The roadtrip is well on it’s way. We’ve been blogging about it on a regular basis over at Plaxo’s Personal Card. Before heading out on the trip, I decided to get myself a hyped up Motorola Q. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really wait for the end-user reviews to come out…Being someone that likes to change phones every 3 to 5 months, I was way too tired of my 9 month old E715 and I found the RAZR much too girly of a phone to get one.
The hardware for the Q is amazing, nothing out there can beat it’s size nor it’s looks. However, as the PC Mag review best put it, the software is really what is holding the Q back. The OS has a severe learning curve as far as navigation and use is concerned; considering Microsoft is calling it Windows Mobile version FIVE point O, I expected a much more refined interface and user experience.
However, looking passed the slightly quirky interface, I eventually got the hang of it and started making use of all that the Q has to offer. First and foremost, the Q works just fine as a phone, it fits in my pockets well and it doesn’t look like a brick stuck to my face when I’m talking to someone on it. Judging just by that, it already has a leg up on the Blackberry that I used to own.
As far as the e-mail is concerned, for some reason the Mail application cannot handle POP3 access with GMail, it connects fine, downloads messages, but does not show any of the messages properly in the Inbox. In the case of e-mail, the Q is no where near Blackberry’s push technology. It is better used to check your email occasionally, but not for being on top of your email at all times.
As for making use of the always on Internet access, I found the Google’s xhtml based home page to be the best asset. I was able to configure my “home page” from my computer to include my GMail account, the top news, and even the weather. I then went onto my Q and loaded up the Google page, giving me a perfect portal of all pieces of information that is important to me. I was also able to access GMail’s mobile version, which worked very well on the Q as well. Kudos to Google for having a better interface for Microsoft’s phone than any of the pre-programmed Microsoft bookmarks in Internet Explorer.
For the times that I’m in the car, I was able to use PdaNet to go online right from my laptop (using the USB cable). Apparently there is a hack online for enabling Internet access via Bluetooth, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. Although it’s not blazing fast, the EVDO connection scored pretty well on the Speed Tests considering I was on some random highway in the US browsing the web at anything above 14.4kbps.
Motorola and Verizon has promised an upgrade to the Q’s firmware, which will hopefully iron out a lot of the rough edges to this device. Overall, this is a good device with a lot of potential providing Microsoft get’s their act together with Windows Mobile.
For the other Q users out there, following are some helpful links:
- QUsers.com
- Howard Forums
- NewsBreak – an awesome RSS reader for WM5.0
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