The Motofone F3 was designed to appeal to the low-end market and developing countries, and was thus less functional, but also less expensive than most phones.

Motorola made it appealing to developing markets and people with reading and visual difficulties by using only simple symbols and using speech synthesis to identify tasks in the menu.

Motorola used the term ClearVision to describe the new display, which was manufactured using E Ink's electrophoretic imaging film.

[1] The electronic paper main display allowed for the phone's thinness (no glass), longer battery life, and outdoor viewability (paper-like reflectivity).

The only thing resembling a (flat) menu was accessed by pressing left/right on the central button: It allowed writing an SMS, reading a saved SMS, call history, choosing the ringtone (out of seven melodies), setting date and time, and setting the alarm clock.

The F3 Motofone was designed for usage in developing countries and sported a display which coped well with both bright sunlight and very dim light.

Voice prompts also explained the current function in a choice of languages, depending on region; a unit bought in Germany offered German, English and Italian.

It was also fairly solid and rugged and could survive not only rough handling but also very dusty and/or damp conditions well, as the case had only two openings (a charger/headset jack and the battery cover) as well as a totally sealed keyboard.

There are even videos on the Internet showing the F3 being thrown from a 3-story building into tarmac, and being run over by a car on a gravel surface.

The F3 had two internal antennas to maximize reception even when partially shielded by a hand or other obstacles, and a loud maximum volume for ringtones and loudspeaker to facilitate usage in crowded city environments or public transport.

According to its very low price (starting from 20 to €30 /$) the F3/F3c was mainly sold with prepaid (pay-as-you-go) SIM cards and it seems that the sellers often (but not always) implemented a SIM-lock.

In the UK, this phone was being sold by Home Bargains (as of 29/04/2008) and £-Stretcher (as of 07/06/2008) with a Virgin Mobile SIM (T-Mobile network) for £7.99 (££6.99 -Stretcher).

Although this phone was being manufactured largely in India, it had (in mid-2008) become completely unavailable in major metropolitan areas such as Chennai or Madras.