Review: Motorola Q
Browsing
Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile is a full-featured HTML and WAP browser. Explorer has a number of page formatting options. It can render the page as it would appear on the desktop, which typically requires both horizontal and vertical scrolling. One nice thing we noticed is that even in this mode, most pages that redirect to mobile sites still sent IE the mobile and not the desktop version, eliminating scrolling. It also has a one-column view, which will display columns one after another in a single column view. This view also resizes text and images to best fit the screen size and orientation. A third mode tries to find some middle ground between the two extremes.
The Q makes browsing text-heavy sites easy. The landscape orientation of the screen makes columns wide enough to display a good deal of text and the scroll wheel makes it easy to continue moving down a page without having to move your hand.
Customization
The home screen of the Q can be customized with a variety of layouts and color schemes, which are chosen separately. Layouts can be as simple as a large clock or as complicated as you can imagine. You can even add third party plugins to fill the home screen up even more.
There are enough default color schemes to suit almost any mood or style and more can be downloaded from industrious Smartphone fans around the world. Each includes a color scheme for menus and dialog boxes as well as a background image. You can also use your own background images.
The Q comes with a wide variety of ringtones, from old Microsoft standards to new guitar-heavy rock or techno-style dance tracks. In addition, any audio file the media player can play can be used as a ringtone.
File Management
The Q includes an easy-to-use file manager that allows you to open or send, move and delete files. It also includes a search function to find that document buried deep within the depths of your storage card. Motorola and Verizon also included the Picsel Viewer in the file system, which will allow you to preview any Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or PDF document on the device. The viewer cannot re-flow the document to fit the small screen, but it does provide zooming and panning tools to navigate around.