Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2008/02/12/review_motorola_moto_u9/

Motorola MOTO U9 mobile phone

Fashion-conscious design can only get you so far

By Simon Lorne

Posted in Personal Tech, 12th February 2008 12:10 GMT

Review Motorola has refreshed the PEBL concept with the MOTO U9, another stylish clamshell with a glossy front and external music player touch controls. But is this tune-playing mobile the one to get Motorola back on track with the fashion phone crowd?

Motorola’s been here before with the rounded look, smooth-feel mobile, when it first skimmed its PEBL U6 onto the market a couple of years back. With the afterglow of the RAZR’s iconic success now very much faded, Motorola has introduced the PEBL-alike MOTO U9, an updated take on the design. The U9 has a similar rounded shape, but packs more features and has a few eye-catching touches to distinguish it.

Motorola Moto U9

Moto U9: a more conventional open-and-shut clamshell

It doesn’t have the addictive slide and spring open flip mechanism of the PEBL, nor the tactile rubberised all-over shell - it's a more conventional open-and-shut clamshell. There’s that rubber feel on the back of the phone, but the front now has a mirrored metallic paint-job-on-plastic look, with a hidden external display that appears to glow out of the casing when active. This shows calls and messages and can be used as a viewfinder for the camera, but also displays the music player, with touch-sensitive controls appearing under it to play, pause and skip tracks.

None of this is particularly new or novel - the mirrored shell with hidden screen echoes Sony Ericsson’s Z610i from 2006, while Motorola has had touch-activated music player controls on last year’s RAZR2.

Targeted as a fashion phone and available in purple, pink or black, the attractions of the U9 are quite obvious and upfront – the shiny look and feel. It's a brasher look than the elegant charm of the PEBL, and pitched at the sub-£100 mark on pre-pay, it’s aimed at mass-market pick-up - though it faces stiff competition at this price point.

The updated features list meets respectable requirements at this level. It now includes a 2-megapixel camera, multi-format music player, stereo Bluetooth and video capture, plus a selection of Java applications, though there’s no high-speed 3G – it relies on quad-band GPRS and EDGE for data connectivity.

Handling In the hand, the U9 does feel reasonably light – it weighs 87.5g – and, naturally, smooth. It’s pocketable too, measuring 90 x 48.6 x 16.4mm folded. Flip open the phone and the main screen is a reasonable 2.0in QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) 262K-colour array, surrounded by black plastic.

Motorola Moto U9

When activated the U9 glows in a pleasingly ethereal way

The numberpad and controls are flush on a single piece of plastic, demarcated by ridges, and are reasonably responsive. Post-RAZR and its numerous imitators, it’s all quite familiar and unexciting. Above the large, well-marked number keys is a round D-pad for main navigation control, flanked by Call and End buttons, a Clear/back key and a dedicated button for switching on the music player.

Motorola has adopted a new user interface for the U9, and the good news is that it's very much like standard user interfaces from other mobile makers – simple and intuitive. It’s based around a standard main menu grid of icons, with a click taking you into further sub-menus – either scroll down lists to choose an option, or press a keypad number corresponding to the option.

Easy, basic stuff, presented in a functional way. You can adapt and customise shortcuts in regular mobile ways too; you can switch the grid to a large icon carousel, or numbered list, and change shortcuts initiated by the D-pad (which can be displayed on the standby screen, if you like).

With little to raise the pulse rate here, the standout feature of the U9 is clearly the glossy shell with its now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t screen and touch-stroked music controls.

In standby mode, when closed the external screen – a 1.45in, 128 x 160 65,000-colour OLED – is generally dormant. When activated (by button presses, playing with the flip or when the music player is on) it glows through the casing in a pleasingly ethereal way. Similarly, incoming calls and messages spark it into life. One screensaver, with roaring flames, adds a stylish touch, but you can change it to a selection of effects.

Motorola Moto U9

Aimed at mass-market pick-up, it faces stiff competition at this price

When you’ve switched on the music player and are listening to tracks, details of tunes appear through the shell on the outside. With the flip closed, you can change tracks by lightly fingering the small touch controls at the bottom of the display. You can skip tracks forward or back, play or pause without bothering your fingers with opening the lid.

There’s no haptic feedback vibrating confirmation that a control’s been pressed so it’s possible to hit forward, back, or pause/play without realising it. You can, however, lock or unlock the controls by pressing a key on the side of the phone. The external screen fades after a few seconds of inactivity to save your battery life.

The music performance from the U9 is perfectly fine; it has a typical music player interface with tracks arranged in regular categories. Tunes can be synchronised via the supplied USB cable with Windows Media Player 11 on a PC, or simply dragged and dropped on to the phone or its memory card storage.

The U9 supports multiple audio formats including MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, Real Audio and WMA files. The U9 has 25MB of internal user memory, so memory card expansion is essential – the phone supports MicroSD cards up to 4GB capacity. The slot is under the battery, so you have to power down to swap cards.

Motorola has chosen to double up its microUSB port as the headphone connector too, limiting the quick plug-and-play headphone upgrade and charge/listen options. The sound performance from the phone is fine through regular earphones, producing a very acceptable performance. You can switch to an inbuilt loudspeaker, too, but that’s quite a tinny experience when the phone’s being carried. You can add Bluetooth stereo headphones too.

Motorola Moto U9 keypad

The numberpad and controls are reasonably responsive

As well as for tunes the external display can be used to see who’s calling, to read text messages and reply to them, using the side keys to select from pre-defined message templates to send.

While it’s a bit different from run-of-the-mill outside clamshell displays, the magically materialising screen isn’t the brightest or most detailed external display. As usual with fashion phones, that’s not going to bother buyers more concerned with the style surface, and there is an undeniable look-at-me factor.

The camera, built into the top of the flip cover, is a 2-megapixel shooter that doesn’t impress. Although it’s an improvement on the original PEBL’s very basic VGA snap’n’send camera, cameraphones have moved on, and 2 million pixels is now standard issue. There’s no flash, autofocus or dedicated controls, and few settings adjustments to speak of (though you can do a few editing tweaks post-shooting).

Overall picture quality is disappointing; while better lighting conditions equal better results that are colourful and bright, lower light images are poor and can be noisy. Video capture is possible too, but again quality is limited (176 x 144 pixels at 15 frames per second), and produces run-of-the-mill low quality mobile footage.

Motorola has added a handful of games and other applications to the U9, including a couple of Java apps that connect online for updates - eBay Pocket Auction tracker, and a neat Rough Guides city guidebook app that uses an onscreen map for you to home in on your required location, and graphics-based info access. There’s also a mobile web browser included, with Google and Yahoo! search options bookmarked.

Motorola Moto U9

Available in purple, pink or black

Standard email access is available on the U9, plus there are regular office tools such as calendar, calculator, world clock and voice recorder. Voice-activated dialling and speaking phone app – for reading back messages, functions, incoming call details and so on - are included too.

Motorola claims the U9 is capable of talktime of up to 430 minutes between charges, or standby of up to 350 hours. While we couldn’t fairly test these claims fully on our early pre-sale review sample of the U9, battery life did appear to be a comfortable few days between recharging with ample usage. Voice calling quality matched up to expectations too, with a clear, dependable performance in a variety of conditions.

Verdict

As the successor to the PEBL, the MOTO U9 has a much-improved specification and the user interface has had quite a spruce up - but Motorola hasn’t added anything really outstanding. Sure, the external display effect is a stylish touch, and the metallic look is eye-catching for fashion-phone shoppers, but you can’t help feeling that a lot is resting on the pull of the design – and we’ve seen much of it before.