What's in the Box?

The contents of the box are a little sparser than I would like - but they were adequate. The Q comes with an AC charger, installation CD, Verizon CD, instruction manual and that's about it.

Design:

The Q clearly takes its design “Q’s” from the very popular RAZR line. When I put the Q next to my son’s RAZR I was amazed to see that it is actually thinner than the RAZR. (look at the Q between a Treo and an Axim).

The Q is slightly wider than the Treo line of Smartphones, but less than half as thick. The keyboard of the Q is more spread out than the Treo’s, making two finger typing easier.

The Keyboard has black keys for the numbers which are activated by an alt kind of key along the bottom left hand side. At the very bottom of the keyboard are dedicated keys for email, the camera and speakerphone/voice activation.

Above the keyboard sits the green Phone dial button and the red cancel phone button is at the far right. In between are a dedicated “Home” button and a “back” arrow – both surrounding a wonderfully designed D-pad. Sitting on top and to either side of the D-pad are the two “soft” keys which are becoming customary on Windows Mobile 5 phones.

Speaking of Windows Mobile 5 – one of the distinguishing features of the Q is that it is a Smartphone that uses the Windows Mobile Smartphone OS. That means it has no Touch Screen like a PDA or like the Treo or other Pocket PC phones. Navigation (which I will go over in detail) is carried out with hardware buttons.

Speaking of the Screen, the Q uses a 320x240 TFT screen. While this is a lower resolution than Palm’s 320x320, it was gorgeous to behold (more on that later).

Along the right hand side of the Q you will find a wonderfully executed Jog dial, reminiscent of Sony Clie days. The helps make the Q “blackberry-esque.” Below the Jog Dial is a dedicated “back” button which proved to be quite usefull.


There is absolutely nothing along the bottom of the Q. Along the left side is the port for charging and connecting to the PC (a mini-USB port) and an opening (covered with a rubber covering) for a mini-SD card. The IR port sits above that.
Along the top is a covered jack for headphones. Sadly. Motorola, like Palm, included a mini-jack so you need an adapter (not provided) for plugging in “real” headphones.

Lastly, on the back is the 1.3 mega pixel camera with flash and 6x zoom.