Plus points
Call quality is fine once you’re connected but it’s a frustrating wait for the keypad to appear and for the ‘end call’ option to materialise once you’ve finished. Movies look small on its display, quite literally, since the option to stretch them doesn’t necessarily allow them to fill the screen, so you still get the intrusive letterbox bars at top and bottom. Some prefer to know that bits haven’t been cropped from view, but on a smallish screen like this, displaying the full Monty can be a bit of an eyestrain.
Key to success:
The music player has a few tricks up its sleeve, offering on-screen lyrics for many popular songs, as well as options to search for related videos on-line and text friends about your favourites. There’s also an FM radio and internet radio that uses Shoutcast and a connection to 7digital’s music store, with millions of tracks available to buy.
The Android browser looks like you’d expect, but renders pages slowly, even with a broadband connection over Wi-Fi, and while it supports Flash streaming video, performance can often look a bit choppy and disjointed. The Moto Phone Portal app allows you to sync your phone with your PC either by USB or Wi-Fi wireless connection. Frustratingly, when using the Wi-Fi connection, it dropped out way too regularly for comfort.
Quickoffice is here, allowing you to create and view Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs, and there’s 4GB of memory on board, which would have seemed generous, except the original Pro had 8GB, though you can add up to 32GB with a microSD card. The 1550mAh battery held up fairly well, at least with the auto brightness activated, delivering a bit more than a day and a half of fairly heavy use.
Verdict
As a midrange business-focused handset, the Motorola Pro+ seems well equipped with its Qwerty keyboard, 5Mp camera and improved touchscreen, but it is not without some issues. Its keyboard isn’t as good as a BlackBerry or, indeed, Android slider rivals from Sony Ericsson and HTC, and its performance can seem frustratingly slow, which leads to disappointment when using apps and browsing. It does everything it promises to do, but alas, with not as much panache as it should. ®
Thanks to Clove Technology for the loan of the review handset.
More Smartphone Reviews |
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Motorola Pro+ Qwerty Android smartphone
COMMENTS
Only Android phone with non-sliding qwerty?
Perhaps you missed the HTC ChaCha?
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/07/08/htc_cha_cha_smartphone/
Theres also the Samsung Galaxy Pro and the LG Optimus Pro.
Agreed, this does seem a rather jaundiced take
You can't compare it to the Razr, that costs well over £100 more.
Also the numbers are ranged across the top of the keyboard because you use the screen to dial.
I'm also not quite sure how a 258dpi screen can be called lackluster. OK Motorola has set the default brightness a bit low but on an enterprise handset that's not a wholly stupid idea with an eye on battery life and seems to pay dividends.
Couple of things I like to have seen covered - how much of the 4GB is free for apps and how do alternate launchers like Go Launcher EX work on a screen that shape? I'm guessing that with a better launcher this handset is a bit of a cracker.
ps..."you'd no doubt become familiar with it over time"....you mean just like every other keyboard under the sun?
This deserves at least 80% given the price!
I found this review a bit harsh.
Granted, 512MB of memory, a single 1GHz processor and 5MP camera is on the weak side given the latest crop of smartphones. The latter point is of lesser importance to me because no phone camera could rival my 12MP dedicated camera (a Panasonic).
But, for God's sake, this is the only Android smartphone with a non-slide QWERTY keyboard like the Blackberry. And given the price - a mere C$350 + taxes (total: C$400 without a contract)! - this is a great deal. Add $25 to unlock, and you are ready to enjoy this unique form factor worldwide! By comparison, the latest crop of smartphones I was referring to earlier cost nearly double (e.g. Samsung Galaxy S II at C$600 + taxes).
The review says one thing right: the battery life is great. One day and a half of intensive use, maybe. But in my normal (less intensive?) routine, it lasts 3-4 days easy.
So, coming back to the above title, if you judge this smartphone on its qualities (e.g. VGA screen, battery life, serious apps and admittedly nothing more than decent performance) relative to its dirty cheap price, I would say it deserves at least a 80%.
UGLY THING
may be they should buy Rim and get a prettier design.
To me almost all these smartphones miss the main point of their existence. I hate greasy, scratchable, un-tactile touchscreens for dialling, and I don't want a miniscule QWERTY keyboard.
I want a PHONE with a PHONE keypad, you know, with numbers on it. As far as I can see the Blackberry Pearl3G is the only smartphone out there that answers this description... not a problem for me just now as I've only had mine a year and hope it lasts a good bit longer yet, but surely I'm not the only one who wants this?
Predictive text has worked well for over a decade now - it's fine for firing off the odd email when out and about, and I'd far rather 12 buttons I can actually find to press individually than fight with the needle-in-a-haystack struggle you end up with when trying to cram a full QWERTY keyboard into a tiny phone.
