Motelona 158x - Moddable?

[Warrick]

always loved old school products and tonight is the night i have said enough to smart phones. gone through 8 iphones and to galaxies in the last 16months so im on the hunt for one of these beauties.

to refresh the topic can someone give a quick run down on them where they are available and what to look for? the sooner i can go back to the future the better lol

[AcousticCoupler]

I managed to pick one up on UK ebay a couple of months ago for around £40 ($65) in an auction, works perfectly and appears to be as new. There's a buy-it-now on there for £90 ($140) atm. http://www.retrobrick.com/latest.html has them for sale but they're £149 ($230) which is a ridiculous price for a shoddy Chinese knockoff. So I'd say keeping an eye on ebay is the best option.

I believe mine was the XY968 version but the previous owner took the sticker off the mouthpiece. The huge battery adds a lot of weight, but I suppose that makes it feel more authentic. I cracked it open straightaway to see (like some of the other people here) that there was no wire connecting the big aerial to the circuitboard, but seeing as there have been reports of RFI maybe that's a good thing for now. Signal seems reasonable enough without it.

Have tried to connect via USB but I can't get hold of working drivers that will let Windows 7 recognize the V180 inside (hooray for dealing with obsolete hardware), so unless you've got access to a machine that's running XP or older I think you might be stuck with the Chinese software. At least I was able to manually delete the stupidly loud switchon/shutdown music (video of how bad it really is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z70kEJj5UrY). My phone also came with the dodgy "666" porn video pre-installed for my convenience :P

Haven't tried the charger yet, but when I do I'll be using it sparingly - don't really want to fork out for a universal charger just for this thing.

[retroguy76]

Hi,

New to the boards here... I have the Motelona XY968 that needs all the usual mods. However, I am in no position to make the mods my self. Anyone in here have the time and the means to fix mine? I'll gladly pay for your services. I'm in the US.


Thanks, "D"

[B'ichela]

The voltage on the original 8000 battery is way too high, 7.5v as opposed to the 3.6v our phones take.

What about large capacity nimh? Sounds like the original charger was designed for these. I have a friend who wa ts to buy one of these phones. All these messages were enlightening to me. Yeah, I am, unfortunately, going to be doing lots of repair work. Have they improved thier build quality since?