Motorola Q

This low-priced smartphone has high-end style and features.

Written by Sascha Segan - PC Magazine   

May 24th, 2006

It's the Q, the Motorola Q. The RAZR-thin Motorola Q is the coolest smartphone in America. It's a terrific voice phone, a dandy music player, and a swell e-mail machine. Just be warned: Expensive service plans mean it isn't as cheap as it appears.

The Q is an unusually wide (2.5 inches), very flat (0.5 inches thick) 4-ounce slab with a bright 320-by-240 screen and a raised, angled QWERTY keyboard. There's a scroll wheel and button on the side, just like those on BlackBerry devices, and a five-way cursor pad above the keyboard, like the ones on Palm Treo handhelds. You can use both sets of keys for navigation, making the Q unusually convenient to use with one hand. A miniSD card slot sits on the edge opposite from the scroll wheel.

For voice quality, the Q is the best Verizon smartphone I've tested. Its reception comes close to the excellent RAZR V3c and Motorola E815. Sound through the earpiece, speakerphone, and Bluetooth headsets is unusually loud and clear; transmission is nearly flawless. VoiceSignal's voice-dialing application, which works over Bluetooth headsets, is terrific. This is an excellent phone, plain and simple. Battery life, at 5 hours 25 minutes of continuous talk time, is good, on a par with that of the Palm Treo 700p.

The basic POP3/IMAP e-mail client on the Q, which supports up to eight accounts, works well. Verizon also provides its Wireless Sync push e-mail solution, which I've always found clumsy, and support for Good's GoodLink push e-mail system. E-mail and Web pages download swiftly over Verizon Wireless's BroadbandAccess EV-DO network. I got speeds averaging 500 Kbps on bandwidth-test sites.

The Q is missing a few features power users will look for. Wi-Fi could come through the miniSD card slot in the future, according to Motorola and Verizon. Push e-mail from Microsoft Exchange servers will come in an update later this year. You'll also be able to use the Q as a modem for your laptop later this year, at a $15-per-month premium to your service plan.

Verizon wants to sell the Q to ordinary consumers, but its costly smartphone service plans stand in the way of the Q sweeping America. You get 450 minutes for $79 per month, 1,000 minutes for $109, and 4,000 minutes for $169, with unlimited data and in-network calling during nights and weekends. Unlimited Q data can also be a $50 add-on to an existing family plan, so, for instance, a 700-minute, two-line plan with a Q and a voice phone would cost $120 per month. At Sprint, the equivalent of Verizon's $109 plan costs only $75, and Verizon's $120 family plan would cost a mere $85. Verizon needs to bring its monthly fees down if it wants the Q to be the success it could be.

The Q's major competitors are from Palm—the Treo 700w and the newer Treo 700p. The 700w is more expensive than the Q and has little to recommend it. The 700p comes with Microsoft Office document editors (not just viewers), has a higher-res screen, runs on both Verizon and Sprint, and is both faster and less buggy than the Q. On the other hand, it costs $200 more and is considerably chubbier. So while the 700p retains the Editors' Choice crown, the Q is an excellent machine and a terrific choice.

Compare the Q with several other mobile phones, side by side.

Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 5 hours 25 minutes