Introduction, packaging
If I say Motorola PEBL, than it’s possible that all of our readers will have a picture of what I’m talking about. The handset, officially called U6, could have been seen on all mass transit vehicles, billboards, fliers, so we could say that it had outmost popularity. The American manufacturer had great hopes of the phone resembling a pebble, but it didn’t bring about the expected success, that’s why there has been a long wait for a successor – until now.
The predecessor was no bad device in its category, but the press criticized it rightfully for not bringing about anything new, we could say that it was quite poor in features. Not even materials used seemed to be of high quality, although time told that this is not necessarily true, as many owners keep using the little stone moto with satisfaction. Still, designers at Motorola felt that the time for a change has come and the result of these thoughts is the subject of our current review, U9, which has been provided by GSM Takács. This time there isn’t as much money invested in marketing, but we can’t say that they are not promoting it. The “mascot” of U9 is an American singer, Fergie, who doesn’t show her best face on the billboards, but at least the fan blows her hair nicely.
To my greatest dissatisfaction I have received a Vodafone branded sample, with Live menu, which caused me as much happiness as Fergie’s charming smile. However I started feeling better when I had a look at the accessories, as there’s a 1 GB microSD card included, although it doesn’t have an SD adapter. The other accessories are just the usual: a charger, a microUSB cable, a stereo headset, 3.5 mm jack adapter and four pads for the headset.
Exterior
If we wouldn’t know who the manufacturer is, at first glance we might rather think of it as the successor of Sony Ericsson Z610i, than of U6. As for me, I don’t have anything with that, as I think that Z610 is a nice piece of phone, it’s just interesting. Although a glimpse at the keypad and we can tell that this is a 100% Motorola device.
It really looks like a small pebble when closed; we might even go skimming with it. The front cover, as opposed to the predecessor, is not made of rubber, but of shiny, fingerprint-collector plastic. By the way the handset is available in two colors (black and pink), theoretically the latter being made for ladies, while the other is aimed at men. I still think that no matter it’s black, based on its size it still fits the hand of a woman much better, so I’d rather call the dark one a unisex edition.
The most awesome is the 128 x 160 pixel large OLED display, hiding under the shiny surface. One might not even think that it has such a nice picture, considering its physical size: colors are beautiful, the animations are fast, so it’s all very spectacular. We’ll be mostly using it for music playback, as the bottom part has touch-sensitive music control keys, but it may also come in handy after closing the lid, as it displays time, signal strength and battery level.
The back of the phone is not that impressive. It’s made of soft rubber, which, although it does not give such an impression of quality as the front, is great for holding the phone, weighing 87 grams, firmly in our hand. Fortunately there aren’t many design elements: the Motorola logo and the loudspeaker are both quite small, which is an advantage in the case of the fist one, while it’s not as good for the speaker as it results in poor sound quality.
On the left the volume control keys are placed, along with a function button that behaves differently according to what we are doing. The upper duo controls sound volume when the phone is opened, while the lower one starts the camera (although we cannot expose with it). If the phone is closed, than the situation is different, as pressing one from the pair of buttons, it takes us to the profiles.
The covered microUSB connector is on the bottom, the hotkey of voice calling is on the right.
On the top we can only see the place where we can attach the neckband. Its size tells us that U9 is imagined as a “put it in your neck” phone, something like jewelry. Great…
The mechanics used for opening the phone are really good. After making good use of it we can look at the 2” wide QVGA resolution TFT display, which is also of good quality. The only thing above it is the speaker; there is no secondary camera, as U9 doesn’t support 3G. The reticular keypad is easy to use, the keys have a proper size and as an extra there is a dedicated music button, which launches the media player application – this is really cool, but I don’t understand why can’t we start it when the phone is closed, why is there no such button on the outside? In the top left corner we can see a light sensor which controls the keypad’s backlight’s intensity.
Menu, software
U9 doesn’t have the new type of menu system like Z6 or V8. Fortunately Vodafone didn’t mess the whole thing up very much, only the main screen look very dumb, everything else is quite all right. The main menu has a grid layout, it has 9 icons, the background is black by default; switching between icons is fast and looks nice. Submenus have a black or white background; I couldn’t understand why the design isn’t unique, but it doesn’t matter any way.
The Tools menu contains the calendar, the world clock, the alarm clock, the calculator, the to-do, MOTOSYNC and the download manager which is responsible for Bluetooth transfers too. Games are inside My files, there are five demos on the phone (Tornado, Tower Bloxx, Sims 2, Bejeweled, Tetris).
The music player called media search is also here. This is the one that has a dedicated button, as mentioned above. Besides these two the camera, the video recorder (of course we change between these two inside the software too), the “Mobile Internet” (eBay and Google Maps, both Java-based) and the sound recorder are also here, the latter being able of recording sounds with a length limited by the amount of free memory.
Phone calls, data transfer
Making phone calls is an interesting experience with U9. Not because there would be any problem with sound quality, just because the shapes of the phone; the center part pressed my face a bit.
The handset can’t handle 3rd generation networks, but it supports four GSM frequencies (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), so it’s usable anywhere in the world. For data transfer we can use EDGE or GPRS. There is no infra port, Bluetooth is supported at a version of 2.0, and it features A2DP too. The data cable uses microUSB interface, as it is fashionable nowadays.
The phonebook can store 1000 contacts, we have a satisfactory number of extra fields and photos and separate ringtones can be associated with each contact. There are profiles, just like an email client, which supports authenticated IMAP servers too. There isn’t much to say about PIM (Personal Information Management) programs, they are as usual, and easily usable.
The web browser is Symphony, version 1.1.0. It can display most web pages without problems; there are no slips or the like. There have been, however, problems with speed, but these were possibly because the GPRS connection. We can open many pages at once, changing between them is possible with the # key.
Musical functions
U9 has music playback as its primary feature, so software in this category has been changed to something that satisfies current needs. This app handles a lot of audio formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, WMA, iMelody.
Since the package includes the aforementioned 1 GB memory card, we will have enough space for our music – internal memory is 25 MB large, by the way. We can filter tracks by artist, album and author, but we can also look at recently played tracks, or all tracks. The software displays album covers (although in quite small), it can seek and runs in the background if needed – in this situation it is displayed on the standby screen, so we can change tracks for example.
There is both an equalizer and bass boost in U9; the latter can have seven different levels, 4 being the factory default (so we get factory overboosted bass, nice). The equalizer has only default presets; there is no chance of altering it manually.
On the standby screen, external display
The software is incredibly spectacular on the external display, even a simple seeking looks cool, as the timeline is circle-shaped. If we don’t touch the screen, it goes dark after a short time, it can be reactivated by touching the place of touch-sensitive buttons – this might cause some problems if the phone is in a pocket. The supplied headset connects through microUSB, it sounds great, it doesn’t have an asymmetric design and it even looks nice, thus I didn’t feel the urge of changing it to my own headset, though I could have done it, as we have received a microUSB -> 3,5 mm jack adaptor with the phone. If this is still not enough, than we can use a stereo Bluetooth headset too, thanks to A2DP support.
There are, however, two problems with the musical functions. The first is that volume can only be set in 7 steps, which is quite insufficient. The other is the quality of the loudspeaker, even a Nokia 3500 Classic sounds better than this musical U9, which is quite a shame.
Camera, battery, conclusion
The camera is a 2 megapixel one, with fixed focus; highest available resolutions are 1600 x 1200 for photos and 176 x 144 for videos. Available options are quite poor, we can only set the amount of JPEG compression and we have a delayed self timer as an extra and that’s it. Picture quality is fairly good, here are the test pictures:
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The battery has a capacity of 770 mAh, it can take the phone for 2-3 days with one charge and moderate usage, but it needs to be recharged daily it we wish to listen to music seriously.
Conclusion: Motorola U9 is a nice, quality phone with pretty good musical capabilities. Unfortunately 3G is missing, although the email client and the good web browser would make good use of faster data transfer capabilities. The camera is a completely average one, just like all other features. It currently has a price of about 200 EUR, which, I think, is not a small sum for it, but it should be worth it for those who would like a nice, fashionable musical phone. It’s cool.
And as an outro it’s worth checking out the official website of Motorola U9, where Fergie, having a hysterically looking hair, asks our name and, even more, starts dancing for us. You shouldn’t be missing this one.
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| Motorola U9 |
Bocha
Translated by Szaszati
Motorola U9 has been provided by GSM Takács. Thanks.
The phone can be bought online at www.gsmtakacs.hu.
Specifications
| Motorola U9 | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM | |
| Size | 90 x 48.6 x 16.4 mm | |
| Weight | 87.5 grams | |
| Colors | Black, pink | |
| Display | ||
| Internal display diagonal | 2” | |
| Internal display resolution | 240 x 320 pixel | |
| Internal display type | TFT | |
| External display resolution | 128 x 160 pixel | |
| External display type | OLED | |
| Number of colors | 262.000 | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 1000 entries | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | n.a. / 300 KB | |
| Internal memory | 25 MB | |
| Memory expandability | microSD (1 GB card included in package) | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 850/900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 12 / Class 12 | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | none / none | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 (A2DP too) | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | 2.0 (microUSB) | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | none / none | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | present | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | present | |
| Voice calling / voice commands | present / none | |
| Sound recorder | present (unlimited recording) | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | iTAP | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Motorola | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / present | |
| E-mail client | present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 5 demo versions | |
| Currency converter | none | |
| Extra software | Google Maps, eBay | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 2 megapixel, fixed focus | |
| Secondary camera | none | |
| Video recording | present (176 x 144 pixel) | |
| Music player | present, also when turned off | |
| Equalizer | yes, presets only | |
| FM radio | none | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 770 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 350 hours | |
| Talk time | 7 hours | |
| Other | ||
| Hidden OLED screen on front with musical buttons | ||
