[Cell Phone] Motorola Q - Verizon

[Der Alta]

Motorola Q

Pros
Love this phone. Reception, and sound clarity is better than the previous phone I had.

Fast internet access. Seamless Hotmail connection. Easy setting up my email address, both home and work. I surf a lot of forums, and this handles it with ease. CNN, WBZ1030, weather.com and many other sites are easy and readable.

Easy to learn, and operate. Small keyboard is tough for my fat thumbs, though. Very intuitive in how it functions. I easily figured things out, as it operates similar to Windows.

Voice recognition and Voice Dialing is incredibly easy. Although my garbled accent tends to cause issues. I have to speak very clear and concise.

High res pics on the camera, as well as a nice 6X zoom. Draw backs are the zoom is not adjustable, and is completely digital. 1X, 2X, 4X and 6X are all you get. It takes pictures very fast. Click the button and it is less than ¼ second for it to snap. Some of the original reviews for it had that as a full second before shutter. Very easy to snap a pic, load it into hotmail and fire it off to whomever.

What's really nice, is that when linked to your laptop, via USB, it charges the battery. Battery lasted about 6 hours with heavy phone and web use. It charges in a short time, and hasn't been an issue. I charge it in the car, and at home, and at the laptop at work, so haven't had any issues.

It can work as a modem for your laptop, but you have to have the Service Provider (AOL, Comcast, Netzero&#8230 and when it functions as a modem, it uses your phone minutes and not your data plan.

Transferring data to and from the Q is really easy. Once you figure out where to move it to. I had a few minutes of searching to locate where a document went to when I transferred it over. However, that was similar to Windows, in that it went into "My Documents".

Movies play fairly well. I tested it with a handful of familiar short movies and it played nicely. I tried a handful of movies at less than 10 meg and one 100meg (yes, one hundred) video file and it played fine. No hitches or slow down.

Making and using ringtones is very easy. Uses both MP3 and WAV files seamlessly. I've edited a few of my own and incorporated them as well. I also downloaded IM+ and use it for my Yahoo, MSN, and AIM accounts. Not a problem, as it makes all three function as similar processes. In other words, weather you're using AIM, MSN or Yahoo, they all look the same.

Cons
Couple of "heads up" notes. Not really issues, but "things I'd have done different".

When connected to your laptop, it will not surf the web or check email. It functions only as a "Sync'd" attachment. In other words, you can load and unload stuff from it.

It only plays Windows Media or MPEG4 movies. Mpeg, Avi, or Mov files don't work. I suppose you could search for a player online, but this really isn't a video machine. In addition, when you're watching a movie, and switch to email, or another function, it doesn't stop the movie. It continues to play. Sound still emanates from the machine.

And, just because you switch to a different function, the other one stays active. Which means its using processor resources. Open an email, access hotmail, surf the web, play a movie, take a picture and you slowly run out of resources, as they are all active. You need to hunt through the system tools to find the task manager and kill the excess applications.

It will read MS Word, MS Excel and txt documents, but not allow you to edit them. I've tried finding applications for doing that, but haven't had much luck in the short time I've had. Apparently there is MS Office Mobile and, according to the Microsoft website, it's free. I haven't found out how to download it yet, though. The inability to edit TXT files is really dumb.

I haven't yet located the "Cut" and "Paste" functions.

Again, no real big issues, just niggling little noshes.

Update
I picked up the extra life battery, and a slick little silicone protector for it. The battery now lasts about 9 hours with heavy use. It charges a bit longer but still within acceptable limits.

I bought this with my "New Every Two" program, so the phone only cost me $200. Verizon gave me a rebate for $100 that took about 4 weeks to come in. It arrived before my first bill did.

I opted for the unlimted data plan, as I use it heavily for everything. Its $45 a month, but I stay in constant touch with all that I need to.

 

[Zrow]

Interesting. I'm actually looking into a phone like this with a full QWERTY keyboard and PDA-like capabilities, as I want something that can keep my schedule organized and not be a pain in the ass to type on. I was also looking at a Palm Treo 700p because it syncs with Macs. A little worried about the battery life, but I usually have a lot of opportunities to charge it.

So you still like it, DA?

 

[Duke]

Interesting. I'm actually looking into a phone like this with a full QWERTY keyboard and PDA-like capabilities, as I want something that can keep my schedule organized and not be a pain in the ass to type on. I was also looking at a Palm Treo 700p because it syncs with Macs. A little worried about the battery life, but I usually have a lot of opportunities to charge it.

I'm looking at the 750p (700p? I forget...) because I've used the Palm OS for years, and am also Mac based at home. I've got lots of personal information customized in Palm's software, and also a lot of stuff using ThinkDB, that I would not want to try to convert to some other system.

If you get a Treo (or even hear something important about it), please let me know what you think, and I'll do the same.

 

[Der Alta]

Interesting. I'm actually looking into a phone like this with a full QWERTY keyboard and PDA-like capabilities, as I want something that can keep my schedule organized and not be a pain in the ass to type on. I was also looking at a Palm Treo 700p because it syncs with Macs. A little worried about the battery life, but I usually have a lot of opportunities to charge it.

So you still like it, DA?

Absolutely. I currently have 3 email addys I track, added Instant Messenger and Google Maps to it. The map tracking system is very fast, and easy to use. I used IM+ as it tracks my Yahoo, MSN, and AIM easily.

I'm expanding how much I use the Schedule, and the email. In the short time I've had it, it has easily proved its worth. With regular use, I'd say you'd easily get a full day out of it. SImply plug it in while driving, or while asleep at night, and you'll never have an issue.

I did recently hear of a guy that was having trouble keeping his chraged through out that day. He claimed that he was only getting about 3 hours out of his long life battery. Turns out he had changed his back light setting to stay on constantly. D'oh!

I've been experimenting a bit with a small database and tracking different events. No real thoughts on it yet, but will post it when I get more involved.

 

[Eric.]

I've also gotten a Q recently, and DA's review is spot on. I would like to clear up a few details though.

The MS Office Suite for Windows Mobile 5.0 is only available for Pocket PC editions of WM5. Those would be the phones/PDAs with a touchscreen, like Treos. Others, like the Q, Blackjack, etc., use WM5 Smartphone edition. I'm a little disappointed that I can't edit or create documents without buying a $30+ program. It really isn't worth that to me, and if I really want to type something on my phone I can always send myself an email and type whatever I'd like as the message.

You can stop looking for cut/paste. It doesn't exist.

There are a few things I recommend playing around with. www.tuned.mobi is a great place to stream AM and FM radio stations. I listen to my local station quite a bit through the Q (which has completely adequate speakers for doing it) and the quality is pretty good. Also, I recommend getting Winamp Mobile. You may have heard of it or used it before, but you can also use it to stream your music library to your WM5 based phone. Go to winamp.orb.com to stream.

Finally, if you need a resource for anything related to the Q, go to www.EverythingQ.com . There is a great forum with lots of helpful people, FAQs related to the Q, an accessory store, and a software store (which also has some free programs).

 

[Duke]

Well, we were adjusting our service contract tonight, so i just picked up a Palm-based Treo 700p. Got a pretty good deal thanks to the renewal and my wife's company discount.

I've barely used it, but I hooked it up to my Mac and synced with no phone-related issues. The Mac went to sleep in the middle of my first sync, so i had to start again, and it wanted to install a bunch of old software for some reason, but I got around that.

So far, it's a little heavy, and it gets a little warm. The charger/sync connector looks a mite fragile. I haven't made any real calls on it but it seems to pick up service well. Once I get a few days on it, I'll post a better review.

 

[Burnout]

I personally have a Q, while my brother has a 700W. We also have a few other Qs used for various tasks, from technician use to office attendant use. We use Sprint for service.

Personally the size difference between the two is the main reason I went with the Q over the 700. It's quite literally half a thick. When I'm not wearing work clothes with a belt clip, it's in my pocket, and that's where the size makes the difference.

Unfortunately we do no have a fast wireless based system here, however when I have gotten the chance to browse on a high speed Edge connect, oh boy was it nice.

One thing I will mention is you can pick up a third party program called PDAnet which lets you use the Q as a modem without needing an ISP or the like. This saved us some money as we could change our phone plans from the $40 unlimited / modem to the $15 unlimited on the phone. It works by installing a small client on the phone which routes requests from the computer directly through the phones connection. Nifty feature. It also works with Vista, which the spring modem client does not.

EDIT: Best MS Office editing suite.

 

[Der Alta]

A little update here. I've added PDANet to the phone and can say it is easily worth every penny. I simply hook the Q onto the phone and it links up and connects to the network. Faster than Dial-up but not quite broadband.

I'm posting from laptop via PDAnet.

Still love this phone.

I am a bit disappointed with the camera, as anything moving is not likely to come out clear. For instance, a license plate. It'd also be great, if the camera only viewed a snapshot for 3-5 seconds after taking it, instead of leaving it up, and you having to switch back to the camera.

I'll have to see what tweaks are out there for this, now that I've had it longer.

 

[Der Alta]

New update, as I recently figured out how to hack my Q. Added a few things here and there, and modified a few things.

These are six home screens that I've built. Some of the coding was "found" and then modified, some of it was purchased. The images (other than the Korn background, which was done for someone else) are all mine.

If you get the desire to download them... here's the folder.