Jared McAteer’s Blag - jaredmcateer.com

So I lost my Nokia 3200 died finally, it was it’s time, it had survived not one but two trips through the wash, sadly it did not make the third. Before I found its bloated corpse at the bottom of the reservoir I though I had lost it, as I had searched high and low for it in the usual places (home, car, work, restaurants I had frequented since the last time I remember using it.) Alas it was not to be so I did the one sure thing that would allow me to find it, I bought a new one. Lucky for me my contract was up for renewal, I could get a free crappy phone or the new hotness for a significant discount. Being the tech junky I am, I went for new hotness.

The Moto Q had been on my radar since January, not my first choice (I was really hoping the LG Chocolate would come out on Telus or Bell sooner.) I had been down in the city the week before and Ajay and Mike had a UTStarcom 6700, a very nice pda/phone that has a touch screen and stylus (that apparently cost Mike $10 a piece and Ajay $3 because he’s a mobile pimp.) The only thing I didn’t like about the UT Starcom is the size; it’s practically as big as the motorolla startac’s predecessor. Since I carry anything worth while in my jeans pocket I wanted something with a little less profile. I finally opted for the Q because of its size, looks, screen (glass not plexi, wonderful picture) and because it was the only one of the 3 or 4 phones I was willing to buy the Source had in stock.

My favorite feature is that the phone charges either by AC adapter or USB, the interface is (finally) a standard plugin, the mini-USB connector. One of my biggest peeve’s in the mobile device industry is proprietary chargers. This effectively means that I can charge my phone at work, home, over at my friends’ as long as there is a computer around and there is a mini-USB cable. This is important because with the regular battery it comes with, it needs to be charged almost constantly, it feels like I’m in an analog zone when i have the slim pack in. It’s understandable though, the Q looks like it requires tonnes of energy, and it doesn’t help I am addicted to bubble breaker, a game that almost made me wait for the UT Starcom to get in stock. The Q came with a slim pack battery and an extended life one, which slightly increases the profile of the phone (but still less than most phones out there,) and significantly increases the life of the phone. This is completely unprecedented in my experience… an extra battery for free? I felt like I was stealing it.

The phone plays many forms of music on it with surprising clarity; the speakerphone is also top notch. Since you have a USB interface to the device you can hook it up to your computer and move over music/videos/pictures onto the phone easily, like copying files from one folder to another. Of course to anyone with a PDA this is not new, but this is my first PDA since the Palm m105 and the functionality combined with a cell phone makes my inner geeky child giggle with glee. The phone only has 64mb of internal space but you can easily extend it with a MiniSD card.

The camera on the phone is excellent, 1.3 mega pixels, it does as high as 1280×1024 sized pictures, impressive for a phone, again though, not really special. More than enough pixels for my needs in a phone, anything more… that’s what my camera is for.

I like the ActiveSync software, when I plugged it into my work computer the program not only grabbed my emails but my calendar, tasks, and contacts. Which was really helpful in rebuilding my phone list since it had just about all the important ones in outlook, it would have been a pain going through and finding everyone’s phone number again, but not only that it also put in their emails, and if present, their MSN emails in the proper places. I am really impressed with the integration of emails and contacts in this PDA, when I get an email on my gmail or hotmail account I can easily add that person to my contacts and if they send a vcf file it will parse it into my contacts effortlessly. Direct Push mail isn’t a feature in the Moto Q, yet, I hear there is an update forthcoming that enables includes this feature, which essentially means that I can get my Outlook mail on my Q at almost exact same time as I get it on my computer rather than waiting for the ActiveSync to do that work, handy, not entirely necessary but I like my mail the way I like my fast food, as fast as possible and heat lamp cooked.

The Voice recognition software on the Moto Q is a pain, at least until you learn it’s quirks. First of all, if you can enter in the person’s full name, when you try to call them use their full name, it will greatly improve the accuracy. If the phone still doesn’t understand you, listen to how the phone repeats names and try to mimic it. Don’t talk to it like it’s stupid, the less natural you talk the harder it will be to get results. I found myself talking slower and trying to speak as clearly as I could and it would confuse contacts even worse. It also helps to add how you want to contact the person, i.e. CallJohnSmithMobile, will get better results than, Caaaall Joooon. When speaking numbers, again, you must do it without pauses. Since getting that I’ve had few problems with the Voice recognition, I haven’t figured out how, yet, if it’s possible to change modes via the VR but it would be really useful if you could.

The thing I love most about the phone is that it is extremely customizable, you can change home screens (like your desktop) with xml and images, you can hack the registry (it is a windows device) with the help of some freeware utilities. What it amounts to is that you have almost unlimited control over the device. My phone came locked by Telus to prevent me from modding my phone, not problem there is a utility to fix that too. I found a website of like minded Q users can get together and share their tips, tricks and customizations. The forums on Q Users contain a wealth of information that can benefit any Moto Q modder.

In conclusion, it’s a great phone, especially for tinkerers like myself. It took me a good three hours of playing to get the phone to the way I liked it, that’s not a bad thing in my opinion. I have gotten a lot of good/envious responses from friends and family that I’ve shown the phone, my mom is broken hearted because her Blackberry looks old and busted by comparison (she’s a big tech junkie, almost as bad as me.)

Interface: 3/5
Usability: 3/5
Features: 4.5/5
Customizability: 5/5

Technorati Tags: cell phone, mobile, moto q, motorolla, windows mobile, review

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 17th, 2006 at 9:56 am and is filed under Mobile Technology, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.