Motorola and Verizon have made the Motorola Q official. The smartphone is exclusive to Verizon, and offers the following features:

* Windows Mobile 5.0
* high-speed wireless broadband network
* .45″ thick
* thumb wheel scroll
* full QWERTY keyboard
* 1.3 megapixel camera
* high resolution video camera
* EV-DO
* Bluetooth 1.2
* stereo speakers

The Motorola Q is available for odering online beginning May 31, and in-store June 5th, for $199 (after $100 instant rebate and with two-year plan). EV-DO enabled data plans are available for between $80 and $170 a month.

Via EngadgetMobile.

Motorola Q Reviews

PCMag reviews the Motorola Q, and likes the smartphone, but finds the Verizon smartphones plan on the pricey side. About the Q’s performance: “For voice quality, the Q is the best Verizon smartphone I’ve tested. Its reception comes close to the excellent RAZR V3c and Motorola E815. Sound through the earpiece, speakerphone, and Bluetooth headsets is unusually loud and clear; transmission is nearly flawless. VoiceSignal’s voice-dialing application, which works over Bluetooth headsets, is terrific. This is an excellent phone, plain and simple. Battery life, at 5 hours 25 minutes of continuous talk time, is good, on a par with that of the Palm Treo 700p.” Link.

ZDNet reviews the Motorola Q, and is very impressed with the phone’s multimedia features: “What really blew us away, however, was the multimedia experience. We transferred several videos to the device, including a music video and an episode of Family Guy, and we had a blast watching them on the Q. The sharpness of the video on the Q was amazing, especially compared to the Treo 700p, with which we couldn’t even get through a whole video because the picture was so blurry. Also, listening to music was top-notch, thanks to the dual stereo-quality speakers.” The review found the speakerphone quality to be excellent, too. Link.

MobileBurn has a review of the Motorola Q, and is impressed with the phone despite its battery limitations: “I’ll cut straight to the chase: the Motorola Q offers some of the best reception and talk time figures we’ve ever experienced on a CDMA phone. The Q managed 5.25 hours in our new talk time test (50% more than the CDMA Treo 700p). Audio quality is good in general on calls and the speakerphone audio was decent for the remote caller and very good for the Q user. The Q’s shortcoming as a mobile phone will be its standby time. With any kind of real usage, especially if you make much use of the data connectivity or push email (more on those later), you should pretty much figure on recharging the Q nightly. If you lay off of the more battery intensive features, you should get 2 days of standby out of it in addition to some voice calls. I find that acceptable for a device like this, though more would always be better.” Link.

The Boston Herald has a mildly sarcastic review of the Motorola Q that laments the inadequacy of its email capabilities when compared to other devices like BlackBerry or the Treo 700w. The review noted in particular the lack of a copy and paste function, and no Direct Push email out of the box. Overall: “Motorola has high hopes for the Q, expecting it to sell as well as the Razr, the superslim clamshell phone. That seems optimistic. If you’re going to pay $110 a month for portable e-mail, there are better ways, unless slim and light are your main criteria. ” Link.

The Mobility Site reviews the Motorola Q, and finds that the phone just might be a Treo killer. Overall impressions: “The unit is a smart phone, not a PDA and a phone glued together. You have some trade offs for the size and weight. Such as WM5-phone does not include pocket Word, Excel or Power Point. You can view these documents with the document viewer, but you cannot edit them. So if you are looking for the Motorola “Q” to replace your pocket PC your out of luck. … If you are looking for e-mail on the fly, and easy communications, then this little gem is a winner.” Link.

CNET reviews the Motorola Q and notes, “We tested the dual-band Motorola Q (CDMA 850/1900; EV-DO) in San Francisco using Verizon’s network, and call quality was generally good. On our end, conversations were mostly clear, although on a couple of occasions, we noticed some background hiss and muffled sound quality. Callers said they could hear us fine most of the time but also reported some crackling–nothing too bad. On the other hand, speakerphone quality was excellent. … We also had no problems pairing the Q with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset or the Motorola HT820 headphones.” Link.

Sci-Tech Today reviews the Motorola Q, and has this to say about the smartphone’s lack of WiFi: “The Moto Q does not ship with Wi-Fi onboard, but if you’re roaming in one of Verizon’s EVDO coverage areas, you will receive data at speeds of 400 to 700 Kbps, on average, which in many instances will obviate the need for Wi-Fi. Although the handset offers support for external keyboards and mice, it cannot currently function as an EVDO modem for laptops. A software solution for this is in the works, however.” Link.

Infosync reviews the Motorola Q and had this to say about the Q’s sluggish performance: “When we checked out the Q back in April during CTIA, we were impressed by its relative speed compared to the sluggish model we saw at CES in January. Well, we’re not sure what happened in the interim, but the Q seems to have lost much of its pep. Flipping around various menus with the jog dial, the cursor struggled to catch up and the screen labored to refresh. Even worse, it often took several seconds for applications to launch, and we saw the multi-colored spinning “wait” ball appear all too often – all despite the Q’s relatively generous 64MB of RAM and 128MB of flash ROM.” Link.

Mobiledia reviews the Motorola Q and concludes, “For business users that need a robust all-in-one device, the Q may come up short, and a Treo 700 may be a better option. But for the casual user who wants a phone with a few extra features, and not to mention a head-turning design, the Q is an excellent smartphone and a great value for the price.” Link.

Brighthand reviews the Motorola Q and concludes, “I’ve been using the Treo 700w as my personal device since January, but my few weeks with the Q has me converted. It’s officially supplanted the 700w as the best device for the way I work. Of course, the Q has limitations, but aside from battery life, I don’t need the Q to do any more than it does. … That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with the Treo 700w, Sprint/Verizon 6700 models, or any other of the popular smartphones. Those are excellent solutions for those who need more in terms of functionality.” Link.

PilotOnline reviews the Motorola Q and writes that the Q “lacks a basic text-editing feature: cut and paste. It’s a strange omission that for me severely limits the usefulness of the Q as an e-mail device. The BlackBerry, which has a similar button layout, does cut and paste.The Q doesn’t do Direct Push e-mail, at least not out of the box. Motorola said there is an upgrade in the works but hasn’t said when it will be available. In the meantime, the easiest way to use the Q is to set it to check the Exchange server every 10 minutes or so. That might be fast enough for some people, but if you’re doing a rapid back-and-forth exchange, it’s not.” Link.

Ubergizmo reviews the Motorola Q and writes, “I’m sure that a lot of people complain about the absence of WiFi. Well, yes, it’s true that having Wi-Fi would have been better (especially if it’s free), but honestly, if you have a decent EV-DO connection you might not care at all. The EV-DO coverage is much better then Wi-Fi’s and the EV-DO radio consumes less power too. Bluetooth is already killing battery life, I can only imagine how bad Wi-Fi would be. … The Motorola Q is a slim, sexy and smart phone with a weak battery and a lack of true push e-mail. Luckily, both can be improved without having to wait for the next-generation Q. However, if you order today, that’s what you get.” Link.

Techworld has a review up of the Motorola Q and writes, “Despite access to Verizon’s high-speed EvDO wireless network, the Q seemed sluggish on the Internet. In our lab tests, the Q’s talk-time battery life scored only Fair, lasting 5 hours and 38 minutes - better than battery life of the Treo 700p and 700w, but worse than most PDA/phones we’ve tested recently. … If you need a slimline, large-screened companion at a comparatively low price, the Q deserves consideration. But if looks and size aren’t paramount, it may be worth the extra bucks to step up to another device, and gain more functionality.” Link.

ZDNet Between the Lines has an interesting two-part review of the Motorola Q and writes, “With all these great things to say about it, why are you also saying it’s not ready for prime time?” It’s true. As neat as this phone is, I was quite surprised by the fact that this was let out of the lab with so very much room for improvement. Obvious user interface stuff (at least to me, it’s obvious) that’s really detracts from this SCP’s potential. For example … I called some company and pressed whatever number the phone system told me to press to enter that company’s phone directory in order to look up the number of a person who worked there. The next thing you hear is “Using your telephone’s touchpad, please enter the person’s name starting with the last name first.” … even though the dark keys represent a telephone’s keypad, there’s no way to tell which of the keys to press for certain letters. For example, unless you’re one of those people who can remember the layout of a typical telephone touchpad (I’m not), how would you enter “Smith?”" Link.

GadgetNutz has a review up of the Motorola Q and writes, “This may be the make or break issue for some. Since the Q has no touch screen, you can only view Microsoft Office and Adobe pdf files –you cannot edit them like you can on your Treo or Pocket PC phone. That being said, the viewer was quite good. Simply drag a Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Pdf file to the My Documents directory and then use the file manager application to find it. Once opened you can use the soft keys to either zoon in or pan the file. While it took a little getting used to, it became quite easy to manipulate the view of the document in order to read it. … I did miss the lack of being to edit documents in Documents to Go, but I realize that I have only actually “edited” documents a hand full of times in years – most of my use is for reading documents and the Q handled that fine.” Link.

DigitalTrends has a review up of the Motorola Q and writes, “In many ways, the Q is a missed opportunity. To really differentiate the Q from other Smartphones, Motorola ought to have included a higher resolution camera, a dedicated 3.5mm stereo headset (or at least included a 2.5mm stereo/inline mic ear set), and/or Bluetooth stereo for music listening. We wouldn’t recommend the Q if your primary purpose is e-mail and texting, unless you really want to save some dough. … But the Q exudes a lot more fun and style than both the Blackberry and the Treo, which, in our aesthetics-driven, form-over-function society, seems to count for a lot.” Link.

CNET has a review of the Motorola Q and writes, “call quality was generally good. On our end, conversations were mostly clear, although on a couple of occasions, we noticed some background hiss and muffled sound quality. Callers said they could hear us fine most of the time but also reported some crackling–nothing too bad. On the other hand, speakerphone quality was excellent. We had absolutely no problems whatsoever carrying on a discussion; volume was more than adequate even in loud environments, and our friends said they couldn’t even tell we were on speakerphone. … The Motorola Q lives up to much of the hype by offering good call quality, an excellent multimedia experience, and the essential productivity tools, all wrapped up in a sexy little package.” Link.

Gadgetnutz has a reviewo f the Motorola Q from Sprint and writes, “… the fact that I could use this as a GPS with CoPilot Live, watch TV via SlingPlayer Mobile and listen to Sirius Radio makes this pretty cool. First and foremost, the Q is a great phone – one of the best cell phones I have ever used. I don’t know about you, but I use and rely on the “phone” part of my converged device more than the “Smart” part. The Q feels very solid, but when you take off the battery cover it is almost as flimsy as paper. This leaves me wondering what would happen if the Q were to fall. The “rubberized” feel makes it seem sturdier than the Verizon counterpart. … The screen is among the best that you will find on a smartphone, the keyboard is great to use, call quality is top notch, surfing the web was fun and looked great and the Q is two to three hundred dollars less than many competing Smartphones!” Link.

Infosync has a review of the Motorola Q (Sprint) and gives it an 82% rating: “The firmware version on the Q we tested for this review is markedly improved over the previous version. In addition to improvements in performance, the tethered modem support is something we definitely missed in the older Q. Though the Sprint version has a couple of extra software features over the Verizon Wireless version, both phones still suffer for the flaws of Windows Mobile 5, mainly a lack of editing in Office documents and a scheduling app that is a little basic for our tastes. Though we assume the Q, like the T-Mobile Dash, could be upgraded to Windows Mobile 6, until the carriers make an announcement, we’re not counting on it. As it stands, however, the Motorola Q remains a competitive device, even compared to more recent phones like the Samsung BlackJack. For CDMA customers looking for a slim smartphone, this is probably your best choice.” Link.

TechNewsWorld has a review of the Motorola Q and writes, “The Motorola Q smartphone adequately combines the functionalities of a PDA, Web browser, phone and MP3 player. The Q’s operating system runs Microsoft Windows Mobile, and while there may be advantages to that — compatibility with Microsoft’s desktop applications, for example — the OS shares an irritating attribute with its desktop brother: slow boot times.” Link.

CNET has a review of the Motorola Q, Amp’d Edition, and writes, “While we loved the variety of content, accessing it required a bit of patience. Downloading songs and TV shows took 5 minutes or longer, and we were often greeted with messages like “Your request cannot be processed at this time” or “Cannot connect to the server.” It was all a bit frustrating and certainly time consuming. Multimedia performance was mixed. Music playback was great. There was plenty of volume through the Moto Q’s dual speakers, and sound was impressive for a cell phone with good bass and balance. The video experience was less reliable. Sometimes playback was smooth, with synchronized audio and video; other times the picture was quite choppy.” Link.

LaptopMag has a review of the Moto Q Amp’d Edition and writes, “All in all, the idea of marrying the hippest mobile-content distributor this side of iTunes to a slick device like the Moto Q is a winner. We wish the Amp’d Live interface produced fewer error messages, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a better mix of multimedia features and available content on a smart phone.” Link.

PCMag has a review of the Moto Q Amp’d Edition and writes, “The Q’s 312-MHz processor won’t win a race with other smartphones, but it will get you where you’re going, despite some occasional sluggishness. The handset has 40MB of storage memory available for applications, and Amp’d Mobile also tosses in a 256MB miniSD card to get you started with music and video (hey, 256MB isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing). The Q scored 5 hours 29 minutes of continuous talk time on our battery rundown test, a reasonable figure for an EV-DO phone with such a slim profile.” Link.