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Overview:
Verizon Wireless recently updated their very popular Q mobile phone lineup with the eagerly awaited Motorola Q9m. The wireless service provider was the exclusive carrier of the Motorola Q9 when it debuted early last year. Now Motorola has updated the line with Q9s all across the GSM and CDMA markets. The “m” Verizon’s Q9m stands for music. Even though the Q was originally aimed at the business professional market, they are trying to pitch the Q9m at the consumer market, and the music piece centers on trying to get users to pay $1.99 forVCast Music, an exclusive to Verizon Wireless. One other advantage to the Q9m is that it is rocking the latest Windows Mobile 6.

The Q9m comes at a lower price, currently $199 after a $50 rebate and a 2-year service agreement.

At First Glance:

The Q9m at first glance is a very attractive phone as it’s aesthetics are improved over those the original Moto Q. It’s primarily black with red accents on the side. You can definitely tell Verizon is pushing their own branding and color scheme in this device. The keyboard is a big improvement as well (more on the keyboard below). The screen is big and bright, taking up about 50% of the face of this device and is easily visible even in bright daylight. One new feature with the Q9m is the screen has an adaptive technology that turns the screen brightness up and down based on how much light isexistent . Even though the Q9m has a native resolution of 240×320, I believe the resolution should be increased to allow more content to be displayed on the screen.

The Q9m, like the original Q, features a very slim design that is attractive and fits into a pocket very easily. I like the directional controls and soft keys, along with the jog dial on the side to allow for easy one-handed operation. Even though there is no stylus or other pointing device, Motorola made the Q9m pretty easy to work with.

The User Experience:

I was very anxious to try Windows Mobile 6 as my experience with Windows Mobile 5 was mixed. Windows Mobile 5 on my Treo 700W was slow and needed to be restarted multiple times per week as the phone OS would constantly lockup. I wasn’t sure if this bad experience was because of the hardware or Windows Mobile itself.

Windows Mobile 6 is a mostly enjoyable mobile computing experience. However, after using an iPhone, Motorola and the Windows Mobile Platform have a LONG way to go to match theiPhone’s user experience and ease of use.

In my trials with Windows Mobile 6 I found it to be very reliable. I never experienced missed calls (that I know of), text messages or had any of the other issues that Windows Mobile 5 presented. A few times I had to restart the Q9m because mobile Internet Explorer became unresponsive and would not loadwebpages.

My main complaint about the software on the device is Internet Explorer mobile edition. This is a bare-bones browser that is clunky to use. I have tried other mobileInternet browsers including Palm’s Blazer and Opera Mini edition. I tried to end my IE misery by installing Opera Mini, but for some reason I could not download the install package.

Syncing to my employer’s Exchange email system was a pretty easy experience, except for one caveat. I had a co-worker connect to his email and while this happened successfully, when I tried to change theusername and password to my own, I couldn’t find a way to change the username without having to do a Master Reset on the Q9m. I could change the password, but the username was grayed out and could not be changed under any circumstance. Very frustrating.

Motorola included Documents to Go to allow users to create and edit Office-compatible documents. I found using Documents to Go to edit word documents attached to emails to be easy and very useful.

Performance:

The Q9m feels very underpowered. There is a very noticeable lag when you hit buttons and you see an on-screen response in Windows Mobile 6. Applications load slowly and even making preference changes such as background images or themes seem like they take a long time to load. After doing some research online, I don’t feel the Q9m is the culprit, instead I think Windows Mobile 6 is a bit bloated. Hopefully a software update can give some much needed zip to this device.

My Motorola bluetooth headset synced flawlessly with the Q9m, allowing me to do hands free calling. I understand the Q9m has A2DP which allows for the use of stereoBluetooth headphones and headsets, but i wasn’t able to test this feature.

Text messaging is easy on the Q9m. I found the keyboard to be great to type on, much better than the Treo 700W and 600 I’ve tried in the past. The rubberized keyboard makes typing easy and fast.

I found call quality to be mixed. Overall I could easily hear the remote party and they could hear me just fine, but about 40% of the time I could hear an annoying buzzing hissing sound in the Q9m. People I called could never hear the sound and I never did hear it while making a call with theBluetooth headset.

Doing anything with data including downloading emails and surfing the web is a breeze on this device. Using Verizon’s fast EV-DO service, the bits fly quickly and without much lag. The connectivity piece of this phone is a major offering. I also downloaded and installed Google Maps, and using EV-DO this combination is a killer app.

Battery life is my main performance complaint. I had to charge the Q9m every day after moderate voice and data usage. This is common withsmartphones (especially 3G ones), but the complaint still needs to be registered.

Conclusion:

The new Motorola Q9m improved on it’s predecessor in many ways. However, I don’t like Verizon’s multi-media push. The Q was just fine as asmartphone that could browse the web and integrate the user into the Windows Mobile experience. $1.99 is way too much to charge anyone for a song that can only play on one mobile device.

Aside from my objections to Verizon’s multi-media services, I feel the Motorola Q9m is a great phone, especially at it’s $199 price. It’s a solid device that feels good to use and still gets looks when I’m in public. If you’re looking for a Windows Mobile 6 device and can handle a little operational lag, the Q9m is a solid choice.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Yesterday, after not receiving any feedback from anyone at Ooma after my last blog post, I decided to instigate an online chat with their support site.

I first got what I assume is a level one support person. After I started asking my questions, he quickly transferred me to an engineer.

Agent (Vincent): “Helllo Jason, My Name is Vince. How can I help you?”
	Techcraver: “hey Vincent. I have a question. I have ooma invites to give out, but my family members are wondering: is a PSTN number required to use ooma?”
	Agent (Vincent): “It is not required, but it’s more for backup.”

Then I started to ask the key question, about security:

	Agent a: “so you are concerned about the last leg on PSNT in term of security?”
	techcraver: “pretty much.”
	Agent a: “from your questions, I can see you understand our DT technology”
	Techcraver: “I’m a VoIP junkie”
	Agent a: “so while the call travels via IP, it’s encrypted, but once you are on a PSTN, on the box side, we have the ability to detect phone tapping”
	Techcraver: “this is my main fear, someone using one of these : http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=282490&ref=froogle&pfp=froogle&cm_ven=froogle&cm_cat=&cm_pla=&cm_ite=feed“
0	Agent a: “this said, some one sitting outside you home with crocodile clip can connect just like they can on traditional phone lines”
	Agent a: “give me a sec to look at that link..”
	Techcraver: “it’s just a phone splitter”
	Techcraver: “so what’s the recourse if you detect splitting/tapping”
	Agent a: “yes.. but ooma is still more secure than your regular phone line..”
	Agent a: “even more so if both sides have ooma, because the calls will be encrypted and decrypted right at the box”Agent a: “if we detect tapping we simply disconnect the call..”

But what about my question regarding if a bomb threat (or threatening phone number) is called in from the ooma network and my ooma box is the node that the call is terminated from?

	Techcraver: “what about this scenerio. What happens if my ooma box is a ‘node’ and my node is the gateway for a bomb threat that is called in. They trace the call and see that it ‘came from’ my number. then what?”
	Agent a: “ok so first, any call that is terminated by an ooma box was originated by an ooma box, this being the case, we know where the call originated from.”
	Agent a: “we keep track of all calls made to and from an ooma box”
	Agent a: “so if a bomb threat is made through your ooma box, we have the callers name and address.”
	Agent a: “Also more than likely, we’ll permanently disable that ooma box.”
	Agent a: “the one used to originate the call of course, not the one used to route the call. I hope this answers your question.”
	Techcraver: “ok. I can just see alot to go through for the node owner. That is, cops banging on my door - having to explain what ooma is; so on and so forth.”
	Agent a: “cops would not come to your door”
	Agent a: “the FCC would call us to get the trace of the call.”
	Agent a: “then they would give the name and location of the caller to the proper authorities”
	Techcraver: “ok. very cool. I appreciate your time. these are the questions my friends and family have asked as I’ve share the ooma idea with them”

So in all, I feel that I advanced toward an answer to my questions, but I still don’t feel 100% secure in recommending Ooma as a telephony solution for anyone that calls on my opinion.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.

Update: here’s the full cnet.com story with more information.

WOW. A while back I wrote about my brand spankin’ new Vizio 47″ 1080P LCD. I have had it now for roughly 6 months and I still love it. It’s a fantastic TV that still continues to get oohs and awws when people see it for the first time. Recently I bought a Wii and it the games look great on it too.

I read this morning on Cnet’s news blog that Vizio is the number 1 LCD make, surpassing Samsung, Sony, and Sharp! It goes to show that if you concentrate on making great products and delivering awesome customer service, your company will be successful.

Congrats to Vizio! You guys deserve it!

This is from the Reasons-To-Move-To-England Department:

If you’re in the UK, you can now order your pizza via SMS. You have to go online and pre-register (probably to put in your full name, address, etc), but after that you can order via text message to your heart’s content. Very cool.

In the States we can now order pizza online, I look forward to this service coming to the United States soon.

As an advocate for services over SMS, I’m glad to see this innovative offering.

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Skype, the darling of software based VoIP products, maybe down right now; but I love what they ARE doing.  They’re communicating to their users.  On their blog they have updated their status multiple times.  After being a victim of Sunrocket’s demise, it’s refreshing to see a company doing it right.

Bravo Skype!  Thank you for being up front with us!

Netflix had a tough quarter, as indicated by their last quarterly conference call.  Blockbuster online is continuing to give them a run for their money.  Today they made a move that will win over new people and keep current customers happy.  For those on the three movie a month plan, they lowered their montly fee another dollar to $15.99.  Very Cool!

Perhaps time to pick up some NFLX, hmm maybe

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Last weekend I enjoyed my first Gnomedex, a tech conference hosted by Chris and Ponzi Pirillo. Seattle was the backdrop for this fantastic conference. Chris asked for feedback via our blogs, so that’s the intent of this post along with generating some discussion.

Gnomedex is an interesting conference because it’s single track, meaning there’s one session per time period and everyone sees the same speaker at the same time. The audience is varied. There are bloggers, videocasters, podcasters, general tech enthusiasts and marketers.

With all that said, the sessions as a whole were very useful. I didn’t enjoy the first session hosted by Robert Steele. As I said on Twitter, I think mixing politics and tech is great, as long as the tech is tied to somehow. Mr. Steele had no focus in his talk and this became very apparent during the question/answer period. He dodged a few questions, in my opinion, because he didn’t have a decent answer.

The Calacanis talk at the end of Friday generated a lot of buzz on the internet and became a meme in the coverage on Gnomedex. It was so entertaining for me to be in the same room while Calacanis is speak, Winer is heckling him, and Scoble’s using twitter to comment on Calacanis subject matter. It was like being in the middle of a tomato fight. Fun stuff.

The following day, Cali Lewis and her husband Neal spoke about the rise of their video podcast. Even though it wasn’t popular, I enjoyed it. I am a fledgling pod/videocaster so it was fascinating for me to hear their story. Thank you to Cali/Neal and Chris for bringing them on stage.

I had some amazing hallway conversations. I met some great people including Andru Edwards and Britt Raybould. Also it was a joy to meet Scoble and Chris.

Also take a look at my flickr photoset.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

For those of you who didn’t see the coverage a while back, a company called Ooma announced a product that would do away with your long distance costs “for life”. The product was not very warmly received by the blogosphere.

The basic idea behind ooma is that you connect it 1) to your broadband internet connection, 2) to your local landline, and 3) to your cordless phone system. If you make a call that is out of your local area, ooma will route the call to someone else’s ooma device and place the call locally. And on the flipside, someone who is making a call remotely to your local area will use your local landline to place his/her call. So basically you’re sharing your landline to anyone on the internet with an Ooma device.

I (along with others) have two main concerns. Theoretically, someone on the other ooma can easily eavesdrop onto my conversation (by splitting the outgoing signal and listening in), and 2) if someone were to call in a bomb threat remotely from the internet; and the call is placed ‘from’ my landline - isn’t that a BAD thing?!

I’m hoping someone with knowledge about this will either comment on this or call me (my phone number is on the upper right of this blog). Either way, I’ll update this post for the benefit of my readers.

According to Michael over at TechCrunch, Flickr will soon be adding support to hold videos.  A few weeks ago, I was trying to decide whether to buy a Flickr Pro account.  Well I buckled down and bought a yearly subscription.  I’m very glad I did, even with flickr’s current feature set.

I’m in the same boat as Mr. Arrington, I often have digital videos off my camera that just sit in iPhoto because there’s no convenient place to upload them to.  There’s one or two on youtube, but I’d really like to have them in Flickr, for my family’s benefit and ease of use.

Yahoo continues to be doing great things and I’m very excited flickr will be adding this!

Wow what a couple of days for two particular tech stocks that I follow.  Amazon.com, the great online retailer, reported that their net profit is up 250% when compared to the same quarter last year.  WOW!  I’m a firm believer in Amazon’s business model and I use their services as often as possible.  Check ‘em out - their symbol is AMZN.

On the flip side, another tech firm I’m a customer of, Netflix reported some not-so-good news yesterday.  For the first time in the companies’ history, they had a loss in the number of subscribers.  They are facing some competition from Blockbuster.  However, BB has a huge overhead to account for and Netflix is known for their operational excellence.  I agree with the market that Netflix is in a but of a rut right now, but Reed Hastings will see them out of it.  For your reference, their ticker symbol is NFLX.