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The rise and fall of Motorola Q August 17, 2006 [MS Smartphone] | By Edward J. R. After period of initial enthusiasm, that Motorola Q is a fantastic innovative smartphone, now Moto Q smartphone is being bashed by press and by end users... Motorola Q is a big letdown! In meantime Fujitsu-Siemens has failed to deliver Pocket Loox T830 Pocket PC phone (it's delayed - now instead of July the September launch date is being mentioned but it is not certain)... so the main hope for Windows Mobile platform remain phone models from HTC and upcoming Palm Treo for UMTS/HSDPA/GSM... Motorola had big expectations with regard to Q smartphone - so big that it even hired a Microsoft employee and was announcing predictions that several millions of Q will be sold and that Moto Q will be (almost) as popular as Motorola RAZR. Nothing of it happened. Not only sales of Motorola Q are slow but also many people confused by the lack of touch screen (see also below) are simply switching to Treo smartphones massively. Motorola has released ROM upgrade for Motorola Q but this upgrade has been withdrawn and it is available only unofficially at various mirror sites in the Internet. We recommend however not to install this mirrored ROM upgrade because it was pulled for a reason and such installation may impact warranty... Users are also complaining about battery life: some people (in areas with weaker coverage) can't even manage one day of standby time for Motorola Q!... and such short battery life for mobile phone is not acceptable in 21st century. If you have notebook with Bluetooth and you would like to use Motorola Q as dial-up modem for fast Internet connection then you will find out that it is impossible. Apaprently Verizon wireless that is selling Motorola Q in USA has disabled DUN (Dial-Up Networking) so users can't use Moto Q in this scenario. If even Steve Ballmer was confused about it and claimed that Motorola Q supports Microsoft Office then no wonder that also end users are confused and finally disappointed. Since Motorola Q is supported by Windows Mobile for Smartphone (MS Smartphone) and not Pocket PC version of Windows Mobile, the Office Mobile software is not available for Q - a grave mistake of neglecting on the part of Microsoft (which treats Smartphone version of Windows Mobile as little handicapped and retarded brother of Pocket PC). Motorola Q has mini-SD card slot so theoretically one could plug to it a mini-SD Wi-Fi card but practically nobody will do it because this card slot is used for memory cards - users need to install applications to memory card to keep the internal memory clean. Therefore lack of bult-in Wi-Fi is a problem and direct competitor to Motorola Q - the HTC Excalibur - has built-in Wi-Fi and right from the beginning will be superior to Motorola Q! The list of annoyances wiht Motorola Q however goes on and on, for example some users are angry that during a phone calls users cannot use digits, to obtain letters. While in Pocket PC phone edition user can use touch screen to bring up the keypad on the screen and use it with touching the screen with fingers, the Motorola Q, being a smartphone, has no such possibility. What is the problem with it? Well, some phone systems rely on usage of tones for letters where the 2-3 letters are assigned to some number. Motorola Q however has QWERTY keyboard and you have no way to know which numeric key to press to achieve given letter! Unfortunately assumption that Microsoft (or Motorola) implemented ability to generate such tones in the phone call by pressing the keys of the QWERTY keyboard (for example key "T" should generate code for "8", key "P" for "7", etc) is false: it is not working! Unfortunately neither Motorola nor Microsoft cared to solve this serious problem. The "Destination Q" - a brick and mortar shop of Motorola - an imitation of Apple store idea - and dedicated to Motorola Q has been recently closed, although similar mobile phone stores of Nokia in USA still remain open. This closure is yet another indication that sales of Motorola Q and customer satisfaction with this product, are not going as expected. Clearly Motorola Q is becoming a failure and upcoming Motorola Q for UMTS/GSM (to be launched in year 2007 - clearly Motorola is destined to miss 2006 Christmas shopping period) will not help if these problems will not be resolved. Motorola is releasing soon HSDPA version of its Motorola RAZR regular phone and it looks like Moto Q will share destiny with other failed products of Motorola like StarTac phones. Next stop in smartphone area for Motorola, that previously practically dumped Symbian, will be: mobile Linux. Once again (after Motorola MPx debacle) Windows Mobile powered Motorolas appear to be a total failure.  Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later) [ 17 Comments ]
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