Motorola Q Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Richard Baguley Published on March 08, 2007 Comment on this |
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Audio
Accessing Music Software (2.47)The Q uses Microsoft’s Windows Media Player for playing back music and video, and this is a pretty simple, but usable program. We timed it as taking on average 8.1 seconds to go from the home page to starting to play the first album on your list (this would take significantly longer if you have a lot of albums and need to scroll through the list). That’s not the fastest that we’ve seen, but it is acceptable.
Dedicated Music Control (2.0)
Apart from the volume control, the Q has no dedicated music controls. Yuo control the music through the directional pad, which acts as a play, rewind and fast forward button in Media Player. There is no way, unfortunately , to stop the music when Media Player is running in the background.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (6.5)
Windows Media Player is a simple, but generally effective music player. It supports album art display and allows you to quickly play music. However, it doesn’t automatically update the list of music on the player if you manually copy your music files over: instead, you have to set it to rescan the entire device looking for the files. It does support playing music in the background, but you have to access the program if you want to control the playback (such as skipping a track).
Windows Media Player supports its own playlist format, but it doesn’t support any of the other playlist formats (such as .PLS) (although these can be imported into Media Player on the PC you synch with, so you won’t loose your lists of favorite tunes. You can create playlists on the device, so you can while away that waiting time at the dentists by creating a new playlist on the subject of pain.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The Q doesn’t work with any of the music downloading services that the carriers offer: it doesn’t support Verizon’s VCast or Sprint’s digital Lounge service, so it gets no points in this section.
Streaming (4.0)
Windows Media Player can handle streaming audio in MP3 and WMA formats, but there is no support for the popular (and arguably higher quality) streaming AAC format. Fortunately, most streaming media services offer MP3 or WMA options.
Podcast Support (0.0)
No direct support is offered for downloading podcasts straight to the phone, but Windows Media Player on the PC can automatically download podcasts, then synch them to the cell phone’s memory card every time the phone is connected.
Music Sync with PC (7.0)
Windows Media Player synchs with a PC running windows easily, and it isn’t difficult to synch specific albums, type of music or other content. You can also do this manually, dragging and dropping albums in MP3 or WMA format to the Q’s storage card when it is connected.
Music Formats and DRM (3.0)
The Q can play back music in WMA (both unprotected and copy protected) and MP3 format. It doesn’t support AAC, Real or other formats (although these can be converted to WMA through Media Player running on the PC, and it can’t play back music you’ve purchased through iTunes.
Music Interruption (9.0)
If you’re rocking out to your favorite tunes and a call comes in, Media Player will pause the music until you hang up. It’ll then automatically resume the music from where it left off.
Video
Video Software Access (2.33)
Windows Media Player handles video the same way it does audio, so playing back a video took roughly same amount of time as music: we found it took an average of 8.6 seconds to go from the home page to start playing a video, as videos take slightly longer to start up.
Video Controls (7.0)
The same controls that are used for music are used for playing back video: the center button plays or pauses the video, while the two side buttons act as fast forward and rewind buttons. The jog dial acts as a volume control.
Video Software & Organization (6.0)
Windows Media Player is a competent video player: it catalogs video well, is easy to use and can stretch the video to fit the full screen. The only major issue is that it does not support that many formats other than Microsoft’s own, and that you have to manually update the library if you manually add videos. Windows Media Player supports the tagging of videos in the same way that music tracks are tagged, so you can sort or search through videos by title, author or genre.
Video Sync with PC (7.0)
Windows Media Players synchs with the PC using the ActiveSynch software that is included with the Q. Using Windows Media player on the PC, this can also convert most video files into a format suitable for viewing on the Q.
Video Formats (5.0)
Windows Media Player supports a reasonable range of video formats: it can play back files in 3GPP, MP4 and Windows Media formats. It cannot, however, play back files in Flash video format or Real Media format.
Video DRM (5.0)
Copy-protected video can be played back only if they are in a format supported by Windows Media Player. This means that only videos that use Microsoft’s own Windows Media DRM system will work.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
The Q had no problem handling our tests which involve playing back 3GPP video files created at a variety of bitrates, ranging from 48kbps to 768kbps. Some phones choke on the high bandwidth files, but the Q had no problems handling them.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
No video downloading services are supported by the Q: Verizon’s VCast service and Sprint’s Music Store can’t be used by the device.
Video Streaming (unscored)
Streaming videos to cell phones is still more of an art than a science: there are a number of incompatible standards and ways to do it, so we don’t score on this test. Our experience of watching streaming video on the Q was mixed: some sites (such as the 3GPP streaming site zoovision.com) failed to work, while windowsmedia.com worked fine. Although the quality of many of the video files that we looked at left a lot to be desired, the Q did a more than adequate job of displaying the files that it was capable of displaying,
Windows Media player supports several video streaming formats, including some variants of the widely used 3GPP standard, and Microsoft’s own windows media formats. However, it does not support Real or Quicktime format streaming video. We do not score streaming video because formats have not been very well standardized, which makes it almost impossible to test it.
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