Sprint did something interesting with the Samsung Galaxy S - no, we?re not on the wrong
phone; just stay with me. It took the first-edition Galaxy S and told Samsung that it wanted to
add a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. That?s how we got the first iteration of the Epic. Then,
when the Galaxy S II came around, Sprint ditched the keyboard - and added a bunch of words
to the name. With Motorola?s Photon line, Sprint has done just the opposite. It started
with a simple slab with the first Photon, and for its sequel, it?s added a hardware
QWERTY keyboard, as well as LTE support and a few other things. How does the new phone
fare on the whole? Let?s find out. I?m Michael Fisher, this is Pocketnow.com, and this is
our full review of the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE. At first glance, the new Photon seems
almost identical to its predecessor, with its jet black body and motorola?s trademark
cut-corners. That illusion vanishes when you pick up the device, though; compared to other
modern smartphones, it?s very thick, at 13.7mm - but for good reason; there?s a slide-out
surprise under there that we?ll get to in a sec. Given that added bulk, the new Photon
feels lighter than you?d expect in the hand. In fact, before I realized the 1785mAh battery
was embedded, I thought I was handing a device without a battery inside. It?s not featherweight
at 170g, but it?s certainly lighter than it looks. Up front here, the display is a 4.3?
540x960 TFT LCD with Motorola?s ?ColorBoost? technology and around 256 pixels per inch.
Even though it?s not an HD display, is looks gorgeous, with brilliant colors and, for an
LCD at least, relatively deep blacks. Motorola doesn?t call out the glass covering it as
Gorilla Glass, but it does say it?s scratch-resistant. It?s also quite a fingerprint magnet, more
so than other devices. Above it is the 1.3MP front-facing camera, which shoots in 720p
HD. Beside that, above the Motorola branding, is the earpiece, which also contains an LED
notification bar that, for me, only lit up when the device was charging. On the right
side here are the hardware camera key and volume controls, On the back is the 8MP 1080p
camera with LED flash, a speakerphone grill down below, and, though there?s no mention
of Motorola?s CrystalTalk noise reduction technology in any of the device literature,
there is a noise canceling mic up here in the corner. On the left-hand side, MicroUSB
and HDMI-out ports are in evidence, there?s nothing going on on the bottom here, and up
top, a headphone jack and the center-mounted standby/power button, which is very easy to
access with a forefinger. The real fun part comes when you slide the unit open to reveal
that five-row keyboard. The keys are LED-backlit with adjustable sidelighting, and Motorola
says the keys themselves are ?laser cut.? I don?t know if you?d be able to tell that,
or what benefits that provides, but it sounds cool. More important, is the keys? click and
travel. Typing on the Photon Q?s keyboard is luxurious. You?ve got nothing but space
on this wide board, and each key delivers a satisfying click when pressed. The dedicated
number row up top really helps with input speed, and little touches like the Caps Lock
indicator further spruce up the experience. In all, it?s one of the best physical keyboards
we?ve ever used, packed into a device that feels equally comfortable in either one-handed
or two-handed usage scenarios. Sprint customers considering this device will want to know
how well they can expect it to hold up over a two-year contract. Let?s talk raw specs
for a second. This phone is powered by a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor running at
1.5GHz, backed up by a gig of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage, with the usual MicroSD
expansion up to an additional 32GB. The phone also brings something interesting to Sprint
customers on the radio side: in addition to domestic support for CDMA and LTE that gives
the device part of its name, the Photon Q also offers international roaming with quad-band
GSM and HSPA radios. That said, there?s no user-accessible SIM; it?s embedded just like
the battery, so it?s not quite as useful if you want the freedom to use it on any overseas
carrier you wish. Aside from that, radios include the usual Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi b/g/n,
and support for NFC. The last time we checked out Motorola hardware like this on the Atrix
HD, the software left us wanting more. So how does the new Photon stack up in this department?
In short, not too shabby. Motorola?s running their sneaky, phantom skin-that?s-not-quite-a-skin
on top of Android 4.0.4. It?s subtle, but it?s definitely there, and most of its tweaks
are very useful - like the unlock-to-app shortcuts on the lock screen, and the Motorola bubbles
widget that we like a lot. There?s also the pop-up app preview windows for some stock
apps, which are handy in a pinch, and the Motorola SMARTACTIONS app, allowing you to
set rules for different battery-saving and location-aware scenarios. There?s also support
throughout the OS for landscape-based interaction, when the keyboard is deployed. That?s something
we saw a lot on early builds of Android, like on the HTC G1 and the original Motorola Droid,
and it?s nice to see it again here. Swapping between landscape and portrait still takes
a few beats, and the phone is sometimes a little slow to wake up - dropped frames in
animations are pretty common, especially when calling up the launcher. But overall, performance
is perfectly acceptable if you?re not a UI perfectionist. In the real world, the new
Photon performed ... as well as it could. Don?t get me wrong; the device is solid, but
it?s really hamstrung by Sprint?s slow EvDO network. Testing the Photon ?4G LTE? was an
exercise in frustration in the Greater Boston area, where download speeds never got above
600 kilobits-per-second. I know that doesn?t sound too bad for 3G, but speeds even close
to that only happened a handful of times. Most of our time with the new Photon was spent
in the 100-to-200 kilobits-per-second range, with very high ping times. Sometimes, network
communication issues were so bad that Speedtest wouldn?t even run. In a practical sense, that
made regular use of apps like Pandora, Spotify, and Instagram painful, if not impossible.
Already laggy apps like Facebook timed out often, and sending email attachments was hit-or-miss.
At times of lower network load, like 3am, the device worked fine, so we know it wasn?t
the Photon itself, but network issues, probably resulting from overloading in this densely-populated
area. We had better luck using the Sprint network in our Sprint Galaxy S III review
just a few months ago, so this sharply-degraded performance came as a bit of a surprise. Your
mileage may vary depending on the network condition in your area, but if you live in
a densely-populated city where Sprint is a popular carrier, you?ll want to give this
device a thorough test drive during your exchange period to make sure you can live with the
data rates. That, or stay on WiFi all the time. It?s a stark reminder of just how far
behind Sprint is in network build-out, and how quickly their LTE build needs to happen.
Thankfully, on the voice side, things couldn?t be better. Motorola has a history of providing
some of the best voice calling in the business, and that continues to be true here. Despite
the lack of any mention of CrystalTalk Noise Reduction in the specs, callers weren?t bothered
by background noise on our end very often, and they said we sounded fine. On our side,
we got excellent clarity and good volume from the earpiece, with a nice helping of warm
sidetone, another Motorola trademark. Speakerphone performance was okay - but as always, we wish
it coulda been louder. Sadly, another Motorola staple is an underwhelming camera, and that
holds true here as well. The optical performance certainly isn?t the worst we?ve encountered,
but it has the same problems we see on a lot of mobile phones when you?re taking photos
that include regions of both light and dark. Other phones, like the Galaxy S III and HTC
Droid Incredible 4GLTE, compensate for this by including an HDR option in the camera software
? sadly, Motorola doesn?t. In good light, the camera does pretty well, but in lower-light
situations, there?s not much good to say here. And ? if you happen to be listening to music
on the Photon Q via headphones (which sounds good, by the way) while taking pictures, congratulations
- you?ve found an audio bug that?s quite annoying. The music will, for a split second, come out
the speakerphone as the phone makes a shutter sound. That?s also true for the front-facing
camera; while it?s nice to see a manufacturer build HD support into an FFC, it?s still just
a 1.3MP shooter in still mode, and those shots aren?t great. Finally, while the hardware
camera button is nice, it doesn?t wake the phone up from sleep, doesn?t feature half-press
to focus, and is accordingly so useless, we almost forgot it was there. The battery powering
all this actually does pretty well - quite a surprise, given its relatively meager milliamp-hour
rating. I was able to eke out about 14 hours on one charge with moderate-to-heavy use,
and the power-saving rules I set up in SmartActions definitely helped a lot; when I turned power-saving
off, performance plummeted. There?s no telling how this performance will fare once the device
is using LTE, but on 3G, battery life on the Photon should be good to excellent for most
users. So ... you?re on Sprint, or thinking of moving over to Sprint, and you want a device
with a hardware QWERTY keyboard. Should you get the new Photon Q 4G LTE? Maybe. If you?re
in a big city with that?s not getting LTE anytime soon, maybe reconsider. If you?re
constantly going to be on WiFi, or if Sprint has announced that your market will be getting
LTE in the near future, absolutely. Or, if you live in an area where Sprint?s 3G coverage
and data speeds are good, yes. Go for it. Your other options for a keyboard-packing
device on Sprint are a handful of dated Android devices, some Blackberries, and two-year-old
high-end smartphones. But it?s not just that the alternatives are kinda weak ? this is
a really, really solid piece of hardware, backed up by modern software that might lag
occasionally, but otherwise does its job well. The keyboard is great, the battery life is
great, and it?s available at Sprint.com for 199.99 on contract. We give the Motorola Photon
Q 4G LTE an 8/10. Thanks for watching, etc.