By Jon Gales -- Despite claims by Motorola that this Christmas will be the season to remember, the company's Motorola A630 phone is no where to be seen. Rumors of manufactoring snags have circulated the internet for several months.
Despite its typical looking candybar form factor, the Motorola A630 splits open to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. The neat trick has lead to acclaim from text message addicts and power users alike. The clever device was announced back in June 2004 at an exclusive party in New York City and has since been spotted in music videos.
In September Amazon.com posted pages for both the T-Mobile and Cingular versions of the device. The links are now dead, and a search on Amazon.com for the A630 returns empty. It is not typical for Amazon to put up product pages for over a month and remove them, all without shipping the product.
The Amazon page even had pricing, along with a rebate (that has now expired). Pre-orders of the phone were cancelled by Amazon.
Online retailer Expansys lists the A630 as a preorder item.
T-Mobile USA used an image featuring the Motorola A630 on its homepage in August. It has since removed the image, but a copy remains on MobileTracker.
In the past few days Motorola has touted its holiday line up and especially the RAZR V3. The company has not mentioned the A630 in months... While it was originally slated for a Q3 launch, over 10 phones are expected out of the remainder of Q4--whether the A630 is one of them is up to wide speculation.
