Keith Combs' Blahg

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I caved... I'm now a Motorola Q fanboy

TechNet Blogs > Keith Combs' Blahg > I caved... I'm now a Motorola Q fanboy

I caved... I'm now a Motorola Q fanboy

22 Jun 2006 11:55 PM
  • Comments 7

I wasn’t kidding when I said my Cingular Audiovox SMT 5600 was obsolete. Verizon made it easy for me.  They dropped my employee discounted price to the “get off the fence” price point.  I picked up my Motorola Q at the local CircuitCity store a couple of days ago.  They have a rather large Verizon Wireless booth inside the store.  I printed off my employee pricing from the Verizon B2B Microsoft employee purchasing site and took it to the counter.  The reps were very polite and professional. They even went into the back of the store and found me the kewl leather case.  I hear horror stories all the time about customer service, but Matthew Stout and the rest of the VZW crew in Southlake, Texas are doing a great job.  They were able to do everything but give me the Unlimited PDA/Smartphone Microsoft Employee SKU.  I fixed that this morning with one email to my Verizon regional rep. 

I’ve been testing the phone to see if it really meets my needs.  It does.  It’s perfect, for me.  Some of my friends are scratching their heads.  You see, they are PocketPC touch screen fanboys.  I am not.  I love single handed Smartphone navigation and use. 

My phone number is currently in port transition as it migrates from Cingular to my device.  Naturally, it’s already been turned off at Cingular.  That happened very quickly.  Shocker.  My phone should be able to receive calls by lunch tomorrow.

So how many more services can a person get from Verizon?  I have Verizon Business FIOS.  I have Verizon Voicewing.  I have Verizon BroadbandAccess (for the remaining two months on my contract). Now I have Verizon Wireless.  Actually there is one service I want, that I can’t have.  I want FIOS HDTV.  I can’t get it unless I want to go back to a residential FIOS plan.  I don’t want it that bad.

UPDATE: My telephone number has been ported without issue.  All of the CSRs I’ve dealt with were very polite and professional.  Wait times for help was pretty low (less than five minutes).  The website immediately reflected the telephone number change.

For fun, I set my ActiveSync email check to five minutes and turned the GPS locator on fulltime.  That drained the standard battery in 24 hours as expected.  I also have the extended battery.  I’ll test it when I get back from vacation. 

 

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Comments
  • rob
    29 Jun 2006 2:55 PM
    Saw in the internet where Verizon has upgraded their FIOS to 100mb/sec...  Man I wish we had that here..  Actually, AT&T called me the other day and offered to double my bandwidth from 1.5mbps to 3.0 for only $5 extra a month.  I politely refused.  I don't think I ever tax my 1.5mbps so it would be a waste of money for me.  You don't need gobs of bandwith to frag good, just low latency.. ;-)
  • Adam
    6 Jul 2006 11:49 AM
    I've been wanting one and with the Microsoft discount, it looks mighty tempting. This post was made a few weeks ago, what are you impressions now?
  • 6 Jul 2006 1:38 PM
    It has been working great for me.  I get 24 hours battery life with the standard battery and 48 with the extended (currently on special for $19.99).  It's easy to setup and use.  I like the single handed Smartphone operation.  EVDO speeds are very good although I just started testing that.  The leather optional case is a must.

    I use mine primarily as a phone, and to view email.  I use Exchange Active Sync and can’t wait for a firmware upgrade to get me to MSFP and direct push.  Rumor is that we’ll have that by Christmas although no firm commitment has been made by Verizon yet.  I have my phone set to grab email every 30 minutes.

    One thing rarely mentioned is the sound quality.  It has 4 speakers and sounds great.  Best I’ve ever heard from a phone.  I keep a healthy collection of music on my MiniSD card and have received comments from several people on how good the sound coming from it is.

    I wish it had an ambient light sensor so that the screen wasn’t so bright at night.  I’m still learning how to use it, so maybe I just haven’t stumbled across the profile settings for LCD brightness.  

    Keyboard locking works nicely and turns the LCD off quickly on key bumps.  That’s the first newbie question that comes up.  Read The Fabulous Manual (RTFM).  Page 17 in the pdf to be exact.  

    The camera works well enough but it doesn’t compare to my Sony.

    There are lots of little things I haven’t explored like voice recognition, speed dialing, etc.  I only got mine just before heading to Oahu and Kauai.  It worked fine on the islands until we rounded Nohili Point and headed for the Na Pali Coast.  You fully expect to see a Tyrannosaurus jump out of the bushes there.

    I only have a couple of dislikes so far.  The first is that the vmail password isn’t hidden on key presses.  It’s too big and bold.  You can create a contact and add the vmail pin which hides it so there is a workaround.  The second is the lack of a supported way to tether the device to a pc and use it as an internet gateway.  

    If you can get one for below $200 I'd jump on it although Motorola has said they think the price will be closer to $50 by Christmas.  Maybe by then they'll have a GSM version, other market competition and offerings to get it down to that price.  It would be a steal at $50.  I paid less than $200 but more than $50 and am very happy.

    We’ll see if it lasts for two years…
  • Keith Combs' Blahg
    7 Jul 2006 1:06 AM
    I was all gung ho about the Motorola Q.  I was so hopeful I finally had a phone in my sight that...
  • Adam
    14 Jul 2006 12:17 PM
    I'm almost convinced. Thanks for the breakdown! Your should make that a seperate post, its long enough, ;) I guess i just need to play with it for a while and see if i like how it feels.

    Thanks again!
  • 26 Jul 2006 8:45 PM
    So what do you think about VoiceWing?  I also have Verizon FIOS, and I am considering VoiceWing.  Have you ever heard any comparisons with Vonage?
  • 27 Jul 2006 1:08 PM
    I never made a direct comparison although Vonage and Sun rocket get great reviews.  At the time I started using VoiceWing, they were priced above the competition but have since lowered their price to be more competitive.

    I use VoiceWing to deliver my webcasts and normal phone calls.  Many of the calls I make are 60-120 minute conference calls and it has performed almost flawlessly.

    Outages are rare and the Linksys box does a good job althought a power off and back on seems to be needed every couple of weeks.  It appears to have a small memory leak that crops up over time.

    I've been very happy with VoiceWing and was very happy to receive the discount (automatically) a month or two ago.  When was the last time you got a discount from your phone service provider?
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