It’s been awhile since I sported the Moto. Since last February, I’ve been a Palm dude. Don’t get me wrong–that Treo 750 was a great phone. Windows Mobile 6, a touchscreen, 3G speeds for music streaming, and a full QWERTY keyboard, all in a little phone.

While it did have it’s own share of downsides (less-than-satisfactory battery life, limited Bluetooth, “fatter” size, random momentary slowness), it’s not because of the phone itself that I no longer am using it for my main phone. No, this goes back to the RadioShack days.

On a recent trip to Green Bay, I stopped by good old RadioShack store 6263 and caught up on old times. One thing that was mentioned was the changing of the Cingular/at&t rep. The rep who was there when I was working had moved on, and there was a new rep on the horizon. When new reps happen, they usually go through the ANR employee plan list (the resellers who get awesome plans) and get rid of anyone who doesn’t work at RadioShack still. Since I didn’t want to risk losing my account (or getting a basic plan with pay-as-you-go text/internet (this would really hurt me with the Push Email)), I went ahead and got myself a consumer plan and a new phone through the proper channels.

Now I’m like everyone else. I no longer get to pay $50 for 2000 minutes and unlimited text/internet/msgs. I no longer am on a contractless plan, where I could technically leave whenever I wanted with no penalty. I no longer have to buy phones off eBay to keep my employee plan active.

So you know the story, and now you can know the new phone.

Getting this new phone was slightly difficult, because I knew getting used to a non-touchscreen phone wasn’t going to be easy. There was just a certain ease and speed to using a touchscreen that I’ll definitely miss. Alas, I now have the Motorola Q. Not that old Q that had issues. This is a Q for GSM networks like at&t (and the rest of the world). This is a Q that keeps the good points of the original Q, and fixes everything else.

Granted, I have only had this Q for a couple days, but I can make these points for certain:

• Battery life is awesome. I got two batteries with the phone–1 skinny one, and 1 fat one. The fat one says it gets 9 hours of talk time. While I haven’t tested much of this yet, I can say this phone handles battery usage much better than my old phone. I’ve been doing heavy streaming media usage with it lately, and I’ve been using bluetooth headphones with it. Several hours, and I’m still good. Once I get into a normal usage pattern for this phone, I can figure out a more solid battery usage number.
• Bluetooth works great. It supports all of the profiles that my other phone didn’t have, so I can do things like transfer files between phones or computer.
• Built-in GPS. So far the only application that really takes advantage of this is Google Maps with it’s locate feature.
• Camera improvements. This phone has a 2 megapixel camera with a flash that will blind you. I think it makes a better flashlight than a flash.
• Lots of memory. 120MB onboard.
• Much lighter and much skinnier than my old phone (a little wider, but it’s surprisingly comfortable)
• Opera as the default browser. Takes some getting used to at first, but it’s a pretty cool concept.
• Sound. The speaker on this phone is surprisingly good. Granted most of my music listening is via headphones on this phone (it’s compatibility with Napster has officially made this my MP3 player), the speakers are nice and loud, and sound really good
• Reception. This phone gets amazing reception. It doesn’t fix the crappy signal I get in my apartment, but the deadzones are much smaller now. Whoever designed the antenna on this thing was an absolute genius.
• I think this was always a Palm bug, but the alarm clock does work. I am sad only because it limits you to just one alarm, not three like the Fusic (which, by the way, is still my main alarm clock).

Get more info about the Moto Q9h here.

Despite liking my old phone, I’m really liking this phone very quickly. Nice hardware, rock-solid OS, and sweet battery life.

Hello, Moto.

~Jaker