Motorola Q9h  

At A Glance:

The Motorola Q9h is a Blackberry-like device with a full keypad built under a landscape screen. It is one of the few Motorola devices that use the Windows Mobile OS.

In the box (prototype)

• Handset Transceiver
• Battery (standard battery)
• Charger
• Headset
• Manual and CD
• Leather Case

Toggle buttons are on the right side of the device together with what appears to be a stop and rewind button. A Micro USB port is on the left side of the phone.

Buttons/Screen
The buttons are white on black with a blue colour backlight. The buttons are rather protruded and did cause some discomfort to the thumbs especially the ‘f’ key with a small little pimple on the surface of the key.

The stiff keys notwithstanding, the response to keyboard input was sufficiently fast. However, the screen was a 320 x 240 pixel one displaying only 65K of colours at a time where 262K is considered the entry-level requirement for a Windows phone.

Software/Messaging
The system runs on the Windows Mobile 6.0 platform. Version 8.6 of the Opera browser is built into the phone, but the one we had was 8.65 so it stands to reason that there may be newer versions of the browser by the time you read this review and decide to purchase one.

The menu features a row of icons stretched out horizontally at the top of the screen. It did require some effort to resist stabbing my fingers at the screen, since most Windows devices are of the touchscreen variety. I must say, the keypad takes some getting used to. Even we experienced reviewers had plenty of difficulty with buttons that are not usually where they are found. The menu and cancel buttons, arguably the most-used keys on any device, are nowhere to be found. At least, not where one would ordinarily expect them to be.

Messaging of course includes SMS and MMS. Email is present, and the supported protocols are IMAP, POP3 and SMTP.

PIM
The PIM section has the Tasks, Calendar, and Voice Notes. Pretty bare considering that this is a Windows device, which is generally loaded chock full with all sorts of applications.

The calculator is buried inside the Accessories subfolder, but there was little else in the way of things to play with.

Camera/Video
The Q9h has a 2.0 megapixel camera with the lens and flash on the back of the device. The zoom option goes up to 8x. The maximum resolution for still images is 1600 x 1200 pixels.

The effects were missing from the camera submenus but we have to say that this is the only Window phone we have seen so far that does not have a viewfinder lag. Viewfinder lag occurs when you are moving the camera about, trying to get a good angle to shoot your picture and the picture on the screen is scrabbling to catch up with the movement of your hand.

The video camera works pretty much along the same lines. The surprise is that the video and the camera are both specified at 2 megapixels. Usually, the video camera has a slightly slower resolution that the camera itself.

Multimedia/Voice
The multimedia section of the phone was terribly slow. If you think that it is bad enough that launching an audio file takes more than a few seconds for the device to respond, wait till you scrabble frantically to shut off the annoying bell ring that is the first audio file on the list.

However, the video launched pretty fast. Perhaps, this was because there was only one video file to test out. Anyway, knowing that Windows phones generally are battery hogs, one would have to be slightly mad to use such a device as a music or video player.

Connectivity
The Q9h has HSDPA capabilities, but does not have 3G support. However, there is good old GPRS and a USB port plus Bluetooth support lets you connect to a computer to transfer data should the need arise.

Games
The games in a Windows phone are more or less standardised. It is the same here, with Bubble Breaker and Solitaire sitting together in the games window and looking rather lonely and bored. So are we.

Editor’s Opinion
This is a curious device that breaks from the norm in quite a few areas. One is the camera-video resolution that we mentioned. Another is the lack of 3G support while 3.5G HSDPA is supported.

The departure from the usual interface on a Windows Mobile device makes this device unique. That is a nice way of saying that the keys and icons not in their usual places. For example, the camera is virtually invisible in the menu but would activate upon pressing the camera hotkey at the bottom of the keypad.

Conclusion: Good for first time Windows Mobile users.

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