Motorola Phone Uses Recycled Plastics

Motorola's A3100 smartphone runs Windows Mobile 6.1 and features a fully customizable touchscreen, while the new W233 Renew uses plastics made from recycled water bottles.

Motorola might be in the middle of a massive reorganization and looking to hop on the Google Android train…and that could explain the staid phone offerings the company has trotted out at CES this year.

The MotoSurf A3100 is debatably the most exciting of the lot, offering a 2.8-inch touchscreen, a 3.2 megapixel camera (and a second front-facing camera for video calls), a microSD slot offering up to 16 GB of storage, and a trackball for navigation. The A3100 runs Windows Mobile 6.1, offers Wi-FI and HSDPA 3G connectivity, and it’s most-touted feature is a fully-customizable home screen: that’s right, you can get rid of those boring default carrier and Windows Mobile icons. Motorola plans to introduce it in the first quarter in Asia and Latin America…although the company did not offer pricing information or say whether it intended to offer the A3100 in other markets.

Meanwhile, the Moto W233 Renew will be available in the United States—T-Mobile is slated to pick it up during the first quarter of 2009…but its most compelling feature is that W233 is Motorola’s first carbon-neutral phone, and its housing is made from plastics recycled from water bottles. But the W233 is aimed squarely at the low end of the phone market, with a 128 by 128-pixel 1.6-inch LCD display and the ability to handle 2 GB microSD cards. Motorola says the W233 is aimed at eco-conscious consumers (even the packaging is made from 100 percent recycled materials) who use their phones to place phone calls…and little else. Motorola did not release pricing information for the W233, but we don’t anticipate it’ll put a major dent in pocketbooks.