Motorola U9

Print | Close this window

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39030107,49295913,00.htm

Reviewed 11 March 2008

Reviewed by Andrew Lim

Motorola has always had a distinct style. You'll find the company's latest handset, the Motorola U9, ticks this box with its appealingly curvaceous design and colours. Is there more than meets the eye?

It's currently available to buy on pay as you go from about £90 and for free on a monthly contract on most networks.

Design
Similar to the Motorola Pebl, the Motorola U9 looks like something you could easily skim across a lake. Still, it's smaller and lighter than the Pebl and in our opinion, more stylish. Our review model came in a Cadbury's Dairy Milk-purple colour that seemed to attract as many fans as it did haters.

The U9 also comes in black and pink, housing a hidden external screen that displays a clock and music tracks, among other things. When the external screen is off, the front of the U9 looks seamless, aside from a Motorola logo and a 2-megapixel camera.

Before we venture inside this purple lozenge, it's worth mentioning that the back section comes in a satisfying rubber finish that seems to be almost everywhere these days. Interestingly, the casing comes in one colour while the keypad comes in another, which again seemed to divide opinions.

The U9's screen isn't tiny but seems small alongside Motorola's other clamshell, the Razr V3. The U9's keypad is also smaller than the V3's but it's very comfortable to use. Although the keypad is flat, it features a series of ridges that make it easy to distinguish between each key.

Features
Anyone who owned a Razr V3 will know that the interface wasn't outstanding and after a while, it started to look dated. Fortunately, the U9's user interface looks modern and is easy to use, but we did notice it was frustratingly slow at times.

Unfortunately, while this phone looks impressive, it's not as dazzling when it comes to features. You'll find a simple music player that will allow you to shuffle tracks, adjust the equaliser and create playlists. You can listen to music using the proprietary or stereo Bluetooth headphones.

Should you need to, you can control your music via external touch-sensitive keys that are located underneath the external screen on the front of the handset. We found that these keys would be less fiddly if they were hardware keys.

The U9 also has a Web browser that isn't particularly impressive, but you can download Opera Mini 4 on to the phone, which we found makes it a much more compelling offering. It was disappointing when certain apps, such Google Mobile Maps, didn't install properly.

Rounding out the U9's basic feature set is a 2-megapixel camera. It'll take photos and record video, but nothing beyond that. You'll find that neither a flash nor a LED photo light is included, so there'll be no shots in the dark for this phone.

Performance
We're pleased to report that call quality came in loud and clear. We didn't hear any noticeable distortion during calls and voices weren't muffled. The loudspeaker brings similar results and sounded relatively better than certain other mobile phone loudspeakers when playing music.

As mentioned, our pens aren't poised to write home about the picture quality from the 2-megapixel camera, especially without flash or a LED photo light. If you want to take photos for small prints or MMS messages, go towards the light.

Battery life is quoted at about seven hours of talk time and 350 hours on standby. With moderate use, the U9 lasted for over two days for us before needing to be recharged.

Conclusion
As fashion phones go, the curvy U9 certainly has that bow-chicka-wow-wow factor. But while it's small in size and looking good, don't expect it to pull off sexy smart phone functions, masterful music phone stylings or killer camera phone snaps.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday