Doug Raeburn
11-12-2007, 07:22 PM
It was time for a new toy and I was eligible for a discounted upgrade on a phone through my AT&T plan. The early buzz was excellent for the new Moto Q Global, so I decided to take the plunge. Here are a few observations after the first few days of use, along with comparisons to my previous Smartphone, the Samsung Blackjack.
Size and Weight - The Q is slightly larger than the Blackjack, with the .3 inch greater width being the most noticeable difference. Thickness is identical, so the Q fits easily in a pocket or purse. The additional 1.2 oz. of weight makes it slightly more noticeable in the front pocket of dress pants, but it feels pretty much the same in a jeans pocket, due to the thicker material.
Screen - The Q has a 2.4 in. screen vs. the 2.2 in. screen on the Blackjack, which makes text a bit more legible. Screen quality seems to be a match to the Blackjack as well. I know that Rocco dissed the Q's screen by comparison to the Blackjack, but I'm very satisfied with the sample that I have. The only objection I have with the Q here is the brightness control. There's a setting for the Smart Backlight, which is a nice feature that uses a light sensor to control the backlight. However, I prefer the screen a bit brighter than the Smart Backlight provides, so it would be nice if it provided levels that you could select. And if you don't use the Smart Backlight, there's no other control for brightness. I think they should have provided a traditional brightness control that becomes available if the Smart Backlight is turned off.
Controls - One objection that I had with the Blackjack was the fact that the soft-keys were almost flush with the directional pad, and I would frequently press one of those buttons by accident when using the pad. That's not a problem with the Q... the directional pad sits enough higher from the membrane type soft-keys to eliminate problems with pressing the buttons by accident. The additional dedicated calendar, contact, messaging, camera and media keys are nice as well. However, while similar dedicated keys could be overridden to activate other applications instead of the standard ones with the Blackjack (Agenda One and FlexMail can be set to do so), those settings seem to have no effect with the Q. The soft-keys can be set to point to other applications, however (I have the contacts key set to call up Agenda One's contacts, for example). Since I'm buds with the owner of Developer One, I'll ask him if he knows why the dedicated keys don't remap with the Q.
In place of the scroll wheel on the right side of the Blackjack, the Q has scroll buttons. When I heard about this, I thought this was a downside, but the scroll keys are really quite well designed. Single presses of the up and down keys scroll from link to link in Opera, for example, and the dedicated action key is easier to use than the Blackjack's "press the scroll wheel" alternative (many times, I'd accidently move the scroll wheel when trying to use the action button). And the scroll buttons have an acceleration feature, where the screen scrolls more quickly when you hold it down. One-handed operation is very easy with this arrangement.
Keyboard - This is where the Q puts its extra width to good advantage. The keys are much larger than those on the Blackjack, and I already make far fewer errors when typing on it compared to the smaller keys on the Blackjack. The latter did have an advantage in that pressing and holding a key would type a key's number or symbol... with the Q, you have to use either the function key or the shift key. However, instead of using key combinations (like function shift) on the Blackjack, one press of the Caps key gives you SHIFT and two presses gives you CAPS LOCK. A little easier.
The numeric keypad is better than the Blackjack's... I never completely warmed to the keypad with rows of number keys separated by rows of non-numeric keys. And apparently I wasn't alone, since the upcoming Blackjack II has been redesigned with adjacent number keys in the numeric keypad. Again, the larger keys on the Q make use of the numeric keypad more accurate than with the Blackjack.
Phone quality - Both phones are excellent, IMO. The Q's only advantage here is that it can be set to be REALLY loud, which might be an advantage when using the speaker phone. I always found the Blackjack to be sufficiently loud, however.
Processor speed - The Q's processor has a faster clock speed, but since they're from different processor design families, that doesn't tell us anything. Gut feel tells me that the Q is a bit faster... it calls up most applications more quickly.
Camera - The camera is a bit of a pleasant surprise. I'm probably at what the photo industry would call the "prosumer" level as a photographer. I take most of my photos with a Canon Rebel XTi digital SLR and I frequently use many of the camera's more advanced features. Any camera on a cell phone or PDA would be hard pressed to match the quality of photos from that camera, or even a high-end point and shoot, for that matter. So I haven't had much use for the cell phone/PDA type of camera in the past. And while that hasn't really changed with the Q, I must say that the picture quality is several steps above any other similar camera that I've used. The built-in LED flash helps to some degree, although it works more like a floodlight than a flash. When the "flash" is turned on, the LED shines continuously rather than just flashing when you press the shutter button.
Anyway, over the weekend I was at a restaurant and was showing the new phone to my dinner companions. We decided to test the camera, so I took a picture of one of the other people at the table, and a friend of mine took the same picture using a new generation Motorola Razr. We all agreed that the Q's photo was far better than that of the Razr. The Q's photo was sharp with nicely saturated colors, while the Razr's photo was fuzzy with very dull colors. A lot of that can be attributed to the lack of a flash on the Razr, but I feel that, while it won't replace my Rebel anytime soon, the Q could take an acceptable photo in a pinch.
Battery life - So far, the Q seems to have an advantage. With my typical use (light phone usage, moderate data usage), my Blackjack would drop down from 4 to 3 bars by noon on most days. The Q gets through an entire workday with the battery meter still registering full. If I don't recharge it after I get home and continue using it, it drops down to 3 bars by the end of the day. I haven't done any formal battery life tests, but in real life usage, I'd say that the Q has maybe a 50% advantage over the Blackjack. For heavy duty use, the Q comes with a standard battery and an extended battery, while the Blackjack comes with 2 standard batteries (although I did get an extended battery for free from AT&T).
Bundled apps - The Blackjack came with little more than the standard suite of Windows Mobile applications. And as a Windows Mobile 5 device, there were no Mobile Office apps. The Q provides Windows Mobile 6 Standard, which brings Mobile Office apps to Smartphones for the first time. However, unlike the most recent versions for Pocket PCs (and in Windows Mobile 6 Professional, used on touch screen devices), the Smartphone Mobile Office apps can only read and perform light edits on documents, and can't create new ones. To make this functionality more robust, Motorola has provided Documents to Go to replace the Mobile Office applications. Documents to Go can create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, as well as read Acrobat docs. And they claim that the edited documents are fully compatible with their desktop counterparts.
Also, Motorola provides Opera Mobile as the standard web browser, although IE Mobile is still on the device. I've been using Opera Mobile for over a year and prefer it to IE Mobile, so that's a good move from my perspective.
That's all I can think of so far... if anyone has any specific questions, I'll try to address them.
Size and Weight - The Q is slightly larger than the Blackjack, with the .3 inch greater width being the most noticeable difference. Thickness is identical, so the Q fits easily in a pocket or purse. The additional 1.2 oz. of weight makes it slightly more noticeable in the front pocket of dress pants, but it feels pretty much the same in a jeans pocket, due to the thicker material.
Screen - The Q has a 2.4 in. screen vs. the 2.2 in. screen on the Blackjack, which makes text a bit more legible. Screen quality seems to be a match to the Blackjack as well. I know that Rocco dissed the Q's screen by comparison to the Blackjack, but I'm very satisfied with the sample that I have. The only objection I have with the Q here is the brightness control. There's a setting for the Smart Backlight, which is a nice feature that uses a light sensor to control the backlight. However, I prefer the screen a bit brighter than the Smart Backlight provides, so it would be nice if it provided levels that you could select. And if you don't use the Smart Backlight, there's no other control for brightness. I think they should have provided a traditional brightness control that becomes available if the Smart Backlight is turned off.
Controls - One objection that I had with the Blackjack was the fact that the soft-keys were almost flush with the directional pad, and I would frequently press one of those buttons by accident when using the pad. That's not a problem with the Q... the directional pad sits enough higher from the membrane type soft-keys to eliminate problems with pressing the buttons by accident. The additional dedicated calendar, contact, messaging, camera and media keys are nice as well. However, while similar dedicated keys could be overridden to activate other applications instead of the standard ones with the Blackjack (Agenda One and FlexMail can be set to do so), those settings seem to have no effect with the Q. The soft-keys can be set to point to other applications, however (I have the contacts key set to call up Agenda One's contacts, for example). Since I'm buds with the owner of Developer One, I'll ask him if he knows why the dedicated keys don't remap with the Q.
In place of the scroll wheel on the right side of the Blackjack, the Q has scroll buttons. When I heard about this, I thought this was a downside, but the scroll keys are really quite well designed. Single presses of the up and down keys scroll from link to link in Opera, for example, and the dedicated action key is easier to use than the Blackjack's "press the scroll wheel" alternative (many times, I'd accidently move the scroll wheel when trying to use the action button). And the scroll buttons have an acceleration feature, where the screen scrolls more quickly when you hold it down. One-handed operation is very easy with this arrangement.
Keyboard - This is where the Q puts its extra width to good advantage. The keys are much larger than those on the Blackjack, and I already make far fewer errors when typing on it compared to the smaller keys on the Blackjack. The latter did have an advantage in that pressing and holding a key would type a key's number or symbol... with the Q, you have to use either the function key or the shift key. However, instead of using key combinations (like function shift) on the Blackjack, one press of the Caps key gives you SHIFT and two presses gives you CAPS LOCK. A little easier.
The numeric keypad is better than the Blackjack's... I never completely warmed to the keypad with rows of number keys separated by rows of non-numeric keys. And apparently I wasn't alone, since the upcoming Blackjack II has been redesigned with adjacent number keys in the numeric keypad. Again, the larger keys on the Q make use of the numeric keypad more accurate than with the Blackjack.
Phone quality - Both phones are excellent, IMO. The Q's only advantage here is that it can be set to be REALLY loud, which might be an advantage when using the speaker phone. I always found the Blackjack to be sufficiently loud, however.
Processor speed - The Q's processor has a faster clock speed, but since they're from different processor design families, that doesn't tell us anything. Gut feel tells me that the Q is a bit faster... it calls up most applications more quickly.
Camera - The camera is a bit of a pleasant surprise. I'm probably at what the photo industry would call the "prosumer" level as a photographer. I take most of my photos with a Canon Rebel XTi digital SLR and I frequently use many of the camera's more advanced features. Any camera on a cell phone or PDA would be hard pressed to match the quality of photos from that camera, or even a high-end point and shoot, for that matter. So I haven't had much use for the cell phone/PDA type of camera in the past. And while that hasn't really changed with the Q, I must say that the picture quality is several steps above any other similar camera that I've used. The built-in LED flash helps to some degree, although it works more like a floodlight than a flash. When the "flash" is turned on, the LED shines continuously rather than just flashing when you press the shutter button.
Anyway, over the weekend I was at a restaurant and was showing the new phone to my dinner companions. We decided to test the camera, so I took a picture of one of the other people at the table, and a friend of mine took the same picture using a new generation Motorola Razr. We all agreed that the Q's photo was far better than that of the Razr. The Q's photo was sharp with nicely saturated colors, while the Razr's photo was fuzzy with very dull colors. A lot of that can be attributed to the lack of a flash on the Razr, but I feel that, while it won't replace my Rebel anytime soon, the Q could take an acceptable photo in a pinch.
Battery life - So far, the Q seems to have an advantage. With my typical use (light phone usage, moderate data usage), my Blackjack would drop down from 4 to 3 bars by noon on most days. The Q gets through an entire workday with the battery meter still registering full. If I don't recharge it after I get home and continue using it, it drops down to 3 bars by the end of the day. I haven't done any formal battery life tests, but in real life usage, I'd say that the Q has maybe a 50% advantage over the Blackjack. For heavy duty use, the Q comes with a standard battery and an extended battery, while the Blackjack comes with 2 standard batteries (although I did get an extended battery for free from AT&T).
Bundled apps - The Blackjack came with little more than the standard suite of Windows Mobile applications. And as a Windows Mobile 5 device, there were no Mobile Office apps. The Q provides Windows Mobile 6 Standard, which brings Mobile Office apps to Smartphones for the first time. However, unlike the most recent versions for Pocket PCs (and in Windows Mobile 6 Professional, used on touch screen devices), the Smartphone Mobile Office apps can only read and perform light edits on documents, and can't create new ones. To make this functionality more robust, Motorola has provided Documents to Go to replace the Mobile Office applications. Documents to Go can create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, as well as read Acrobat docs. And they claim that the edited documents are fully compatible with their desktop counterparts.
Also, Motorola provides Opera Mobile as the standard web browser, although IE Mobile is still on the device. I've been using Opera Mobile for over a year and prefer it to IE Mobile, so that's a good move from my perspective.
That's all I can think of so far... if anyone has any specific questions, I'll try to address them.