Motorola Q9 Global, Moto Q9h Smartphone: What I Like and Don't Like
Posted: Sunday, January 04, 2009
by Mogama
http://www.mogama.info
My review is more personal
than technical. But if you want a technical take, you won't be
disappointed. First off, what I really wanted was an iPhone, but was
I ready to ditch out $400 to $600, the price of a laptop computer,
for a phone? By no means! That's when I started net shopping for the
next best thing: smart phone. Having owned various brands of mobile
phones over the years, I knew Motorola was the brand I wanted. For
one thing, when I visit the local jail I've noticed that all the
deputies and guards use Motorola radios to communicate throughout the
facility. For good reason.
The Features I'm Really Crazy About
Global reception: During a recent trip to Africa, I had to purchase a separate mobile phone besides the one I used in the USA. The global reach of the Moto Q9h, with crystal reception has rescued me from the need to juggle mobiles when I'm 8,000 miles away.
The Look: The design of this phone is sneak and smooth. Every time I pull it out to make or answer a call, heads never cease to turn. I'm not the only one who like the look of the Moto Q9h.
Keyboard: The layout of the keys make them easy to use. One thing I really like is how conveniently I can switch between the two characters on each key by giving the Fn key no more than a light touch.
Voice Dialing feature: Even with my heavy "foreign" accent, the Moto Q9h is not intimidated, fooled or confused. To dial keylessly, I begin by pressing the speaker sign. The voice recognition software displays a list of commands, and tells me to "Say a command". I say "Call". It says, "Say the name or number..." I read out 2054989. It asks, "Did you say 2-0-5-4-9-8-9?" I reply, "Yes." And it says, "Connecting". Because I like telling people what to do, I really have fun with voice dialing.
Texting Template: Every cell phone can text-message these days. What's new for me on the Moto Q9h is the My Text feature. With this function, I have created a list of text templates listed by number. For example, "Where are you?" is #3. So instead of me typing those words every time I want to know where my illusive daughter is, I just press 3, and the text is inserted into the body of the text message screen. On New Year's Day, I wanted to text, "Healthy, Happy New Year" to several friends. So I created the template, and sent that one message to many recipients by pressing 1. Cute. What a time saver!
Most Used Items: The Moto Q9h keeps the functions I use a lot at the top of the screen, so I don't have to search for the Voice Recorder every time I want to record something funny my toddler is saying, or when she's singing one of her silly songs. The same is true of the Wordprocessor, which is right up there if I want to write the intro to a SearchWarp article, blog or sermon.
Lock function: It's so easy to lock AND unlock this phone. For previous cell phones I'd rather turn them off than lock them, because it was such a pain to unlock the thing. It takes me less than 5 seconds to unlock the Moto Q9h.
Function Number: The Moto Q9h matches a number with every major function. Example: On the Quick List menu, the Power Off function is assigned #1. So to cut the phone off, I can "Select" Power Off, or I can just hit the number 1 key.
Price: I thought I was getting a steal when AT&T offered me a deal for $50 to get a brand new Moto Q9h with a 2-year contract. I didn't even blink. Hey, normally I would have paid $199. This is a great resting place, while I wait for the iPhone's price to visit planet earth someday.
What I Don't Care About
The GPS function is pretty good, but why should I pay $9.99 per month to some company when I can buy a Garmin or Tom Tom GPS for about $200, a one time buy?
The Moto Q9h is locked into AT&T network. That means, even though I can use it anywhere in the world, I'm stuck with the AT&T price tag for those expensive international minutes. This really gets on my nerves when I travel outside of America and find out that mobile phone customers in Europe and Africa have unlocked phones that use SIM cards from various carriers. I'm tempted to send the Moto Q9h to a third party to have it unlocked, but I'll make that decision when my contract with AT&T ends months from now.
For those of you who want a technical word on this great smartphone, let me close this review by quoting what the experts at Mobile Tech Review have written about this phone: "The Moto Q9h Global is a Windows Mobile 6 Standard Edition smartphone with a landscape QVGA non-touch screen, a 2 megapixel camera, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, 325MHz TI CPU, 256 megs of flash memory and 96 megs of RAM. A tad wider than the Moto Q9hm and the original Q, the Global also adds more memory, a better camera and GPS, so we'll easily accept a millimeter or two. In the Moto Q tradition, the Q Global is exquisitely thin at 0.47" and is a middleweight at 4.73 ounces. AT&T and Motorola include a standard and extended battery in the box (and the extended battery door), a microUSB to standard 3.5mm stereo headphone adapter, charger and USB sync cable."
In case I haven't put it straight yet, I'm very happy
with the Motorola Q9 Global, Moto Q9h Smartphone.
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