Review: Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE

Smartphones with physical keyboards are a dying breed. But if you're a fan of these QWERTY-keyed sliders, you've got to applaud Motorola. Nobody is footing a larger share of the smartphone keyboard's life support bills than Mr. Moto.

In February, the Google-owned Motorola delivered the Droid 4 on Verizon – a solid handset with a great keyboard, but sadly a less-than-stellar display. And now Motorola has dropped the Photon Q 4G LTE, a keyboard-equipped Android phone, available exclusively to Sprint customers for $200 on contract.

The Photon Q feels like it's lagging in comparison to today's top-of-the-line Android handsets, particularly at the $200 price point.Sadly, just as with the Droid 4, the Photon Q feels like it's lagging in comparison to today's top-of-the-line Android handsets, particularly at the $200 price point. The crummy screen and the device's slow performance are the biggest problems, but there are enough additional downsides here that I can only recommend the Photon Q to existing Sprint customers who absolutely insist on using a physical keyboard.

It's a shame the Photon Q isn't a better device. After all, Motorola isn't facing much serious competition in the Android-with-QWERTY realm, outside of the T-Mobile MyTouch Q and the latest Android-powered T-Mobile SideKick 4G, (now more than a year old).

On the inside, the Photon Q is slightly more spritely than the Droid 4, with a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor instead of a 1.2GHz chip. Both handsets pack 1GB of RAM. This looks fine on paper, but in testing, the Photon Q always felt sluggish. It was never as responsive or as fast as I wanted it to be, especially when compared to other $200 handsets I've tested this year, such as Samsung's Galaxy S III and HTC's One X. Even the $100 Motorola Atrix HD, which has the same Snapdragon CPU and 1GB of RAM inside, is faster and more impressive.

The Photon Q also comes with just 8GB of storage, which is a ridiculously small amount of space once you've loaded up on apps and games, and after you've shot a month's worth of photos and videos with the 8-megapixel rear camera. Just about every other $200 phone on the market includes 16GB of on-board storage. It's the industry-wide standard now, and anything less is inexcusable. There's a MicroSD card slot for up to 32GB of additional storage, but MicroSD cards are, of course, sold separately.

My biggest gripe of all is with the display: it's simply not good enough. The Photon Q's 4.3-inch touchscreen has a "qHD" resolution of just 960 x 540 pixels. This feels like a cut corner – Motorola, I know you can make a better display than this. Again, I point to Motorola's own $100 Atrix HD, which has an iPhone-rivaling 1280 x 720-pixel display of indisputable beauty. The Photon Q's lower-resolution "ColorBoost" LCD screen is bright, and the colors are slightly oversaturated, but still attractive. And it's actually one of the better-looking qHD displays I've seen, but the low resolution results in everything looking cluttered and cramped. With dozens of HD games sitting in Google Play waiting for download, and with Netflix and Hulu (and everyone else) capable of streaming videos at 720p or better, shipping a $200 phone with a display this low-res is just silly.

As far as the physical design is concerned, the Photon Q is a mixed bag. The phone feels solid and sturdy, and the plastics don't feel cheap. I'll admit that the keyboard itself is actually a joy to type on. The keys are well-machined, and they click with a satisfying responsiveness. There's a dedicated row at the top just for numbers, and the whole keyboard is edge-lit. Sliding the keyboard out from beneath the display, however, is a bit odd. When you start pushing the screen up, you encounter more resistance than seems necessary until you get about half way, at which point the screen quickly sproings into place. I've used a lot of sliding mechanisms, and this one is awkward.

Because it's packing the keyboard, the Photon Q ends up at 0.54 inches thick. That's a bit chubbier than keyboard-free phones, but the handset doesn't feel too fat, not even in my jeans pocket. The 6-ounce weight is also neither too light nor too heavy. To my eye, the black and silver finish is simple, and a bit boring. It's not unattractive, but it doesn't feel like Moto is stretching the language of smartphone design at all.

Motorola is currently producing the finest variation of Android 4.0 outside of Google's own vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich, an accolade it's won by largely leaving the software alone.One big notch in the plus column is the Photon Q's installation of Ice Cream Sandwich. Motorola is currently producing the finest variation of Android 4.0 outside of Google's own vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich, an accolade it's won by largely leaving the software alone. There are small alterations, like custom fonts, and a lock screen that can launch directly into the most-used apps. Also, Motorola has fiddled with a few of the icons for pre-installed apps: phone, people, text, e-mail, camera, calendar. But the best parts here are what hasn't been changed, such as the app launcher, an ever-present search box on home screens, and the use of on-screen (rather than physical) buttons.

As long as I'm dispensing the love, I have to applaud the total absence of a Sprint logo. This is a wonderful thing, and a design choice usually only seen on Apple's iPhone and unlocked Android phones. A carrier logo on your phone is both unsightly and unnecessary. Why should we be walking billboards for our carriers? We know who we're mailing checks to every month, that's all that matters.

Also cool: the inclusion of a mini-HDMI port, which allows users to connect the Photon Q to an HDTV, mirroring on the big screen what's seen on the phone. If you wind up throwing content to your TV often and you want to charge your phone while you do it, Motorola also sells an HD Dock accessory for $60.

Even though the Photon Q has these few niceties, they aren't enough to save the handset from too many poor choices – the not-true-HD display, the boggy performance, the yawn-boring hardware, the anemic built-in storage and the $200 price tag. For all but the fervent QWERTY keyboard devotees who are also Sprint subscribers, the Photon Q is forgettable.

And if you're a serial thumb-pounder, please do yourself a favor and switch now. Give up the keyboard. The majority of the smartphone-buying public has already done it. The rewards are obvious: scores of touchscreen-only phones, almost all of them offering more bang (and less bulk) for your buck. They all beg for your touch.

WIRED Nice backlit keyboard makes for comfortable and easy thumb-typing (if you must). Aside from Google's own stock Android, Motorola's installation is the best out there. Splash-resistant coating.

TIRED Slow, unresponsive and underperforming, considering what's inside. Low-resolution display is unfit for an HD world. Price is double what it should be. Styling to rival an '86 Chrysler LeBaron. Paltry 8GB of storage.