Review Of Motorola Karma QA1 – AT&T – A Square Shaped Messaging Phone
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
3.5 mm head phone jack, great for messaging, full HTML browser with Flash Lite support, GPS, stereo Bluetooth, launch bar for quick access to Facebook and other social networks, great call quality, ergonomic keyboard, fast 3G.
Thumbs Down:
Tiny display, not good for video viewing, bad camera quality.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology
WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band
WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design
Slider
Caller ID
Yes
Other features
Stereo Bluetooth, 3G, QWERTY keyboard, music player, camera.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Display
2.5 inch, LCD display, Resolution – 240 x 320 pixels, 18-bit (262000 Colors)
Messaging / Data Features
Text messages, Multi media messages (MMS), Instant messages , E-Mail
Internal memory
100 MB, expandable to 16 GB.
Additional Features
GPRS support, USB 2.0, POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, microSD card slot, 3.5 mm phone jack
Supported audio formats
MIDI, MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, RealAudio, and XMF
Supported Video Formats
MPEG-4, H.263 video and AMR audio
Camera 2 mega pixels, 8X Digital Zoom, maximum resolution 1600X1200
Battery
Lithium ion 1170 mAh.
Razzle Dazzle:
We were turned off by the shape of the phone which is square and will result in a smaller display on the phone. Motorola Karma QA1 is 3.42 inches long, 2.52 inches wide, 0.7 inch thick. The phone unusually small and hence there will be no problems when you put it in your pocket. The phone weighs 4.97 ounces and even though it has a slider keyboard it doesn’t add much to the thickness of the phone. The back of the phone is all rubber and there are grooves, so it feels good to grip.
Inside Dope:
Motorola Karma QA1 is a square phone which looks quite a lot like Verizon Wireless Blitz and Cricket TXTM8. The three phones look a lot similar but we will say that when it comes to features and quality, this Motorola phone wins. It looks quite simple and basic phone but Motorola has known the surprise us with great packages inside. This phone has features like HTML browser for the internet and access to applications of social networking which makes better than other messaging phones.
The display of the Motorola Karma is tiny 2.5 inch. This phone is a strict no-no for multi media enthusiasts who prefer bigger screen for watching videos. The display has resolution of 240X320 and 262,000 colors which is quite good for a small screen like this. Images look crisp and the display is clear with the clear font and big icons. You can change display theme, wallpaper, the “skin”, screensaver and the greeting text. You cannot change the brightness or the backlight time. There are lots of wallpapers, screensavers, and alert tones to choose from in the phone. You can always download more from AT&T’s Media Mall
At the bottom of the tiny display there is a launch bar and you can use this for storing any of the applications that you use frequently. There is a limit of just four, though. You can also use this bar for storing browser bookmarks. This launch bar will hide itself you press the up and down navigational toggle. The screen doesn’t have touch screen interface which means you will have to use physical buttons which is below the display screen.
The keypad of Motorola Karma QA1 has a square toggle with middle OK button, two soft keys, messaging key, Clear which is also the Back key and Send and End keys. The End key is also used to power up the phone. We liked the “Smart key” which is on the left side of the phone, it can be used to launch any application that you assign to it. The key is also situated in such a way that accessing it is easy when you are using the phone. Other than that, on the sides of the phone is a volume rocker and charger. We were glad to find a 3.5 mm head phone jack, which lets us plug any head phones of our choice but then watching videos is miserable on this tiny screen which means the head phones will be used mostly for music.
The Motorola Karma QA1 has a full QWERTY keyboard which can be seen when you slide the QA1 up. The keyboard is roomy and the keys are adequately raised above from the surface for easy typing. It is very rare to find a keyboard that has good ergonomics when it comes to mobile phones, since they are very small, but these keys stood up to our expectations. The number keys are colored in blue which makes the keyboard attractive too. The special keys on the keyboard include dedicated Shift key or Caps Lock, Symbols or punctuations key, and a browser key.
We would have liked a 2000 memory phone book since this is a phone for business class people; instead the Motorola Karma QA1 has space for 1000 entries. A single entry can take six numbers, a Web URL, three e-mail addresses, a birthday, three postal addresses and notes. You can assign an individual ring tone to a contact and you can also pair up a photo with a contact so the face flashes when he/she is calling. There are 25 ring tones, eight alert tone and five patterns of vibration.
The other features on the Motorola Karma QA1 include vibrate mode, text/multimedia messaging with threaded conversations, speakerphone, calendar, alarm clock, world clock, calculator, and voice recorder. You will be able to read incoming texts and messages on the front of the screen even when the keyboard of the phone is closed. You can also use applications while on a call, by selecting “Swap” in Options from the menu.
There is also voice dialing, stereo Bluetooth, instant messaging (Windows Live, AIM and Yahoo), and A-GPS which supports for AT&T’s TeleNav service. You can also get e-mail from various e-mail providers such as AOL Mail, Yahoo Mail, AIM Mail, Comcast, Windows Live Hotmail and more. The phone doesn’t support POP3, IMAP and SMTP for business men who need to access their e-mails on the go.
Motorola Karma QA1 is has aHTML browser, which is great to use with the fast 3G speeds. But the screen is small so get prepared to scroll loads when you are web browsing. You can zoom in and zoom out and fit pages to screen. The browser supports Flash Lite, for you to watch videos after streaming from YouTube or CNET TV. History of browser can be accessed and you can also reset the cache, clear the cookies, toggle JavaScript and images on or off, and even save a Web page to view later. A browser with such features is quite rare on mobile phones. If you want a phone which has great browser and don’t care for other features, this is it!
For the launch bar, by default the phone gives short cuts for sites like Face book and MySpace. But these icons are not short cut for applications like other phones give but these are short cut for mobile versions of the website. You can update you status, put photos and videos to a variety of social networks including Flickr and Twitter. You will need to login just once if you want to use any of such services.
Motorola Karma QA1 is a 3G phone, which means you can access AT&T broadband services like Cellular Video, to watch video clips after streaming from content providers like CBS and CNN. You can also use the AT&T Video Share for one way streaming of live video calls to a compatible 3G phone. AT&T Mobile Music is a music portal which has online music store for you to download music. You can purchase songs from Napster and eMusic from the store and you get access to XM Radio Mobile, Music ID (which is a song ID service), music videos are courtesy of MobiVJ, and several other applications related to music.
With 3G you get loads of support for downloading music and this feature is complimented by a music player which has an interface which is quite simple for a layman to understand. The supported formats are MIDI, MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, RealAudio, and XMF. There are features which a music player should normally have like repeat, shuffle and you can create, edit play lists on the fly. You can toggle bass boost and spatial audio which improves the sound quality to some extent. The phone can take multi tasking, you can minimize the player and you can send the songs to friends by Bluetooth. The phone is on a fast processor and it won’t slow down the phone as long as you keep to the applications that you need.
Motorola Karma QA1 has support for microSD card so you can transfer songs from a computer through USB. The phone has just about 100 MB internal memory and 16 GB is the maximum it supports. The card is not hot swappable but at least it is not below the battery of the phone. The card is situated below the battery cover.
Music quality is good but don’t use the speaker phone because it sounds awful. We would recommend you to take advantage of the 3.5 mm head phone jack and use some good quality head phones if you are going to listen to music for a long time.
The Karma QA1 has a 2.0 MP camera which we are quite unhappy. We want a 3.2 mega pixel camera when it comes to camera phones. This 2 MP camera can give you a 1600X1200 resolution which is not that good for photos. There are also three quality settings. Other features include five color effects, six white balance/lighting modes with a night mode option, an exposure setting, a self-timer and 8x digital zoom and five shutter tones and also a silent option. The camera is equipped with flash LED for low light conditions but there is no mirror for self portrait. Photos quality is below average on this phone.
The video mode in the camera has three types of quality settings, and you can toggle the sound on or off, four resolutions and settings which are similar to the photo camera. Video quality, like the photo, is not great. We got pixilated videos and the videos were dark when used in low light conditions even with the flash.
The Karma QA1 has modest built in games and applications like Scrabble Blast, Super Jewel Quest, Yellowpages, , WikiMobile, The Oregon Trail, Mobile Banking, MobiTV, Where (it is a application which is location-based for you to find the local business which is nearest to you), and Zuma. You can also download more Playing games, like videos was a miserable affair on this tiny screen.
Motorola Karma QA1 is a business phone and we expected it to perform well in sound quality tests because that is what a business user wants primarily in a phone. Call quality on this device was great and we could hear the voice clearly. On the other end people gave us similar reports. The phone uses CrystalTalk, it is a noise-canceling technology developed by Motorola which means that users on the other end can hear your voice quite clearly. Background voices on your end are all eliminated when you are on a call.
We had some problems getting the 3G signal but once the phone is through you can load pages fast. A 3 MB file will take around 30-35 seconds to download which is quite good.
The device could not handle streaming video smoothly. The video was laggy and there were lots of pixilation and it seemed to stop occasionally.
The speakerphone is loud enough but callers did sound a bit harsh and the voices distorts a bit if you take it to full volume.
The phone has battery life of about 5.2 hours talk time and it has 14.5 days of stand by time.
Nitty Gritty:
We weren’t happy with the square look of the phone and the tiny screen but we will say that this is a good messaging phone. A business person who needs a phone just for talking and messaging will find this a good option. But this phone is definitely not for music enthusiasts even if it has a 3.5 mm phone jack.
