Design - Mediocre
The Motorola Q9h Global looks unsurprisingly like the Q music 9m on Verizon Wireless, just not as cool. Instead of the black phone with a red band, the Q9h has a more business-like look with a brushed metal band, unfortunately emphasizing the width and bulk of the device. The Moto Q9h is a big Q, larger than the previous model, larger than the Samsung BlackJack and larger than the BlackBerry Curve, its closest competitors. Motorola and AT&T have also included an extended life battery in addition to the slim battery, and this adds even more weight and thickness around back.
For the bulk, you get the best keyboard in its class and impressive battery life (with the extra pack), though not as great as Moto claims. The Q9h has a few more shortcut keys than the Verizon Wireless model, including a calendar button and a phone book, but Windows Mobile 6 can take as many extra buttons as you can throw at it and still not feel like an easy or efficient operating system for one-handed use. We found ourselves digging through the menu constantly. For instance, simply turning on the Bluetooth radio required digging through six menu levels, and that includes two pages of settings before you get to the "Wireless Manager."
While adding all these additional buttons, Motorola has strangely taken away the clickwheel. We often criticize the clickwheel, but only because we want something more advanced, like a trackball or something new. Instead, the new Q9h has up and down arrow buttons and a select key, which seems like a step backwards. For a phone with such a menu-heavy interface and no touch screen, we think removing an easy navigation method is a mistake.
Calling - Very good
We were very impressed with call quality on the Motorola Q9h. Though the sound wasn't perfect, quite a few callers failed our "landline or cell phone" quiz, which is what we hope for in a phone. Reception was spotty and strange, though it seemed to affect data far more than voice calls. In lower Manhattan, we saw signal strength very from two to five bars of HSDPA, standing still. In New Jersey, we ran the gamut from full HSDPA to EDGE to simple GPRS reception, all while sitting next to our living room window. Dropped calls were an issue, as we lost two or three a day in the half-week we tested the device, but call quality never seemed to take a hit as reception faded.
For call management, we like Windows Mobile 6, and the Moto Q9h packs every feature we enjoy. Not only does the phone have accurate speaker-independent voice dialing, it moves the feature right up front with a dedicated button on the keyboard. Conference calling could have required less menu digging, but it worked fine. And the phone had no trouble pairing with our Bluetooth headsets, including our new Samsung YA-BS300 stereo speakerphone device. The speakerphone on the Q9h was also impressive. It was not only loud, but the dual-speaker phone also had good sound quality from the speaker. Finally, the WM6 address book is by far our favorite, as you can start typing a name or number from the Today screen, and the phone will get to work searching your address book for matches. Then, once you've made your call, the phone will keep a call log attached to individual contacts. We can't stress enough how much we like this feature, and want to see it everywhere.
For battery life, it's obvious that the extended life battery is better than the slimmer one, but not as great as Motorola claims. The company says you should get 9 hours out of the extended battery, but in tests in our office, we managed a call that was about 7 hours long. Of course, we had good HSDPA reception, which means that battery life takes a serious hit. With apps that are constantly tapping the data network--like an IM client--we expect this battery life to deteriorate even further. Tests with the slim battery gave us just over three hours under the same conditions, which is a couple hours shy of Moto's promise.
Messaging - Very good
The Motorola Q9h Global has all the messaging features you'd expect from a Windows Mobile smartphone, with AT&T's Xpress Mail thrown in. Unfortunately, while Xpress Mail is an easy way to setup various e-mail accounts, such as our Gmail (both POP and IMAP), it doesn't give you some of the advanced features of Outlook, notably the HTML e-mail reading. Also, we're bugged that even while using Outlook, downloading HTML code, images and attachments is a two step process at least, requiring multiple mail fetches to get everything we want to see. We would rather have the phone download everything up front. Other than e-mail, you get IM for AOL, MSN and Yahoo, as well as SMS and MMS for picture messaging.
Typing on the Q9h is a real joy, though, and it has one of the best keyboard we've seen on a phone. Keys are less stiff and larger than on our Palm Treo 755p, with more travel and a more satisfying click than on the AT&T Tilt. We would have changed the layout a bit, the "delete" key is poorly placed above the keys, and we wouldn't mind an extra "shift" key for caps on the left side of the keyboard, in addition to the one on the right.
Scheduling and productivity - Very good
For business users, Windows Mobile 6 is tough to beat handling scheduling and reading Office documents on the road. The non-touchscreen edition of WM6, called Windows Mobile 6 Standard, has a problem in Office Mobile that doesn't allow you to create new documents. We've heard from Microsoft reps that a fix for this should be forthcoming, and there are workarounds, but AT&T has wisely sidestepped the issue altogether and included DataViz' Documents to Go, which handles Office documents even better than the official Microsoft software, especially on a WM6 Standard phone. Beyond creating new documents, DataViz software gives you more editing and viewing control, especially over PowerPoint decks, and also presents a better looking interface.
For scheduling, if you're an Outlook user, Windows Mobile 6 provides the most parity with the system you're using. You can invite attendees to events, schedule detailed reminders, and do just about anything you can do from your PC. The interface is getting a bit old, though, so we'd like a visual update. Also, on the calendar app, the lack of a clickwheel hurts the Moto Q9h, as scrolling through long lists of events or days on the calendar is much more tedious without a good navigation option.
Multimedia - Good
The Moto Q9h may not have the multimedia menu that Verizon Wireless sticks on top of their WM6 Today screen, but that doesn't mean there are no multimedia options. The phone is an AT&T Music device, so Windows Media Player 11 will be able to sideload tracks, including PlaysForSure music from Yahoo! Music and Napster. For memory, there isn't a card included, but you can load up to a 32GB microSDHC card into the slot, if you have the cash (and patience to wait until they're actually available). The device supports stereo Bluetoth, which is nice, because it doesn't come with a 3.5mm jack or any adapter for standard headphones. A microUSB to 2.5mm adapter is included, but we'd rather see a real standard jack, like we found on the BlackBerry Curve.
The device also does a fine job playing videos from AT&T's Cingu. . . er, Cellular Video service, though these short, expensive clips are more and more uninspiring the more we use our iPhone for video playback. Of course, with the music you can also load videos onto the device, but without good transfer or video management software, this solution is less than ideal.
Camera - Mediocre
Images from the Q9h's 2-megapixel camera were blurry and washed-out looking, though not completely unrecognizable. Edges on objects were packed with noise and distortion, and even a simple happy-snap self-portrait came out looking too blurry to use on a desktop. Videos were usable in an emergency, but otherwise gave an underwater feeling, as images tended to waver when the camera moved. Image management was good, with folders and an easy-to-use organization menu, and we were especially impressed with the speed at which images were transferred over Bluetooth. Once paired, the Q9h thankfully didn't require a passkey every time we sent an image to our laptop, which is a nice change from other phones we've seen. Still, with images like these, we didn't do much transferring.
Web browsing - Good
With its Opera browser, the Motorola Q Global handled Web pages quickly. Occasionally, the Q9h seemed to stall, but when it did pick up and start loading again, it was very fast. Web pages came out a bit messy, but graphics and mastheads, especially on our own homepage, looked clean, and much better than on our Treo 755p. The AT&T Q9h includes Internet Explorer, but you have to dig to find it. Instead, the Opera browser is a top-level menu choice, and we think this was again a smart move on AT&T's part. The Opera browser rendered pages better than Internet Explorer, and quicker. Navigating pages was tougher than it needed to be, thanks to a lack of clickwheel or touch screen.
GPS navigation - Mediocre
Navigation software on the Q9h is provided by TeleNav, but we're more curious about who provides the GPS hardware, because we'd want to avoid their products at all costs. The Moto Q9h could never find us. Not in lower Manhattan, not in suburban New Jersey, nor at any point in between. In a long weekend of testing, the Q9h found us on only one trip out of several, and held our position just long enough for us to take a screenshot before it lost us again. We can't blame TeleNav, as their navigation software still provided good directions, even when the GPS signal was weak. But we can't recommend buying this phone for the GPS sensor, as it always complained of a lack of sky view, even in the wide open fields and atop the small hills of New Jersey.
Laptop sidekick - Good
We had some trouble getting the Moto Q 9h Global to work as a tethered modem, though we suspect our SIM card, and not the device, was to blame. See, we pulled our SIM from our iPhone, and this is apparently a no-no in AT&T's book. Not a violation of policy, but an iPhone account excludes a data connection account. Even without a proper speedtest, though, we had other problems with the Q9h. For one, though the WM6 Professional edition (read: touch screen edition) handles tethered modem access through the easy-to-use Wireless Manager, the Q9h require menu drilling. First, we had to drill down six levels again, then had to figure out that it was not the "Wireless Manager" or "Dial-Up" settings that we needed to change, though this would have made sense. Instead, the option is hidden under "USB Device Type," which must be set to "Modem." Of course, how could we have been so ignorant? Also, the Q9h uses a microUSB cable, which will eventually be a standard, but since its different from the camera cable and music player cables we carry, it means another cable in our bag. The Q9h should charge plugged into your laptop, but we left the device plugged into our Dell D420 the night before we wrote this review, and woke up to a dead cell phone. Perhaps a loose connection?
Accessories - Good
The Motorola Q9h Global comes with quite a few accessories, but many of these simply compensate for the microUSB slot. For instance, you get a microUSB to 2.5mm headphone adapter, though we would rather have a 3.5mm jack. You get a microUSB to miniUSB adapter, which is nice, because we have plenty of miniUSB cables. You also get a microUSB cord to connect to a desktop, and a microUSB charger. So, once you buy the Q, you should be all set and ready to adapt your miniUSB accessories to your new microUSB device. Our question, then, is why prefer microUSB over mini? The accessories haven't gotten smaller. The port doesn't even seem much smaller. The new microUSB port isn't proprietary, so there should be plenty of cables available eventually, but this seems like a change for changes sake, as we don't see any benefit to the new port, especially not on the Q9h. Instead, you simply get a bunch of new accessories and adapters to carry around and possibly lose.
|
_pt00.jpg)
|
Archive