturesque wallpapers.

Just as importantly, the display, in viewfinder mode, is one of the best we've seen. Images appear sharp onscreen and the display’s refresh rate is fast enough to handle quick movements of the camera.

In general, the E365's onboard digicam is quite nicely implemented. A button on the left of the device activates the camera instantly, while a second press snaps a picture. Photographs of up to 640 x 480-pixel resolution are supported, and you'll be able to store up to 32 of these in the phone’s memory. When viewed on the desktop, these pictures offered good color reproduction, but seemed out of focus with subjects farther than 1m away.

As a bonus, there's a tiny mirror beside the E365's camera lens, which helps to shoot self-portraits. This mirror actually slides over the lens, protecting it from scratches. It will be polite for users to keep this cover closed when not in use.

Connectivity Woes
Nokia irked us by letting us transfer photos from the 7250 only through its PC Suite software. The Motorola goes without infrared altogether, a major oversight for any imaging handset. Friends will want to share photographs or wallpapers from phone to phone without the hassle of cables or the steep cost of MMS. Infrared and Bluetooth are thus the best solutions, and the E365 lacks either.

This is especially salient here because the E365 contains a very small number of wallpapers, another mistake considering its strong display quality. At least Motorola is including a PC data cable with the launch package. Mobile content can then be downloaded from www.mymobilesoft.com.

Other Features
The E365's polyphonic ringing tones are very loud, and the phone includes no less than 40 melodies and sound effects. The songs here are generally upbeat, with several jazz, pop and disco beats.

There are five games bundled in this mobile, including yet another version of bowling. Of special note is a card game called "Big 2 Garden", which should be more familiar to local readers as "Chor Dai Di". We've seen phones that ship with less popular games like Solitaire, but the E365 is an example of how localization is the way to go.

Surprisingly for a Motorola handset, the E365 misses out on triple band, so you won't be using this handset in North America.

Reception And Battery Life
The voice quality of the E365 is good, with average reception when it comes to signal strength. During testing, there were rare occasions when the phone abruptly rejected my SIM card.

The display takes a heavy toll on battery life, and the 740mAh Lithium-ion cell provided less than three days of normal usage.

Conclusion
The E365 is expected to go on sale by the end of August, at S$528 with a two-year contract, or S$648 without a line. This is a decent price for a 65,000-color TFT camera-phone, but the E365 will be up against stiff competition from the likes of the Sony Ericsson T610. Despite a few blemishes, the E365 amply shows that Motorola can be a force to reckon with, so long as it doesn't pull another disappearing act.