Absolute Gadget

Review: Motorola Moto Q 9h

Written by Matt Chapman Tuesday, 02 October 2007 03:56

Let’s face it, not the snappiest of names. In fact, the Moto Q 9h is only beaten by the OQO e2 for names that seem to be created using a random collection of letters. But that’s not the end of its problems...

Having been landed with a dubious moniker (that’s a dodgy name to those who haven’t swallowed a dictionary), the Moto Q 9h needs to draw people in using its other charms. Not a great follow up, then, that it looks like something Texas Instruments might cook up.

Clearly aiming to be a Blackberry-style phone, it never really captures that device’s angular features. But can the smartphone’s inner workings break through those starting issues to become the device of choice for your pocket? As we say on a daily basis, “good luck with that”.

We have to admit, the Motorola phone gives it a damn good shot. For starters, its fat-but-flat frame hides a 325MHz processor, 256MB of Flash ROM and 96MB of RAM. That beats the BlackBerry 8800’s 312MHz processor by a smidgen and helps keep Windows 6.0 happy for most tasks.

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The calculator-style layout also allows for a 320 x 240 screen, but the keyboard gets the most benefit from the spread out design. A full Qwerty keyboard makes hunt-and-stab typing a real possibility, even if the decision to set the numbers as functions off other keys slows things down occasionally. Shortcut keys for camera, music, calendar, phonebook, messages and web browser help restore the balance somewhat.

If you need further convincing of its usability, fire it up in a darkened room and watch the keypad light up to make it easier to use. A four-way wheel with a central selection button adds to the ease of navigation.

As the phone runs Windows Mobile 6.0, certain elements such as email set-up are a piece of cake. This isn’t a true business smartphone, however, and even though a built-in file viewer lets you open Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDFs and zipped documents, it only displays the first page and doesn’t allow anything to be edited.

Still, it comes with fitted with the Opera web-browser, which will be familiar to Nintendo DS users. This removes some of the strain of surfing on a small device by fitting the pages to the width of the screen, so you don’t find yourself scrolling across as well as down to view all the elements of a web page. That can leave you bundling down the page until you reach the bottom of the menus, but does mean you won’t miss anything by accident.
The phone also comes with MSN Live Messenger as standard, allowing for easy sign up if that’s your service of choice. Logging in to this service automatically adds those messaging contacts to your address book, allowing you to IM them more easily in the future.

Looking very much like a serious business phone, the biggest surprises are the Moto Q 9h’s impressive entertainment functions. MPEG4, WMV, H.263 and H.264 video are supported and the screen handles them well. But it’s the ability to stand the phone up and use its speaker to blast tunes out at the highest volume that is truly surprising. It handles Mp3, WMA and AAC files and also supports a Bluetooth stereo headset.

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That’s backed up by a 2-megapixel camera – something you won’t find on a BlackBerry. Image size stretches to 1,600 x 1,200 pixels, with video being captured at 320 x 240 at 15fps. A little annoyingly, some of the screen is taken up with menus at the bottom – a crime when there’s unused space at the sides or the option most phones take of having see-through menus. The camera’s static flash also doubles as a torch.

Having bigged-up the Moto Q 9h’s usability and entertainment options, we unfortunately have to point out two really obvious omissions. For starters, there’s no Wi-Fi connection. Looking like it does, you’d think it must have wireless internet ability. Otherwise the designers would have surely made it look prettier, wouldn’t they? This lacking item dates the phone immediately, especially when the BlackBerry 8820 is heading this way and the iPhone, HTC Touch, Samsung SGH-i600, etc, etc are already there.

There’s also no GPS satellite technology. That’s going to put the phone behind brands such as Nokia, which plans to include it in every new phone it releases.

The device’s battery life never caused us a problem, mainly because it charges every time it gets plugged into a PC using the USB lead. We’d have prefer to see a standard miniUSB connection on there, so there’s less doubling up on leads for all your gizmos.

Overall, the well-spaced keyboard and great sound almost turn this phone’s unattractiveness around. But the vital missing ingredients such as Wi-Fi and GPS keep this from being an essential purchase.

Verdict: 6/10

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Specs:
Weight: 134g
Volume: 85 cc
Dimensions (H x W x D): 118x66.7x11.8mm
Display: 2.4” 320x240 65K TFT
Colour: Black
Form Factor: Tablet
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE; UMTS 2100