The Photon Q 4G LTE for Sprint ($200 with a
two-year contract) is one of the best keyboard-equipped phones you can buy
today. It runs Android 4.0.4 beneath a custom Motorola overlay.
The front of the Photon Q holds a
1.3-mrgapixel camera and a 4.3-inch, 540-by-960-resolution screen. The phone
uses Ice Cream Sandwich’s virtual navigation buttons.
The
Photon Q 4G LTE for Sprint is one of the best keyboard-equipped phones you can
buy today
The Photon Q carries a 1785mAh embedded
battery; such batteries are supposed to last longer but you can’t replace them
yourself if the need ever arises.
The keyboard buttons felt great under my
fingers as I typed, but the spacebar emitted an unsettling cracking noise every
time I pressed it.
Powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm
MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 processor with 1GB of RAM, the Photon handled virtually
everything I threw at it, including most of the games I tried.
Call quality over Sprint’s network left a
lot to be desired: Voices sounded a bit muffled, and I heard a low buzzing
noise whenever someone spoke. Since call quality varies depending on your
location, consult cover-age maps for your area.
The Photon Q is one of the few phones that
can connect to Sprint’s new LTE network. That network hasn’t launched in San
Francisco, so I couldn’t test the phone’s speeds on it. On Sprint’s current 3G
network, the Photon Q managed an average download speed of 0.49 megabit per
second and an average upload speed of 0.86 mbps, as measured by the Ookla Speed
Test app.
Even with LTE turned on, the Photon Q held
out for most of a day (about 5.5 hours) of normal use – I sent text messages,
downloaded a few apps, and played games on it. In our lab’s formal battery
tests, it lasted for 7 hours, 5 minutes.
The phone’s rear speaker delivers decent
sound, but you can get better audio quality by using headphones.
I wasn’t particularly impressed with the
photos that I captured using the second, 8-megapixel camera. They tended to be
a bit dark and washed out. The 1.3-megapixel camera worked well for video
calls.
The Photon Q can record video in 1080p,
though footage appeared a tad dark and audio pickup was slightly muffled.
Though a bit chunky and hampered by a
mediocre camera, the Photon Q is a solid choice for anyone who wants a phone
that has a physical keyboard. If you text frequently, or if you tend to com
pose a lot of email messages on your phone, this Motorola model is well worth a
closer look.
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Details
Ratings: 4/5
Price: $200 (with two-year contract)
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