Motorola Q9c (Verizon Wireless)

Reviewed by

Bonnie Cha

on 05/21/2008

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The Moto Q9c is also an EV-DO handset, which means you can get data speeds of around 300Kbps to 600Kbps with the potential to hit up to 2.4Mbps. Unlike the Moto Q9m, however, the Q9c doesn't support Verizon's V Cast music and video services.

Though you don't get the V Cast multimedia services, you do get other avenues for enjoying music and video. The onboard Windows Media Player 10 Mobile offers support for a number of multimedia file formats, including AAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-4, and WMV. There is an Audio Enhancement utility found under Start > Accessories where you can tweak the sound settings for the phone speaker as well as for your headset. If you have TV shows recorded on your Windows Media Center PC, you can transfer them to your device for on-the-go viewing. Alternatively, you can stream your home's TV programming right to your device with a Slingbox and SlingPlayer Mobile.

The Motorola Q9c comes with a 1.3-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities.

The Motorola Q9c is also equipped with a 1.3-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities, flash, and up to 6x zoom. For still images, you have your choice of three shooting modes and five resolutions. There are brightness and white balance settings that you can adjust to get the best picture. The options are a bit more limited in video mode, but there are only three quality settings, and brightness and white balance controls, as well.

Unfortunately, the camera produced some poor pictures.

Picture quality was sub-par. There was a bit of graininess to the images, and colors were washed out. Unfortunately, video quality was fairly poor as it produced a very pixilated picture.

Performance
We tested the dual-band (CDMA 850/1900; EV-DO) Motorola Q9c in San Francisco using Verizon Wireless service and call quality was great. We enjoyed crisp audio with very little to no distortion during conversations with friends and while using an airline's voice-automated response system. On the other end, callers had very little complaints, though they could hear an occasional echo. Speakerphone quality was also good with plenty of volume. We were able to successfully pair the Moto Q9c with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active headphones.

We experienced some general performance delays during our test period. The Q9c could get a bit bogged down when we had numerous applications running at the same time, particularly the multimedia functions, so we'd have to go the Task Manager and close out of some programs. As for multimedia performance, despite the dual speakers, we were a bit disappointed by the quality of music playback. There was a slight hollowness to the sound, though there was plenty of volume. Watching videos was fine in short spurts. Audio and picture always matched up, but as expected, there was some pixilation. We are currently waiting for Verizon to activate VZ Navigator on our review unit to test the GPS capabilities.

The Motorola Q9c's 1,170mAh lithium ion battery has a rated talk time battery life of 4.5 hours and up to 8 days of standby time. In our battery drain tests, we were able to get 6 hours of continuous talk time on a single charge. According to FCC radiation tests, the Moto Q9c has a digital SAR rating of 1.3 watts per kilogram.