Digital Trends

Motorola Q October 15th, 2006 | by Stewart Wolpin

Features and Design

Although the Blackberry is filled with all manner of e-mail niceties, IT managers who hand out the things have eschewed what they consider frivolity, such as a digital camera or multimedia playback. But in the weeks that we have been investigating the Q, with its 1.3 MP camera and Windows Media playback capabilities, we have found that a large group of users utilize it not only as a way of staying in touch, but for multimedia needs such as a digital photo album and home movie viewer. There is also a large class of users who actually need an imaging device, with real estate agents, interior decorators, and insurance adjusters topping the list. Unlike the Blackberry, one gets the sense that Q fans are willing to overlook some of Q's minor flaws for these multimedia capabilities.

At .45 inch thick and .012 inches thinner than a closed RAZR, Q's heroin-chic slimness is its primary drawing card. While aesthetically sleek, this thinness offers few advantages. Keeping it in a breast pocket will keep unsightly bulges to a minimum. Its thinness has no impact on the hip holster compared to the Treo or Blackberry. At 4.1 ounces, the Q is also the lightest of the three phones, adding to its tote attraction. Both the Q and the Blackberry 8703e have bright, highly readable 2.5-inch, 320 x 240 pixel screens, but only the Treo’s 2.5-inch, 240 x 240 pixel LCD is a touch-screen.

Functionally, the biggest difference between the Q, the Treo, and the Blackberry is text input and menu navigation. Q's QWERTY keyboard is comprised of slanted, rice-shaped keys; the keys on the right side— from the Y on over—lean right, and the keys on the left lean left. With this arrangement, the top of the keys slightly overhang the bottom of the neighboring key, which results in more miss-hits than on the Blackberry or the Treo, whose keys are more traditionally rectangular. Plus, the Q's keys are backlight in a soft aqua blue, making them a bit more difficult to read in the dark. Blackberry's keys are backlit with a bright white, making them far more readable in any light, or lack thereof.

Both the Q and the Blackberry also offer a scroll wheel and action button array on the right spine. On the Blackberry, this “thumb-able” array works intuitively for every menu navigation and non-text operations, but is awkward for scrolling through text. The Q adds a traditional navigation array as well as a dedicated back arrow and twin soft menu keys. While these extra keys aid text navigation, they complicate everything else.

The Q's and the Treo's strength is in their fun apps (a 1.3 MP camera and an MP3 player), which the Blackberry lacks. However, the Q giveth fun and the Q taketh it away. The dedicated stereo headphone jack is of the 2.5mm type, perfect for a wired headset with an inline microphone for plain conversations. But that leaves your music listening options severely crippled. Your first choice (accessory wired 2.5mm stereo earbuds with an inline mic, which are universally awful and are shockingly not even included) is like that old Catskill complaint—poor food and such small portions. You could use your own headphones if you get a 2.5mm-to-3.5mm adapter, but you'll have to yank them off your head to answer the phone. Since the Q includes a stereo speaker, speakerphone, and Bluetooth, we wish the headphone jack would have been oriented for music listening, especially since the Q is also equipped with Motorola's mini USB jack that could have been programmed for use as a conversation headphone jack (as it is on the company's other phones, such as the RAZR).

Unlike the Blackberry, the Q has a miniSD slot for storing your goodies. However, when syncing, a PC recognizes not the Q, but the generic media card. And the rubber gasket covering the miniSD slot is harder to pry open than the hatch on the popular TV show Lost.

Speaking of the mini USB jack, Q also lacks a docking cradle. Since the mini USB jack doubles as both power and PC connecting cable, and since your PC's USB connection won't charge the battery, the Q should be fully charged when you sync it and must be fully charged when you update the software (which, considering we're talking about a form of Windows, will probably happen more frequently than you'd like).

 
Image Courtesy of Verizon