Motorola XT300 “Spice”

Ah, the MotoSpice… you folks in the US can start being jealous now.

For less than $200 CAD I had it all: Android, vertical slider, physical qwerty keypad… Okay, the camera was crap and the phone was severely underpowered — and it actually ran Android 2.1, which meant no WiFi tethering. Yet despite these obvious flaws the Spice was the only phone I took out the door with me for almost six months.

The Spice was also the first Android device that I successfully rooted, necessary to enable WiFi tethering and get rid of Motorola’s er, “enhancements”.

This cheap and cheerful handset accompanied me to SXSW in March, 2011 and to PAB later that spring. A testament to its durability was that it survived both trips and being dunked into a cup of piping hot coffee — I just needed a bag of uncooked rice to dry it up.

You can read MobileSyrup’s review of the Spice here, and my own posts about it here.