Motorola Q Cell Phone Review - Software
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Richard Baguley Published on March 08, 2007 Comment on this |
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OS (8.0)
Choosing an Operating System (OS) is rather like choosing a religion: whichever one you go for, someone will tell you are damned for making the wrong choice. The Q runs Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system; while this may not be to many people’s taste, it is a competent, well designed OS that is stable, has plenty of software and is relatively easy to use.
Home Screen Score (5.0) The default home screen of the Q provides some basic information, such as notifications for voicemail, text messages and upcoming appointments. There are also icons on the top line of the screen for the signal strength and the phone profile (such as silent, in meeting etc). However, it also wastes space with links to an MSN news page and Windows download page that most users don’t need, and unlike smart phones that run the more fully-featured Pocket PC version of the OS, you can’t easily change the layout of the screen. Instead, you can just choose the default screen, or one of 5 alternative layouts that contain even less information. One (called Windows default) is completely blank, except for the start menu. Programs are available that allow you to build your own start page (such as the $14.99 program Home Screen Designer), but it’s a pity that you have to buy an extra program to be able to configure your phone properly.
Extensibility (7.0)
Windows Mobile provides plenty of options for expansion: there are a wide selection of programs from Microsoft and third parties that can expand or enhance the features of the Q. And that’s a good thing, as many of the included programs are so basic as to be useless. Java applications are also supported with a built in java emulator.
Customizability (3.0)
The Q has only very basic customizability: you can’t change the display font (although you do have the choice of two font sizes), and the color scheme that the menus and programs use. But that’s it: a minimal amount of control that means you can’t easily personalize the phone.
OS Responsivness (5.0)
The Q is often a little slow to respond; it sometimes take half a second to redraw the screen. In particular, playing sounds seems to affect the responsiveness: the sounds menu (where you set the various sounds the phone makes) is particularly slow.
Gaming (4.0)
Two games are included; the puzzle game Bubble Breaker and the ubiquitous Solitaire. Both are amusing, simple games, but both suffer from the fact that the Q does not have a touch screen; choosing where to place your cards in Solitare requires the keyboard and is awkward, and in Bubble Breaker, you have to scroll around the screen to find the bubble you want to break. Frankly, we didn’t bother finishing either game; it simply takes too long to make it any fun.
Plenty of good games are available for purchase for the Windows Mobile OS, though , ranging from shoot-em-ups to RPGs. But make sure you get the right ones: games that are written for the Pocket PC OS (which includes a touch screen) won’t work on the Q.
Browser Features (4.0)
The Q comes with Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer, a well-featured portable browser that supports emailing pages and encryption, as well as saving individual images from web pages. It doesn’t support RSS feeds, cascading style sheets, Flash or Javascript, though, and you can’t save entire web pages.
Browsing Interface (6.0)
Internet Explorer provides a variety of ways to view web pages, including a full screen mode and a single-column mode that forces the page into a single column. These features do make browsing the web easier, but many web pages are still unviewable. You are better off sticking with the mobile versions of sites where available.
A variety of tools are provided to make the browsing experience easier, including a zoom control (with 5 zoom levels) that allows you to shrink or enlarge the text on the page to fit more in. However, it doesn’t have the more advanced features or more recent browsers, such as tabbed browsing or a fully fledged search feature.
Pages can be easily bookmarked by selecting “Add to Favorites” from the menu, and basic features are present for editing existing pages in the favorites list. Bookmarks can also be imported from the PC version of Internet Explorer. However, there is no support for RSS bookmarks (for easily reading things like news headlines). Internet Explorer maintains an extensive history of the Web sites that you visit, but you can’t do much with this information; you can’t search the history, add web pages from it directly to the favorites, or sort the data by date.
Browser Access Speed (6.67)
We found that it took an average of 12 seconds to go from the home page of the Q to hitting enter after entering the url www.wirelessinfo.com. That’s a reasonable time for starting off the browser and entering the URL; more then acceptable for casual browsing.
Calculator (4.0)
If all you want to do is basic arithmetic, the calculator included in the Q may be adequate. But for anything above first grade maths, this calculator gets a fail; it only does addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This seems like an odd omission; square roots aren’t something most people need on a regular basis, but given that the processor in the Q can calculate these things without breaking a sweat, it seems odd that they aren’t included.
Alarm (2.0)
The alarm on the Q gets a failing grade as well: the alarm function only allows you to set one alarm that goes off at a specific time in the next 24 hours. More complex alerts can be set in the calendar application, but even these are somewhat simplistic: the only way to set an alarm for weekdays only (so you can have a lie in at the weekend) is to set one appointment early in the morning for each day.
It is worth pointing out that there are plenty of freely available alarm programs that you can install and use, but you shouldn’t have to do this to get basic functions like this. Creating a simple set of features is one thing; but missing useful, common features is another problem completely.
Document Software (4.0)
Many users assume that all versions of Windows Mobile come with portable versions of Word and Excel. But the smart phone edition doesn’t, so the Q can’t edit Word or Excel files. They can be viewed, but they can’t be edited, which limits the appeal for business users.
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