Gadgetory

sprint did something interesting with the Samsung Galaxy S and no you're not on the wrong video just stay with me it took the first edition galaxy s and told Samsung that had wanted to add a slide out qwerty keyboard and that's how we got the first iteration of the epic then when the galaxy s2 came around sprint ditched the keyboard and added a whole bunch of words to the name with motorola's photon line sprint is done just the opposite it started with a simple slab with the first photon and for its sequel it has added a slide-out QWERTY keyboard as well as LTE support and a few other things how does this new phone fair on the whole well 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 for Sprint let's get to it 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 I'm compared to other modern smartphones it's very thick at thirteen point seven millimeters but for good reason there's a slide-out surprise under there that we'll get to in a second but given that added bulk the new photon feels lighter than you'd expect in the hand in fact before I realized that the 1785 milliamp hour battery was embedded I thought I was handling a device without a battery inside it's not featherweight at 170 grams but it's certainly lighter than it looks up front here the display is a 4.3 inch 540 x 960 TFT LCD with motorola's color boost technology and displays images at around 256 pixels per inch even though it's not an HD display it 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 exactly but it does say it's scratch resistant it's also quite a fingerprint magnet more so than on other devices we've tested above it is the 1.3 megapixel front facing camera which shoots in 720p HD and beside that above the Motorola branding is the earpiece which also contains a large 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 the volume controls on the back is the lens for the 8 megapixel camera that shoots 1080p video with an LED flash right next door a speaker fill speakerphone grill down below and though there's no mention in Motorola's literature of crystal talk noise reduction there is a noise cancelling microphone up here in the corner on the left hand side not much to see except a micro USB port and HDMI out there's nothing going on the bottom here and up top a headphone jack and the center mounted standby and power button which is very easy to access with a finger very easy to get used to the real fun part comes when you slide the unit open to reveal that 5 rope the keys are LED backlit with adjustable side lighting 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 ques keyboard is luxurious you've got nothing but space on this wide board and each key delivers a satisfying little click when pressed the dedicated number row up top really really helps with input speed 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 it's going to hold up over the course of a two-year contract so let's talk Ross specs for a second the phone is powered by a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon s4 processor running at 1.5 gigahertz backed up by a gig of ram and eight gigs of on-board storage with the usual microSD expansion up to an additional 32 gigabytes 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 40 Wi-Fi b/g/n and support for NFC the last time we checked out Motorola hardware was on the atrix HD which we liked a lot on the hardware side but the software left us wanting more so how does the new photon stack up in the software department in short not too shabby Motorola's running their sneaky phantom skin that's not really a skin on top of Android 44 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've talked about before and which we like a lot there's also the pop-up preview windows for some stock apps which helped out in a pinch and also Motorola's Smart Actions suite which allows you to set rules for different battery saving conditions location-aware scenarios and so forth there's also support throughout the OS for landscape based orientation when the keyboard is deployed that's something we saw a lot on early build of Android like on the HTC g1 and the original motorola droid and it's really 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 there are drop frames and animations especially when you call 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 that's not the knock on the device 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 don't know that 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 speed test 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 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 speakerphone performance was okay but as usual we wish it could have been louder sadly another Motorola staple is an underwhelming camera and we found that to be true here as well it's certainly isn't one of the worst cameras we've tested but it has the same problems we see on a lot of mobile phones where you're taking photos that include regions of both light and dark other phones like the galaxy s3 and the HTC droid incredible 4G LTE compensate for this by including an HDR option in the camera software sadly Motorola does not 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 speaker phone as the phone makes the shutter sound finally while the hardware camera button is nice it doesn't wake the phone up from sleep it 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 Smart Actions definitely helped a lot when I turn 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 if you're on Sprint or thinking of moving over to sprint and you want a device with a slide-out hardware qwerty keyboard should you get the new photon maybe if you're in a big city that's not getting LTE anytime soon maybe reconsider if though you're constantly going to be on Wi-Fi or if Sprint has announced that your market will be getting LTE in the near future absolutely if you live in an area where sprint's 3g coverage and data speeds are good then also yes go for it I mean your other options for a keyboard packing device on sprint are a handful of data to Android devices some blackberries and high-end Android phones from two years ago but it's not just that the alternatives are kind of weak this is a really really solid phone and it's backed up by modern software that might lag occasionally but in otherwise does its job quite well the keyboard is great the battery life is great and it's available at sprint com for 1 99 99 on a contract not the cheapest phone around but we think it's worth the price we give the motorola Photon Q 4G LTE an 8 out of 10 it's going to do it for me i'm michael fisher with pocketnow.com thank you for watching our full review of the motorola Photon Q 4G LTE if you want to follow us on twitter where at pocketnow tweets if you want to follow me on twitter i'm at captain two phones throw us a thumbs up here on youtube if you like the video if you have a comment please leave it on the post at pocketnow.com that's where our full review for this phone lives and that's where we will respond to comments should you want a response thank you again for watching stay tuned for more videos and we'll see you next time