New Motorola Q 9h Specs And Review

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. The Q9h is a full-keyboard device, commonly referred to as a BlackBerry type device. Most of the exposed surfaces are rubberised, especially the back portion which includes the battery cover.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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. Good for first time Windows Mobile users.

Specification Motorola Q 9h
GENERAL
2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network HSDPA 2100 - Q 9h
HSDPA 850 / 1900 - Q 9h global
Announced 2007, February
Status Available

SIZE
Dimensions 118 x 67 x 11.8 mm, 85 cc
Weight 134 g

DISPLAY
Type TFT, 65k colors
Size 320 x 240 pixels, 2.4 inches
- Full QWERTY keyboard
- 5-way navigation button
- Downloadable wallpaper and screensavers

SOUND
Alert types Vibration; Polyphonic, MP3 ringtones
Loudspeaker Yes, with stereo speakers
3.5mm jack No

MEMORY
Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records Practically unlimited
Internal 96 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM
Card slot microSD, up to 8GB, buy memory

DATA
GPRS Class 12 (4+1/3+2/2+3/1+4 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE Class 12, 296 / 177.6 kbits
3G HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps
WLAN No
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infrared port No
USB Yes, v2.0 microUSB

CAMERA
Primary 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, LED flash
Video Yes, 30fps
Secondary No

FEATURES
OS Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard
CPU 325 MHz processor
Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser HTML (Opera)
Radio No
Games Yes
Colors Silver, Black
GPS Yes (Q 9h global only)
Java Yes, MIDP 2.0
- MP3/AAC music player
- MP4/H.263/MWV/H.264 video recording & playback
- Voice memo
- Voice dial

BATTERY
Standard battery, Li-Ion 1170 mAh
Stand-by Up to 480 h
Talk time Up to 6 h 30 min

MISC
SAR US 1.29 W/kg (head) 1.53 W/kg (body)