Tracfone Motorola EX124G3.2 Touchscreen Display w. Gravity Sensor3 Megapixel Camera, Music Player, Mobile Web and EmailThe Tracfone Motorola EX124G Touch Screen phone is their best handset yet. It comes with a large 3.2 inch display, a 3.0 megapixel camera, a media player that plays music and videos, and mobile web access plus the ability to check multiple email accounts. It is slightly larger than the LG 800g, their other new touchscreen phone, but, in some ways, more powerful.
It’s still a prepaid phone so your monthly costs can be as low as $15 a month on the pay as you go plan if you don’t use it much. Of course, if you’re considering it, you probably will want to use it quite a bit. In that case you can use it with one of Net10's monthly plans. So it’s quite exciting to review this phone, so let’s get started! Touchscreen DisplayEven though the Motorola EX124g display at 3.2 inches is the largest of the prepaid phones offered by Tracfone or Net10, I should mention that the phone itself is actually smaller in length and width than the LG 900g. The display itself is nice and bright and comes with a nice default wallpaper.There are three default “widgets” on the home screen, the airtime widget which when pressed will tell you how many minutes you have, a music player widget and an FM radio widget (more on these later). After a few seconds the display displays a screensaver image (a wine glass on my unit) and then the screen turns off. You press the power button on the side to turn the screen back on, and then you have to unlock the display. Unlocking the Motorola EX124G DisplayI admit that when I first saw the locked display on the Tracfone Motorola EX124G, I was stumped and didn’t know how to unlock it. After the embarrassing incident with not knowing how to answer my wife’s LG 800g phone, I was a little put out to be stumped by a simple operation on yet another phone.At first I pressed the lock symbol, then the open circle symbol – nothing. I even resorted to turning the phone completely off and then back once in order to use it, before it finally hit me why the green arrows were there! To unlock the phone you have to Slide the lock over to the right! The quick auto-lock feature is a little annoying, but it’s probably there to save battery life and to allow you to talk on the phone without accidentally activating some widget. You can turn this Auto Keypad lock off in the security settings. Get a Screen ProtectorI’m usually pretty casual about getting screen protectors for my personal phone, but with a touchscreen phone it’s recommended since you’re going to be putting your fingers on it a lot. The only reason not too would be if you always use the included stylus instead of your fingers.Gravity SensorThe gravity sensor (accelerometer) on this phone helps automatically orient the display when you are composing text messages or viewing photos. This is pretty convenient.The phone is not tied to the sensor in many of the functions however. For example, the display does not adjust when you are entering contact information. The buttons on the touchscreen are pretty closely packed together, and it would be nice if the screen tilted horizontally for any text input function. In this case, you might need to use the stylus. OK, let’s get back to seeing what the phone can do. 3 Megapixel Camera takes great PhotosThe three megapixel camera takes great photos with good color and contrast. Not only can you compensate for the light level, but you make the adjustments in real EV units which in nice. You can set the resolution of the photos at 3 MP, 2 MP, 1 MP or VGA quality. The VGA quality resolution might be something you’d do if you were just taking photos to use as part of their picture in in your address book.At 3 megapixels, you’re getting close to being able to create a decent (small) print from your photos. Of course it’s still a small lens, so you do need pretty good lighting to get a really clear photo. Record QCIF-quality Video in MP4 FormatThe Tracfone Motorola EX124g also takes video. The resolution is still only QCIF quality (176 x 144 pixels), but the good news is that the videos are in MP4 format. This means you can easily play them on your computer (using Quicktime) or upload them to YouTube.When you play them on the phone itself, there’s a slight glitch. A pop-up window comes up that says, “incompatible media format”, but once you close the pop-up and press the play arrow again, it plays without any problems. Media Player – Music, Videos and FM RadioOne of the nicest things about these new prepaid phones like the Tracfone Motorola EX124g is the presence of a music player that lets you hear your favorite mp3’s. You store your music to a microSD memory card you insert into the phone.You can load your music in several ways: by cable, via Bluetooth and directly onto the card from your PC. I prefer the direct method. I stick the microSD card into an SD card adapter and stick that into the SD card slot on my laptop. Then I just the folders in my music directory to the music folder on the memory card. Once you stick the card back in the phone, it recognizes the mp3 files and you can play them. Creating your PlaylistsThe only thing is that you have to create your own playlists song-by-song. So far I don’t see a way of automatically assigning an entire albums songs in the right order to a playlist of the same name. Luckily it’s pretty quick to create playlists. Once you create a playlist, you just add the songs to it by touching the “check” symbols next to the files.Music WidgetOnce you start the media player you can get out of it and the music will continue to play. The current track will be displayed in a small widget on the home screen. You can use the widget to pause or stop the music, skip ahead or back to other tracks. You can use the volume buttons to adjust the volume. The music continues to play even after the screen-saver comes on and the screen turns off.The only sticky point is that once the screen turns off on the Tracfone Motorola EX124g, you can’t make any adjustments until you turn on the screen and unlock the phone. In particular you can’t adjust the volume or pause the music while the phone is locked and the screen is off. This can be annoying. Actually, you’re not confined to just playing your own stuff, because there’s also an FM radio on this phone. FM Radio – Reception TipYou can use the FM radio on the Tracfone Motorola EX124G to listen to your favorite stations. I did have one issue – the reception was worse than on the LG 900g. In fact, for a moment, I actually thought the metal piece that extended from the phone was an antenna and tried to see if extending it improved reception until, whoops, I realized it was a stylus.Reception Hack – Wrap the phone with earphone wire.Luckily I found a quick hack that really helps improve the reception. Once you plug in your earphones to use the radio, you can improve your reception by wrapping the earphone wires around the phone a couple of times. It looks a little ridiculous, but it works!Okay, so you’ve listened to some music and heard the radio, so now it’s time to surf the web. You're in luck because there is . . . Good Mobile Web AccessThe mobile web access on the Tracfone Motorola EX124g is pretty good. Although it doesn’t advertise full HTML access, I’ve been able to view most of the sites I’ve wanted to so far. There have been a couple of complicated sites that didn’t fully load with the error message that there was a “Javascript timeout”.But Still No YouTube?Update: There is kind of a way to watch Youtube videos on the EX124g.In the settings there are indications that it should be able to view videos, but you won’t be able to see YouTube videos as it says “unsupported” format when you click on the play link on the YouTube site, which otherwise loads fine, including showing the video thumbnails. How to Save Airtime while using the WebYou can touch the “world” browser icon on the home screen on the Tracfone Motorola EX124g to connect to the home page. However, you can save airtime by first going to the menu and then clicking the web browser icon.In that case, you are presented with the option to go to the homepage, a URL or a bookmark. The phone doesn’t connect to the web until you’ve either entered a URL or selected a bookmark, so you save a minute or two this way over first starting the browser and connecting immediately to the homepage. Messaging:Text, Picture and EmailText and Picture MessagesFrom your Tracfone Motorola EX124G, you can send text and picture messages to cell phones and email addresses. When composing a message, if you tilt the phone to a horizontal orientation, the gravity sensor on the phone will also tilt the display. This spreads out the “keys” making it easier to compose without using the stylus.Real Email Access to Multiple AccountsYou finally get real email access with the Tracfone Motorola EX124g. You can set up multiple accounts and access them via either the IMAP (recommended) or POP protocols. Note, Gmail and Yahoo allow this kind of access so you don't have to access their email via a web browser. One advantage to accessing it this way is that once you download the email, it’s in your inbox and you don’t have to go back out to the web to read it. On the downside, if you have a ton of email messages in your account, it could use up a lot of your airtime to download them all the first time.You can set the number of messages you want to download at one time to your Tracfone Motorola EX124g. This retrieval limit is set to 100 by default. My only problem with it is that it started with the oldest messages first, so I was getting emails from 2008! This will only happen the first time, I suppose. I don't know yet if there is a way to set it to download the most recent messages first. If you’re really planning to check your email a lot from your phone, you should consider getting the Net10 version of this phone to make use of either their 750-minute or unlimited 30-day plans. Java Games and AppsYes, you can run Java games and apps on your Tracfone Motorola EX124g. I’ve left this feature for last simply because there are no games or apps pre-installed on the phone. Still you can buy these from Tracfone or Net10 or download them from the web. You can even download them to your PC and transfer them via Bluetooth to the phone.Get One?All-in-all the Tracfone Motorola EX124GYou can also get the new Motorola EX124G at NET10 Wireless Got One?Already got one? Great, tell us about it!Your Motorola EX124g Reviews and QuestionsShare your opinions and questions about this phone! What Other Visitors Have SaidClick below to see contributions from other visitors to this page...
Downloading the Kaywa QR reader ?
EX124g Battery Life and good for first-time user?
Is the EX124g an "android" phone or just a look-alike?
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Cost of checking email on EX124G?
Email on the EX124g and other questions
Memory Card for EX124G
EX124g FM radio reception
EX124g - love it, but no ID on incoming text messages
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EX124g stylus small for big hands
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Hey what happened to the Bolt Browser?
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The Motorola EX124G sucks.
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Mororola EX124G Continuous Music Playback
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Horrible EX124g
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Can I get Pandora on my (Straight Talk) EX124g? No.
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Adjust EX124g call volume
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Ex124g nearly there but not quite
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EX124g speaker phone
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Apps and memory card for EX124g
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Does YouTube app from GetJar work on EX124g? No.
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motorola ex124g - no threaded text messaging
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EX124g overall ok but i would rather have another phone
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Getting to the still camera from camcorder mode on the EX124g
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Can you remove the browser shortcut on the EX124g?
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Is there a monthly fee on EX124g Tracfone?
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How to transfer photos from EX124g phone memory to memory card
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EX124g Screen locked up?
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Google Sky on Motorola EX124g or LG 800g?
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While is better motorola ex124g or the lg 800g?
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No music found on Motorola EX124g
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Create EX124g Playlist
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Would like to see a plan for Tracfone like Net10 or Straight Talk
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How to download apps to Motorola EX124g?
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Problems using mp3s and with EX124g display shutting off.
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Bluetooth Car Kits plus EX124g Interactive Tutorial
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Unlocking the EX124g display
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How to load music or pics on EX124g
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