Motorola unveils the Q q9 and Q gsm

When Motorola announced the Q back in 2005, Crave got really excited. The Q was going to beat BlackBerry devices to a pulp and put Motorola firmly on the smart phone map. Unfortunately, it never made it to the UK, but now Motorola has done the right thing and announced two Q devices set to be available in the UK this year.

The Motorola Q q9 (pictured left) runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard and features a full Qwerty keypad, a large colour display that adjusts its brightness depending on ambient light, a 2-megapixel camera and 256MB of onboard memory, with the option to expand via a microSD slot.

The Q q9 also features HSDPA connectivity, so you can download data at speeds of up to 3.6Mbps. We had a quick go with the Q q9 out at 3GSM in Barcelona and we really liked the keypad: the keys are really well designed and easy to press.

Our only niggle with the Q q9 is that there's not jog dial or scroll wheel, so you have to click the navigation button in order to scroll though emails, which could become annoying if you're reading a very long email.

Next up is the Motorola Q gsm (pictured right), which is very similar to the original Q, but comes with a different feature set. The main difference is it has quad-band GSM, GPRS and EDGE connectivity, meaning you can use it anywhere in the world that uses a GSM network.

Another difference is that it runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard, which gives you access to Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail on the go, among other things. Other features include a 1.3-megapixel camera, an expandable miniSD slot, and a handy jog dial on the side for scrolling through emails. As with the Q q9, the Q gsm's keypad is very easy to use.

Both devices are expected to come out some time in the second quarter of this year. Expect full reviews soon. -AL