Motorola Q Silver

Price: $.01 - $.01

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Motorola Q Smart Phone or PDA Phone?09/19/06

Pros:

Small, Sleek, Excellent Display and Stereo

Cons:

Verizon Locks, No TouchScreen, No WiFi

From Verizon's website, if you compare the features, you'd have to expect that this Motorola Q is virtually identical if not better than the similar PDA Phones like Palm's Treo 650 and 700w. In fact, I didn't see any discerning difference, and Verizon doesn't really mention that the Treos have Touch. They look VERY similar too. Alas, this version of Windows Mobile 5.0 has some major features removed: there is the Pocket Office Suite, except for Pocket Outlook (now called Outlook Mail. Using ActiveSync over the net to your corporate MS Exchange 2003 server, you can get excellent E-mail support. Other mail types are also supported, like POP3 and HTML mail, so if you don't have an Exchange server, you can still enjoy a robust mail client.
Better than the Treos and similar units, the Q sports full blown STEREO, and adding additional memory via miniSD cards, the embedded Windows Media Player 10 makes for a heck of an MP3 player too. Media Player supports the major audio AND video formats, although the speed of display for video is frequently not quite good enough. Choppiness is to be expected in qvga sized clips.
They've tapped into the scrolling wheel that many email pro's adore on the Blackberries, but it's really not a substitute for a stylus. Windows Mobile 5.0 has been adapted to use a navigational pad, the scrolling wheel and additional 'soft' keys.

As a PHONE, it's quite difficult to use, unless you're an extreme techie or have used other Windows Mobile phones. You DO eventually realize that it's Windows acting like a phone. Heavy use of Internet Explorer, Multimedia AND Phone will get you a lockup here and there, requiring a battery pull.

Most of the difficulties in using this unit are due to lack of quality documentation. Everything says Windows Mobile 5--it is, but it's stripped in several areas. Any documentation you find on Microsoft's site will generally reference the full blown Windows Mobile 5.0. Enough has been changed up that confusion and inability to locate features will have you scratching your head again and again.

Even though the screen isn't as big as a laptop computer, it does do a very nice job of adapting standard web sites and pages--even those that aren't "Mobile Optimized." The 3 main views allow Single column (where the whole site is vertically stacked to fit the width of the display at a very legible text size); Desktop View (pretty much unaltered, you'll do alot of scrolling, left to right, up and down), or DEFAULT, which compresses is slightly in the width, generally not allowing a web to go more than two screens wide, AND vertically stacking.) The speed of display updates and the ability to scroll quickly and smoothly, the text and picture viewing speed is spectacular. On large web pages built for 1024x768 or better resolution, it's not terribly quick to move around, but certainly surviveable. As typical in other smart phones/pda browsers, you'll still find the frequent glitches in how embedded Java and other 'advanced' web elements function.

There's a fairly useless built in camera 1.3 megapixels, and 6x digital Zoom. It's no replacement for a standard point and shoot camera, but it's there in a bind.

Since the device comes with a USB data cable, you can connect it very easily with the included Active Synch software. This is the same package of software that started out on the original Windows CE PDAs--remember the Cassiopia? Given, version 4.2 of the current ActiveSync has much improved over the older versions. Using Windows on your desktop, you can 'explore' your Q just like a PDA, there's the typical Windows Folder, along with Documents, etc.

You can add software packages, just like PDAs. Odd though, Windows PocketPC/Mobile software is somewhat tougher to come by than the Palm OS stuff of days past. There certainly isn't t