Device Review: Motorola Q9h

Motorola RAZR series cornered the market on sleek, sharp, edgy-looking phones and when you lift the MOTO Q 9h out of the box, there’s definitely a family resemblance. And this is no mean feat considering that this Motorola packs the weighty responsibilities of a smartphone on its somewhat wide shoulders - and is lumbered with fairly sizeable dimensions (118 x 66.7mm) - though it’s as lean through the midriff (11.8mm) as any of its RAZR cousins...

The MOTO Q9h brings 3G-capability to the table, along with the latest Windows Mobile 6 platform, so it’s super-fast and highly intuitive to boot.

But it’s some well-considered choices in terms of both design and functionality that make this smartphone truly clever.

The handset’s size is a brave move by Motorola in the cutthroat world of ‘smaller is better’, but that extra width and height are put to excellent use with a 2.4 inch landscape display, a generously proportioned navigation area, and an expansive QWERTY keyboard that’s among the best of any handset currently available.

Another smart decision, in our opinion, is Motorola’s substitution of Dataviz’s Documents to Go instead of the Microsoft Office Mobile Suite, which would have seemed the more obvious choice for a Windows Mobile 6 phone. But with Dataviz you can not only view and edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents in the Q9h, but create them as well. Of course you can also view PDFs and extract Zip files.

And then there’s the use of Pocket Opera 8.65 as the MOTO’s default browser rather than Internet Explorer – a good choice. Keep it away from the kids though, as the media player produces such excellent audio and video playback they might ditch their iPods and borrow this instead.

Navigation
One of the key selling points of the MOTO Q9h is its Windows Mobile 6 interface. If you are already familiar with the Windows environment from your desktop applications, then finding your way around the Q9h will be a breeze.

You’re likely to start seriously missing your mouse, however, as the only way to jump between icons is to painfully hop your way there click by click using the 5-way D-pad. Nonetheless the large, landscape-mode display accommodates menus, applications and documents effortlessly, and the wide QWERTY keyboard is a triumph of design and functionality.

The keys are tactile, responsive and grippy, and beautifully differentiated by deep curved grooves – no problems mistyping here.

A dedicated row of shortcut keys at the bottom of the keyboard provide instant access to Calendar, Contacts, Windows Media Player, Camera and Voice Recognition. In addition to being mighty useful in their own right, these quick keys ensure that the navigating area below the display is left as uncluttered as possible.

The 5-way D-pad at the centre has thoughtfully raised arrows on the metallic dial to increase the tactile feedback, and – though not particularly large in itself - is surrounded by enough breathing space to give even meaty digits adequate room to manoeuvre.

And there’s still plenty of mid-section real estate left over to house the two soft keys, the Menu and Back buttons, the Call and End keys, and Internet and Messaging shortcuts.

What does seem to be missing is some form of easy scrolling device.

The Back Button on the left of the red end key is the Delete/Backspace key.

The Volume Up/Down keys on the side of the handset do double duty for scrolling, with a Select key in the centre and Back key below, but we found these unintuitive to use, adding unwanted seconds to the process of navigating through larger documents and web pages.

Calling
For those of you who suffered through poor call quality with some of the earlier PDA-style phones on the market, making calls on the MOTO Q9h is likely to be a truly healing experience.

It comes equipped with quad band for roaming (GSM/GPRS/EDGE; UMTS 2100), giving you the pleasure of HSDPA (3.6Mbps) within coverage areas.

Call quality could not be faulted and the on-board speaker phone was especially clear and easy to use.

The ear speaker on the MOTO Q9h is cleverly located behind the metallic M logo and provides outstanding audio quality.

We did find, however, that the battery began to take a serious hit with the use of extra items like HSDPA and Bluetooth hands free devices, so battery life could best be described as fair not good.

Thanks to Windows Mobile 6, accessing Contacts data is an unexpectedly enjoyable experience.

By simply beginning to type a contact name in the home screen you activate the address book; make a call, and the individual call times are recorded against the relevant Contact.

Voice Signal, the MOTO’s speaker independent voice dialling application, is very easy to activate by holding down the shortcut key for a few seconds, and provides above average voice recognition.

Conference calling also works well, though you need to dig around in the menus to find it.

Camera
The Camera on the MOTO Q9h is really pretty good for an integrated fixed focus 2MP camera.

Our test shots produced good colour replication, though we began to notice some blurring of the sharp edges in a number of the pictures.

The LED style flash is very bright, but having to pre-select the use of the flash makes low-light photography a less than spontaneous experience.

Three modes of capture are available: Normal, Burst (5 consecutive shots) and Timer.

Other image factors that can be controlled include brightness, zoom, white balance and resolution (320x240, 640x480, 1280x960 and 1600x1200).

The lag time between pressing the Camera button and taking the shot is barely perceptible, so you have an excellent chance of capturing a passing moment in good time – unless you need to use the flash, that is.

Video can be captured in 3 quality settings (128x96, 176x144 and 320x240 – the same resolution as the display), with options to vary the brightness, zoom and white balance.

Messaging
The MOTO Q9h has an impressive suite of messaging features.

ActiveSync keeps your email pushing to your phone on the move, and you get effortless access to all your desktop’s Microsoft Outlook data, such as Contacts, Email, Calendar, Tasks etc.

Of course this is exactly what you’d expect from a Windows Mobile 6 smartphone, but we were surprised to discover that you can also download BlackBerry Connect for free.

This is big news for corporates using the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) since it enables BES info to be pushed to MOTO Q9h handsets.

Windows Live Messenger is pre-installed and it takes less than a minute to add Gmail, following the simple wizard that is provided with Windows Mobile 6.

You can also get all your other POP3 and IMAC4 accounts integrated and the process is remarkably smooth and free of unforeseen obstacles.

Applications
The list of available applications that could potentially run on the MOTO Q9h is virtually limitless, if you’re into customising your smartphone.

But – as mentioned earlier - Motorola have made some excellent fundamental choices in terms of the pre-loaded apps that ensure users are not held to ransom by the peculiarities of the Windows Mobile 6 environment.

You do, however, get Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, which supports a wide range of video formats (MPEG4, H.263, WMV and H.264 decode) and audio formats (MP3, WMA and AAC).

And you can easily sync the MOTO Q9h with Windows Media Library on your desktop.

No cable required, just fire up the PC with Bluetooth and Windows Vista and you’re pairing in no time at all. The only major omission from the MOTO Q9h is the lack of Wi-Fi.

And GPS would have been nice – although you could always hook up a standalone Bluetooth GPS receiver.

One other application that is pre-installed and worth a mention is McAfee VirusScan. Ignore at your own risk, since Windows-based devices are prone to viruses and malware.

Summary
The MOTO Q9h is a 3G smartphone that provides high-speed mobile broadband and superb call quality in a handset that has been designed for optimal usability.

Design features like the wide screen and large QWERTY keyboard ensure that business users can make the most of the Windows Mobile 6 interface and related applications.

Messaging functionality is a highlight, and the excellent quality of the display and speakers provides unexpectedly good multimedia playback as well.

Overall the MOTO Q9h is a smartphone that meets all of your business requirements but knows how to play hard as well.

Street smart, stylish, high achieving and of undoubted intelligence, this is a device that can hold its own all the way from the boardroom to just about anywhere else.

The Q9h has taken a while to reach the market but clearly Motorola was putting the time to good use actually listening to their focus groups.

And once you start putting this 3G smartphone through its paces, it’s even more impressive. Move over BlackBerry, hello MOTO!

8/5/24_ex_m_h_nl