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Slider cell phone with camera and music player
- Great call quality
- Battery life
- Camera, music player
- MicroSD memory card slot
- 3G coverage is spotty
- Browser criticized in some reviews
- No Gmail, poor email support
- Keypad has flat buttons
- Battery cover falls off easily
The Motorola MOTO Z9 is a slider cell phone that reviewers say offers great voice quality due to Motorola's Crystal Talk enhancement but somewhat spotty 3G performance. CNET's Kent German, for instance, notes that some Web pages and videos take a long time to load (while using T-Mobile service), while PCMag.com, PhoneArena.com and MobileBurn.com say the phone was continually switching between the high-speed 3G and slower EDGE networks, especially indoors. There is some disagreement in reviews over battery life. PCMag.com includes the Motorola Moto Z9 in a roundup of "The Longest Lasting Cell Phones" -- noting that it achieves more than 10 hours of talk time on EDGE -- and MobileBurn.com also gets great results, but PhoneArena.com calls battery life "average at best" after testing in 3G. InfoSync's Philip Berne pretty much trashes the browsing experience, while PCMag.com's Sascha Segan says it's satisfactory, as even "Opera 8 can't work miracles" on script-heavy pages. Ultimately, PCMag.com gives the Motorola Moto Z9 an Editors' Choice, and CNET rates it "excellent."
Even less complimentary reviews don't deny that the Motorola Moto Z9 comes loaded with features, such as GPS, video sharing, music player and a 2-megapixel camera/camcorder. But InfoSync's Berne says it "does a lot right, but not a lot great." A few reviews note that it doesn't do some email functions well at all -- no support for Gmail, and MobileBurn.com's Ricky Cadden says that for Microsoft Outlook, "you'll have to either pay for a synchronization program, or just manually enter all of your contacts." Not every reviewer likes the slideout alphanumeric keypad's flat buttons, and owner reviews sometimes mention that the cover for the battery/microSD slot keeps slipping off. Still, PCMag's Segan notes that it's a better bargain than the Motorola Razr2 V9, though some reviewers like the Sony Ericsson W760 or LG Versa better among multimedia phones.
We found the best reviews at the usual thorough sources -- PCMag.com, CNET, InfoSync, ConsumerReports.org, PhoneArena.com and MobileBurn.com. One slight failure is that PCMag tests battery life only in 2G (EDGE) mode and not 3G, and CNET doesn't appear to test talk time at all. But CNET does offer insights from about 30 owner reviews -- more than Amazon.com has.
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Our Sources
1. PCMag.com
The Motorola Moto Z9 is among eight cell phones in this roundup of products with long talk times per battery charge -- about 10 hours in 2G mode for the Z9 (plus "crystal-clear voice quality"). There's a link to a full review by Sascha Segan in which the Z9 gets an Editors' Choice.
Review: The Longest-Lasting Cell Phones, Jamie Lendino, Aug. 28, 2008
2. CNET
Kent German gives the Motorola Moto Z9 an "excellent" rating, and about 30 owner reviews combine for the same grade. German says the Z9's call quality is "outstanding," although 3G performance is "variable" and photo quality could be better. Music and video playback are "satisfying."
Review: Motorola Z9 (AT&T), Kent German, Apr. 16, 2008
Philip Berne, a tough grader, gives the Motorola Moto Z9 a "good" rating and says that the keypad "wasn't great" and that the Opera Web browser is "disappointing" with "muddy and poor" pages, including images that are "blocky and pixilated." The top 10 multimedia phones list at the bottom doesn't include the Z9.
Review: Motorola Z9 Multimedia Slider Phone Review, Philip Berne, May 1, 2008
4. ConsumerReports.org
The Motorola Moto Z9 is among more than 50 cell phones ranked in a chart, with links to brief reviews on each. You'll need a subscription to see the report.
Review: Cell Phone Ratings, Editors of ConsumerReports.com
Reviews here are thorough, suffering only from lack of numeric ratings so phones can be compared. PhoneArena.com usually gets worse performance in battery tests than other reviewers, and that's the case here.
Review: Motorola Moto Z9 Review, Editors of PhoneArena.com, May 13, 2008
Reviews here are thorough but lack a comparative rankings system other than the "highly recommended" tag applied to the Motorola Moto Z9. Reviewer Ricky Caden says the keypad takes some getting used to, and email can be difficult (Microsoft Outlook) or impossible (Gmail) to use.
Review: Review: Motorola's Razr2-like Z9 Slider, Ricky Cadden, May 27, 2008
7. Amazon.com
More than 20 owner reviews combine to give the Motorola Moto Z9 a good average score, with about two-thirds rating four or the maximum five stars. There are some complaints about the battery cover slipping off. The only one-star rating concerns the Z9 being out of stock.
Review: Motorola Moto Z9, Contributors to Amazon.com
