First impressions: Motorola Q

I can't believe it. I am actually staring at the Motorola Q right now, live and in the flesh. We just met with Motorola and Verizon over at the W Hotel in San Francisco to have a little "get to know you" session with the infamous Q, and afterward, we were lucky enough to walk away with a review unit. So is it worth all the hype?

Well, it's certainly thin (thinner than the Razr, actually), and you won't find a smart phone out in the market today with such a sleek form factor. The 2.5-inch, 240x320-pixel resolution screen (not a touch screen, though) is sharp and bright, but we're finding that it holds a ton of smudges and fingerprints. The QWERTY keyboard is solid. It features nice, bubbly keys that are tactile, and spacing between buttons is adequate, much better than on the Treo 700w. However, the blue backlighting seems a bit dim to me.

When you break it down, the only reason the Moto Q generated so much buzz is because of the design. That, and it's the first Windows Mobile 5 running the Smartphone Edition to have an integrated keyboard. However, featurewise, the Q doesn't offer anything the other WM5 devices don't, such as the Cingular 2125. You can view (but not edit) Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files. Of course, Outlook e-mail is supported, as well as POP3 and IMAP4 accounts. Wireless options include Bluetooth 1.2, EV-DO support, and infrared but no Wi-Fi. Verizon also said it would not support dial-up networking capabilities at launch. The Moto Q has 128MB of flash memory and 64MB of RAM, with roughly 60MB of user-accessible memory, in addition to a Mini SD card slot.

For fun, you have a 1.3-megapixel camera. Motorola wouldn't confirm or deny a cameraless version of the Moto Q but did say that this is just the first of a family of devices. Windows Media Player 10 Mobile is also onboard for all your multimedia needs. Motorola gave us a demo, and we were absolutely blown away by the awesome video quality; plus, the Q is equipped with dual stereo speakers, so the sound is top-notch, too.

Obviously, there's still a lot to cover, and we'll have our full review up soon, but initial impressions are pretty good. The design alone will attract many consumers, as we've already seen, and the smart phone has a decent feature set that should please business users. Hopefully, it'll perform well to round out the package.

One final note. For those with Cingular and T-Mobile service, Motorola said it would have trials for a GSM version by the end of the year.