The Motorola Q Smartphone

With the introduction of the svelte, sleek, and well designed Q Smartphone, Motorola and Microsoft have taken direct aim at one of the most successful mobile e-mail devices in corporate history—the RIM BlackBerry.

The Motorola Q has been one of the most anticipated Windows Mobile devices and my expectations for the device were extremely high. Like many of you, I've been inundated with TV commercials touting the Q as the thinnest Smartphone available and promoting the capabilities of Verizon's high-speed data network. While these ads have certainly piqued the interest of corporate users and consumers, Pocket PC users should take them with a grain of salt.

Don't get me wrong—there's a lot to like about the Motorola Q Smartphone! But it's not the perfect device for everyone. The big question in my mind: will avid Pocket PC Phone Edition users swap their more feature-rich devices for the slim, highly-portable Motorola Q?

Bright, readable screen; very useable QWERTY keyboard

One of the first things you notice about the Q—after its slim, lightweight form factor—is its bright 320 x 240 color display. The 2.4-inch display is small by Pocket PC standards, but a bit larger than earlier Smartphones. Better yet, it has a bright QVGA display, and even my 50-year-old eyes found relatively small text is easy to read. The Q and other Windows Mobile Smartphones do not use touch screen technology. To open applications and navigate through menus on the Q, you use the application launch keys found on the face along the edges of the device, along with the 5-way navigation button centered below the display. To enter text messages, e-mail, and other data, you use the QWERTY keyboard below the display. (The Motorola Q is the first Windows Mobile Smartphone to incorporate a QWERTY keyboard, as opposed to the traditional alpha-numeric keypad found on other Smartphones.)

It was easy to enter text messages and other data with the raised and angled keys on the QWERTY keyboard—even using my large "man-thumbs." My two complaints with the Q are related to using the dial pad to make phone calls. First, you have to dial phone numbers with the rather small embedded numeric keypad. This dialing method is similar to the BlackBerry, and one of the reasons I never adapted well to that device.

Fig. 1: The Motorola Q sports a functional QWERTY keypad.

The second problem has to do with labels on the embedded numeric keypad. On most cell phones the number "2" is associated with the letters "A,B,C," the number "3" with "D,E,F," the number "4" with "G,H,I," etc. So if you see an advertisement that says, "for more information, dial 888-TELETYPE" it's relatively easy to dial the number on the phone's keypad. Unfortunately, the numeric keypad on the Q does NOT display these letter assignments. Unless you have them memorized, it's very difficult to make calls to numbers like these.

The placement of the other buttons and ports was well thought out. As you face the device, the thin left edge of the device holds the IR port, a covered MiniSD slot, and the standard USB charging/sync port. The right edge sports the jog wheel and a grey "back" button—push it and it takes you to the previous screen. The placement of the jog wheel, application launch keys, and the QWERTY keyboard make it easy to use the Q as a one-handed device. The stereo headphone/headset jack is on the top edge of the device.

Located on the back of the Q are the aperture to the still/video digital camera, its flash, the cover to the removable battery, and the stereo speakers. The Q's 1.3-megapixel camera produces decent quality images. It's good in a pinch to capture an image (which you can then e-mail to a friend), but it won't replace a 6 megapixel digital camera. The camcorder mode takes relatively smooth 176-by-144 videos at 10 frames per second.