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Phone Features and Reception The Z9 features Motorola's CrystalTalk technology which reduces background noise and improves outgoing voice quality. Whatever that special sauce is, the Moto Z9, like the Moto Q9 Global on AT&T, very, very good. Incoming voice is clear and distinct with above average volume and outgoing voice is landline clear with good volume. If you find most GSM phones too quiet to hear, the Z9 should be on your short list since it's one of the louder phones currently on the market. Voice quality through Bluetooth headsets was good, though not as impressive what we heard when using the handset itself. We tested the Moto with the Plantronics Discovery 655 which has its own very good DSP and below average range with all handsets. The Z9 and Plantronics 655 DSPs worked well together (2 DSPs can over-cancel noise and create artificial outgoing voice) and we got about 15 feet of range which is very good for the 655. We also tested the tiny Jabra BT8040 which generally has clipped and digitized sounding incoming and outgoing voice with most phones. It did better than average with the Moto, sounding a bit clipped at the high end, but female voices were still easily understood. Range with the Jabra was easily 25 feet.
The Z9 has a speakerphone that's loud and clear and Voice Signal's voice command software that offers accurate speaker independent (no voice tags required) voice dialing and commands. Voice command worked well with the Moto itself and and over Bluetooth headsets including stereo A2DP headsets like the Motorola S9. The Z9 has speed dial (1 through 9 with 1 assigned to voicemail), caller photo ID, and you can assign ringtones to individual contacts in the phone's address book (but not to those stored in a SIM card). The Moto Z9 supports AT&T's Video Share feature which allows you to do one-way video calls with other AT&T subscribers using Video Share-enabled AT&T phones. To make a video call, you first need to initiate a voice call, the wait about 10 seconds for the phone to realize you're: 1) in a 3G coverage area, 2) calling a Video Share-enabled phone, then select the video share menu option. If someone calls you and wants to send you video, you'll see an on-screen prompt asking if you wish to accept the video. Only the person sending video pays a fee, currently .35 cents/minute if you don't have the $4.99/month Video Share feature added to your plan that gets you 25 minutes of video (there's also a $9.99 plan with 60 minutes).
The 2,000 record address book has a plethora of fields by feature phone standards and includes multiple phone numbers (mobile, home, work, page, fax, other), email addresses, URLs, street addresses, as well as first name, last name birthday and notes. As you'd expect, there's SMS and MMS support along with mobile email. The Motorola Z9 is a quad band GSM world phone that will work anywhere GSM service is available. It's got dual band US 3G (850/1900MHz) with HSDPA 3.6 Mbps support, making it a good buddy for tethering to a notebook and also plenty fast for watching CV (Cellular Video, AT&T's streaming video service). Web pages load very quickly using the included Opera 8 web browser, though rendering is still feature phone style, lacking the sophisticated desktop layout of smartphones and the iPhone. Multimedia The phone's rear-firing speaker is loud and clear for speakerphone calls and music, though the best sound comes through Bluetooth stereo headsets like the Motorola S9 and Plantronics Pulsar 590 which sound excellent. We were particularly surprised by the S9 whose small earbuds don't generally deliver deep bass and are prone to a bit of hiss with many phones. Paired with the Z9, they were at their best with good bass, pleasing stereo separation and no background hiss. The Plantronics 590 over-the-ear headset does well with most all phones and sounded great for music playback with the Z9. Given the Moto's ability to use high capacity microSD cards up to 8 gigs, the phone could become your mobile music player. The moto has flight mode so you can use it for music and gaming in-flight. The music player supports most popular music formats, including unprotected iTunes format files: MP3, WMA, AAC, EAAC+, Real and WAV. Music playback controls appear on the circular d-pad's surface when the music player is running-- very cool. Using the phone, you can download music from eMusic.com and "sideload" music from Napster using a PC. The music player supports playlists (you can create them directly on the phone), background playback and it picks up song details including album, artist genre and title, which means you can select songs in any of those categories for playback. In addition to the magically appearing playback controls in the d-pad, control indicators appear on the phone's homescreen along with "Stop Music" assigned to the left softkey. Strangely, if you choose to view song properties of the song currently playing, the music pauses, but otherwise the player operated as expected.
Music playback controls appear in the d-pad when a song is playing. The phone's large 2.4" QVGA 240 x 230 pixel display is gorgeous-- sharp, glossy, vivid and very bright. It's perfect for video playback and viewing photos taken with the camera. It's readable outdoors with some glare thanks to the glossy finish. The Motorola Z9 handles AT&T's CV streaming video service with aplomb. CV is included with AT&T's $15/month unlimited MEdia Net data package and offers content from CNN, ESPN, The Weather Channel, Sci-fi channel (including full episodes of Battestar Galactica and Ghost Hunters) and snippets of content from other major networks. HBO streaming episodes are available for an additional monthly fee and full episodes are broken down into 5 to 10 minute segments so you'll need to stream 5 or 6 segments to see a full hour show. The Moto plays CV in a window, and the full screen option looked quite good though buffering became an issue during the first 20 seconds of playback. The Z9's large d-pad works well for games and we tested a variety of titles all of which played easily and ran well on the phone. AT&T offers a good selection of downloadable games for those who like interactive entertainment during downtimes. GPS GPS was once the province only of smartphones on AT&T. The Moto Z9 is AT&T's fist feature phone to offer AT&T Navigator (formerly called TeleNav and still powered by TeleNav) with a built-in aGPS. AT&T Navigator is a Java application that offers maps, directions (on-screen and spoken), traffic alerts and POIs (points of interest). The service costs $9.99/month, billed to your AT&T account and maps and POI data are downloaded over the MEdia Net data connection, so a data plan is required. The Z9 typically got our location within 30 seconds on a clear day outdoors and in a car (the first fix took about a minute) and was accurate within 40 feet. Directions were clear and accurate from the female voice and there are options for travel via the shortest, quickest, pedestrian or traffic-optimized routes among others. The application has 2D and 3D moving maps, voice guidance in English and Spanish, traffic alerts and the ability to route to typed addresses or spoken (via a toll free call-in number, not voice recognition). We like TeleNav: it's accurate, easy to use and the maps are up-to-date. If you travel to unknown territory frequently and don't own a dedicated GPS, it's worth the $10/month.
Battery The Motorola Z9 comes with a 950 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's user replaceable. That's a good amount of power for a feature phone, and the Z9 needs it to power the large display, 3G radio and GPS. Battery life is average for a feature-rich 3G phone, and the Moto lasted us 3 days of light use and 1 day of heavy use which included 40 minutes of CV, 40 minutes of GPS use with AT&T Navigator and 1 hour of talk time. Claimed talk time is 3 hours which is on target in 3G coverage areas (3G uses more battery power than GSM and EDGE) and claimed standby is 12 hours which seems accurate. Conclusion The Moto Z9 is a hard phone to not like. It's got great looks, a sturdy build with metal casing, it feels good in the hand and has a wealth of useful features. As the first GPS-enabled feature phone on AT&T, the Moto Z9 will be on your short list if navigation is important but you don't want a smartphone. The haptic side controls, music playback controls that appear when a tune is playing are not only cool but useful and the keypad and controls are roomy enough for even the largest-handed guys. While the RAZR-esque flat keypad isn't as easy to use a a traditional button keypad, we didn't have much trouble texting or sensing when we'd moved from one number to another thanks to the metal stipples. Music playback quality is very good, especially over A2DP stereo Bluetooth headsets and the camera is one of the better among US 2MP camera phones. Most important: call quality is excellent, reception is good and call volume is loud enough for a busy mall. Our only complaint? The microSD card is very hard to remove. Web sites: www.hellomoto.com, wireless.att.com Price: $149.99 with a 2 year contract and ATT online discounts
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