- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 88 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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19 out of 19 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Skeptical at first..."
Pros: Nice business phone with a great keyboard and good multimedia features to boot
Cons: A bit sluggish, not a Palm
Summary: First of all, I'm a Palm fan that loves my TX. I didn't choose this phone, it was issued to me. The phone this replaced was a Samsung SCH-i730 that I grew to loathe (but noticed it received an 8.1 rating here). Between my love for the Palm OS and how much I hated my previous Windows Mobile phone I was prepared for the worse.
My needs for my business phone are simple: make it easy for me to receive and send e-mail. This means accessing my e-mail needs to be simple. An easy to use keyboard is very important. Occasionally I browse the 'net but I have a Boingo account and a laptop for that. It would have been nice if Google maps was pre-loaded.
The interface made it easy to accomplish my most immediate needs of this phone. I simply customized the home page with the icons of the apps I use the most. Messaging, calender and IE are the first three apps I have on my menu. Windows Mobile isn't as nice as the Palm OS and I miss a touchscreen but the use of the rocker and the wheel let me do what I need. (No more Brain Age for me and don't get me started on trying to play Solitaire...)
The keyboard is excellent. I haven't tried the keyboards of all the PDA phones out there but of the ones I have, (SCH-i730, Palm 6 and 7 series, Blackberry 8800), this beats all of them hands down. The keys are not slippery and they have good spacing. (I have good size hands. I can reach a 11 keys on a piano.) I'm not too happy about using the left side of the keyboard to dial numbers but this isn't a complaint against just the Q9M.
I've been using my TX to view videos on airplanes. I was pleasantly surprised of the multimedia abilities of the Q9M. The screen is smaller than I'd like but it is very sharp. (I'm forgiving of this because I don't want the phone to be any bigger than it already is.) I have a kickass BeyondTV setup and will be exporting TV shows to it.
I wrote this review mainly because I was appalled by Cnet's expert opinion. I've always been curious about the lack of wi-fi complaint about PDA phones. I'm always on the road so I'm skeptical about attaching my PDA to a public wi-fi router. For the heck of it I've attached my TX and and SCH-i730 to my work router and at home. I've never found it useful. If I'm at work or home I'd rather use my desktop/laptop.
The phone is a bit sluggish. Powering up takes about as long as you'd expect a Windows device to take. (I bet MS steals more productivity by making users wait for start up than the NCAA basketball tournament.)
The camera is only 1.3 megapixels. It's a PDA phone. I've never wished the TX or the SCH-i730 had a camera at all. Are there a lot of business users out there in need of a better camera. If there are, aren't those business people issued real cameras?
I'm not too sure what to make of the comment about smudges and fingerprints on the screen. Every device I have that has a screen seems to have smudges or fingerprints on it if I touch them. Does Cnet have screens that are smudge and fingerprint resistant? If they do, they should sell them. I'd be first in line.
Windows Live and Live Messenger are stripped from the phone? Are you kidding me? I think she's trying to invent issues to justify her rating.
Cnet should stick to pertinent issues when reviewing hardware.
- 5 replies to this review
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I have three devices with WiFi: a Nokia e61i, a HTC Excalibur (TMobile Dash) and an Ipod Touch. The fact is that all of them are quite usefull to web browsing: reed the mail, reviews or just for fun! At house or in a Hotspot or at work one can find a WiFi connection and that its great. In short, my gadgets sometimes make me forgot that I owned a Laptop.
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This is probably a little late since its April 2008, but they are right; Windows Live & Windows Live Messenger were not included in the phone and are not available for download with the Q9m, All we have is an barely worthy link to access a web based Live Messenger and other features. There is no 'program' (.cab) that we can install. Also a HUGE drawback is the lack of support to Upgrade from Windows Mobile 6 to Windows Mobile 6.1 (seems non existant).
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Once again, great review. What is the keyboard made out of?
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I really enjoyed reading this review as it's helped me make my decision on whether or not I want to buy this phone and I think I will. Very well said, great job.
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Great non-biased review. Very helpful.
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