I'm still fascinated by Motorola's INSTANTMOTO concept of selling cell phones and accessories through vending machines. It's a funhouse-mirror version of what Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung are all starting to do in selling high-end phones directly to consumers. But where Nokia is using expensive retail spaces to communicate their cool European brand, Motorola is using robotic vending machines to make their products into ubiquitous impulse buys.

I got in touch with Moto today and found out that the InstantMoto machines will be selling six phones: The RAZR V3 (in various colors), the RAZR V3c, the SLVR L7, the PEBL U6, the Q smartphone, and the prepaid V190. (No word on prices or whether these are the 'generic' or carrier-locked versions.) They'll also sell a slew of accessories, which is where I think the real impulse buys will happen: the H3, H300, H500, H605, and H700 Bluetooth headsets, the HT820 Bluetooth stereo headset, the HF820 speaker phone. The product lines round out with various AC adapters, car adapters, cases and the Motorola Mobile Phone Tools PC software.

The three machines currently out there are in Terminal G of the San Francisco airport; the Lear Terminal of the Reno airport; and the basement of the Macy's on State Street in downtown Chicago. They'll soon be joined by at least twelve others. There will be one in the Macy's at the Dadeland Mall in Miami; terminals C and D of the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport; Concourse F of the Minneapolis airport; the Metreon in San Francisco; the Greenwood Park Mall in Greenwood, IN; the Crystal Mall in Waterford, CT; the Arburn Mall in Arburn, MA; the Emerald Square mall in North Attleboro, MA; the Oxford Valley mall in Langhorne, PA; and the Ross Park Mall and South Hills Village in Pittsburgh.

Yes, you'll be able to get at least somewhat in-depth technical information from the INSTANTMOTO's touch screen before buying. But notice the difference between these machines, in nondescript suburban malls, and Nokia's prestige stores in prime urban real estate, which sell Nokia's highest-end devices. INSTANTMOTO, I think, is more about those workaday moments when you suddenly realize you left the car charger at home and you're running out of battery power. I suspect they're going to sell a heck of a lot more chargers than Qs, considering impulse buyers probably won't be into the whole $50-a-month-data-plan-with-two-year-contract thing. I wonder if Motorola also plans to bring back stores like their Destination Q, which sold Motorola Qs for a few months in Chicago this summer.