We would love to call the Z9 an innovative, new cell phone, but that wouldn’t be quite right. Unfortunately for Motorola, the company is still stuck in its past and can’t let go of its RAZR days of success. A single concept and its rehashes won’t win over the crowd every time, and Motorola is experiencing the backlash in its earnings, a decline in market share and annoyed customer base who would prefer the company to wow them again.
Motorola’s Z9 is a slider phone with a mahogany exterior, which is a nice color to differentiate the Z9 from the rest. The external controls continue to be standard with a volume rocker and music shortcut on the left spine, and a camera shutter and a microUSB port on the right spine. The front packs a gorgeous 2.4-inch display with 262k color support, a crispness that’s required to view today’s digital content, including videos, photos and text. We had a blast navigating through the menu just because the display was so vibrant and exciting to use. Of course similar to a lot of smartphones, you can adjust the brightness and backlighting time to conserve battery, and trust us, with the display this bright, you are almost certainly going to have to work on reducing the brightness.
Going back to the navigation menu, do note that Motorola hasn’t updated its menu at all. It’s the same old way of browsing through your phone. We’re not pleased; half of the fun of getting a new phone is to take advantage of new features, and the Z9 is lackluster in that category.
Underneath the display is your OK button with four corresponding keys for navigation. Additionally, there are two soft keys, Talk/End-Power keys, a Clear-Back key and a Web browser shortcut key to further occupy the rest of the device.
Once you slide open the phone, you are welcomed to its keypad with alphanumeric keys. All keys offer tactile feedback that are difficult to feel. The keys underneath the display, especially, didn’t offer the best tactile feedback that we have experienced. Motorola needs to work on getting the most basic necessities of the phone right.
On the back, you will find the integration camera with its lens and flash. It’s a 2.0-megapixel camera with support for four resolutions (1,600×200, 1,280×960, 640×480, 320×240), three quality settings and 8x digital zoom. Other options, such as lighting (five), color tones (six), and exposure metering are all present. You can also record video in three resolutions (320×240, 176×144 and 128×96) with three quality settings. You can record for up to 30 seconds for MMS clips, or for an unlimited amount of time depending on onboard storage. The phone is equipped with 45MB of onboard storage + a microSD expandable slot for additional memory. There’s a memory meter to alert of you of total available memory, a delightful option.
The Z9 lacks a mirror, so taking self-portraits would be an interesting task at best. The camera quality was decent. It took crisp pictures, but there was some blurriness in them due to dull lighting. Even in the brightest of times, the photo quality didn’t quite get the colors right. While sharp, there were some issues with color contrast in our testing. We would qualify the overall quality to be good with reservations, or decent.
Motorola’s Z9 feels good when you are holding it, as it’s a sturdy, solid unit.
In addition to the onboard camera, it packs an alarm clock, a calendar, text and multimedia messaging and a host of other default, expected features. Most notable is AT&T’s Navigator GPS application, AT&T’s Video Share service, AT&T Music (thanks to 3G support), and a music player with support for MP3, AAC and WMA formats; playlists, shuffle and repeat modes; it also packs a host of mobile multimedia (music, video and weather) services to round out its features set. We liked the feature set in general. Although it’s limited in its potential, Motorola did its best to include as many applications as the phone would hold.
On the performance side, in one word: “Excellent!” The Z9 is an amazing phone with its excellent audio quality. We had no problem understanding callers, or vice versa, thanks to Motorola’s CrystalTalk and auto background noise canceling technology. The phone automatically adjusted our volume depending on extraneous noise, which is something we are greatly fond of with Motorola handsets.
The speakerphone was good, but not quite there with standard output. The volume output was poor, and we really had to focus on what callers were saying to understand them. That defeats the point of turning on the speakerphone option.
Signal strength for 3G was superior and so were audio and video streaming. Though video quality was okay, it was expected. Our videos didn’t pause for buffer or any other technical issues. We loved interacting with our digital control through Z9 and its speedy connection. For some odd reason, however, loading time for music and video files was all over the graph. Some files took longer to load, while others were fairly rapid.
Volume output for audio on the phone was surprising good, especially with a headset.
The Z9 is rated for four hours of talk time and 13 days of standby time. We confirmed these numbers in our lab, and they were inline with the company’s estimates. Four hours is a little iffy for our taste considering it’s a multimedia phone with a handful of battery heavy options.
All in all, the Z9 is a very good phone with solid exterior and a host of features. It’s not the phone for consumers who are looking for mobile innovation, but if you just want a cell phone without a learning curve, but with a bit trendy design, the Z9 is a superb option.
[Gundeep Hora]
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