Motorola Q

If you think smart phones are for geeks, think again. The sexy silver Motorola Q is the first smart phone with a full keyboard that's slim enough to disappear in your pocket. At $199 with a two-year contract, it's also surprisingly affordable. Only a few flaws keep the Q from being the Holy Grail of hybrids.

With its RAZR-like profile, the Q weighs 4.1 ounces and measures a mere 0.5-inches thin. Stack two Qs on top of one another and you have about the same thickness as the Treo. Even more impressive than this gadget's dimensions is the full-sized keyboard. Because there's a fair amount of spacing between the keys, we had no problems typing at a rapid rate right out of the box.

Just be sure not to make too many typos. For some strange reason, Motorola decided to place the backspace key above the keyboard next to the navigation pad. We also wish there were dedicated volume controls on this phone. The scroll wheel does the trick, but only while you're within the phone application or Windows Media Player Mobile.

The Q boasts a very bright 2.4-inch QVGA display. It's not a touchscreen, but this smart phone is a cinch to navigate with one hand using either the scoll wheel or navigation pad. The bottom of the keyboard is lined with a few shortcut keys for the camera, the speakerphone, and e-mail/dimming the display.

A 1.3-MP camera resides on the back of the Q, which took colorful but slightly blurry pictures. The miniSD card slot on the left side is there for saving those shots or loading the Q up with your favorite tunes. 

Powered by a 312-MHz processor and featuring 64MB of RAM, the Q delivered good performance when it came to accessing our e-mail, contacts, and calendar using Outlook Mobile. However, it took about six seconds to open the Pictures & Videos app with other apps running in the background. Fortunately, Motorola includes a Task Manager utility that lets you kill any running program.

Thanks to Verizon Wireless' EV-DO network, the Q surfs the Web and downloads e-mail attachments at a reasonably fast clip. In our tests the Motorola averaged 401 Kbps, on the low end of the 400 to 700 Kbps you're supposed to get. Like the Treo 700p, the Motorola Q took about a minute to load the entire The New York Times homepage, but whereas the Treo's Blazer Browser begins loading Web pages immediately, the Q took anywhere from 10 to 15 seconds to get going. The Q would come in handy as a laptop modem—if Verizon decides to enable dial-up networking.

The Q is a very capable e-mail device, with native support for POP3/IMAP accounts, as well as GoodLink and Verizon Wireless' push-based Wireless Sync solution. You can view but not edit attachments, a limitation unique to Microsoft's Smartphone Edition of Windows Mobile 5.0. The included Picsel Viewer did't impress; in order to see a Word document, we had to zoom in so far that we couldn't see the entire page at once, causing us to scroll left to right. Another feature this Smartphone device lacks is a Notes application, though you can buy one.

Compatibility with Windows Media Player 10 makes the Q a serviceable digital audio player, complete with album art and support for PlaysForSure online music stores and subscription services. Actually, the Q trumps the iPod in one respect; as the first smart phone with Bluetooth stereo support, you can listen to tracks wirelessly and then switch over to take a call using a set of wireless headphones. We paired the Q with Motorola's HT820 and enjoyed decent sound quality, although we noticed occasional skipping.

Equipped with four internal antennas, the Q performed very well when making calls, delivering crisp audio quality for both parties. This smart phone fell out of EV-DO range only a few times during testing. Battery life was just okay; we were down to one-third capacity after about a day and a half of periodic use, which suggests you'll need to recharge every three days. Power users can upgrade to a larger-capacity battery for $59.99.

One expense you can't avoid is Verizon's pricey monthly plans. For instance, 1350 minutes with unlimited data costs $109 per month, $15 more than Sprint charges for 1400 minutes plus unlimied data.

While it lacks the ease of use and sheer speed of the Treo, the Motorola Q is a well-rounded smart phone that's priced right for the masses. It's sleek, powerful enough for most users, and fun.