Motorola ic902 Deluxe Review

Introduction:

When Sprint and Nextel completed their merger in September of 2005 users of both services envisioned a bright future. Sprint users would finally get a real walkie-talkie replacement to the ill-conceived Ready Link service, and Nextel users would finally see some feature-rich handsets. Unfortunately for the end user, the first years of the merger were about integrating billing platforms and business strategies, and though under the same corporate umbrella the users and products remained distinctly separate. The two paths finally began to diverge with the introduction of the Motorola Buzz and Blend at the beginning of this year, and with the arrival of the ic902 Deluxe Sprint is finally able to leverage the power of both networks on one converged device. The Deluxe by Motorola is an EVDO rev 0 phone stuffed with all the goodies: 2mp camera with flash, microSD expansion, stereo speakers, QVGA display, stereo Bluetooth and its calling card, Nextel Direct Connect (DC.)

Included in the box the user will find:

Design:

The Deluxe is a sleek clamshell phone featuring an external antenna. The body is a gunmetal gray plastic, with small accents such as the speaker and camera housings being black. When compared with previous iDEN offerings the phone is sleek and svelte, but compared to its CDMA compatriots the Deluxe is rather large. Still, the lines are very clean and the Deluxe has an excellent in-hand feel. It has some heft to it, but the balance in your hand makes the weight give it a quality feel.

As with all previous iDEN models, the Deluxe sports an external antenna on the top left side of the phone. It is integrated well with the phone’s lines, but makes it awkward to cradle the unit between your ear and shoulder (especially on your right side.) Motorola has gone to great extremes to make this an attractive, dare we say non-iDEN looking device, and even the antenna has an embossed design on it. The Deluxe is slightly v-shaped, and Motorola has chosen to highlight this with the lines around the external display and embossed pattern running along the side of the phone.



The external display and camera monopolize the front of the flip. It is a 65k color 120x160 display, and along the top the user will find status indicators including signal strength, DC availability, DC speaker, ringer, Bluetooth, message icon and battery. Network indication is just below, with the time and date on the bottom of the screen. The background mirrors that of the inner display, and cannot be set separately. The display is a good size, crisp, and bright enough to be seen in direct sunlight. Above it is a 2mp camera and LED flash. Between the camera and display sits the Sprint logo, a detail that is not insignificant. Previous PowerSource phones features a prominent Nextel logo, with a tiny “From Sprint” underneath. A shiny Motorola M is found at the bottom of the flip.



On the right side of the Deluxe one will find a handy flip-open button at the top, similar to the one found on previous high-end iDEN models. Incorporated into this button is the status LED, which will glow when charging or flash different colors when the user has a missed alert. Below that, on the top flip portion, there is a camera button along with music controls. Holding the camera or play/pause key will launch their respective applications. At the bottom of the right side is the miniUSB charging port found in most Motorola phones. The PowerSource (hybrid iDEN/CDMA) phones are the first iDEN to utilize this charging port, but as the new Boost i425t has it we expect to see it going forward for all iDEN and PowerSource phones.



The left side of the phone has a lanyard loop at the top, with the volume up/down rocker just underneath. Below that is the DC button, which sits just above the 2.5mm headphone jack. As with all iDEN phones this jack has a halo around it, allowing for headsets with DC compatibility via a quick press of the headsets multifunction button. Standard 2.5mm headsets can be used as well, but their multifunction button goes unused and will not trigger the Voice Command system and/or redial. On the top flip portion of the left side the user will find the microSD slot. We were very glad to see that this was easily accessible and not beneath the battery door.



Turning the Deluxe over the user finds a Nextel logo at the top of the battery door, the only place you will see the term “Nextel” used on the device. There is a latch that must be slid right to remove the battery door and the door comes off and goes on easily. It may be a minor detail, but this mechanism is very nice and adds to the quality feel of the phone. The battery capacity is not labeled, but a quick Google search of the part number reveals that it is a high capacity (though thin) 1100mAh. As is common, the battery must be removed to insert the SIM card into the bottom of the compartment, but since the SIM never has a reason to be removed this is not a nuisance like a hidden microSD card would be. The compartment is very tight, and the average user will have a hard time getting the battery out without using an object such as a pocket knife.



At the top of the Deluxe sits the Walkie-Talkie speaker button and a multifunction button. At rest, this button will bring up the recent call list, and pressing the Walkie-Talkie key will dial the highlighted number. The multifunction button also acts as an end key with the flip close, ending a call or exiting a running program. The bottom of the phone houses the stereo speakers and is rounded/pointed so that they are front facing. The embossed accents running vertically empty into the speakers (or start from, depending from your perspective) making for a well integrated look.

Opening the flip reveals a 2.2” 262k color QVGA display. There is a noticeable quality advantage even over the V9m, whose display is nearly identical but only 65k colors. The display is bright and crisp, and the smaller border makes it appears bigger than it is. Above it is large, chrome colored earpiece. Below it sits the keypad, which is broken into an upper and lower half. Up top one will find a left and right soft key, five way directional pad, camera and back keys, and a send and end key. Below is a 12 key dial pad, nothing new here. Each key is individual, and the 5 key not only has a nub but is concave, making the pad easy to navigate on touch alone. The keys each have a very solid click to them, and when the ambient light sensor feels it is too dark the keys are backlit with a cool blue LED. The send and end keys are backlit green and red in low lighting conditions.



Overall the phone is very well designed; it is pleasing to the eye, feels great in your hand and is built very well. Despite the lack of metal, glass or soft touch paint there is no part of the Deluxe that feels flimsy or cheap. It should be noted, however, that this unit is not built to military specifications unlike many other iDEN phones.

User Interface:

While the exterior may not be able to hide the Deluxe’s iDEN roots, inside the phone is all CDMA.  Nowhere in the software does the term “Nextel” appear, and the menu system is nearly identical to that found on Motorola’s other Sprint CDMA offerings.  CDMA users migrating to this handset will be right at home with the uiOne-based UI, but as the majority of owners will be coming from the iDEN side and this means that the interface will be totally new to them.  A new interface not inherently a bad thing however;  Motorola’s iDEN UI was far from simple and as features such as web and multimedia began appearing on the phones the menu system became more bloated, sometimes requiring three pages of icons.  Unfortunately, while this new UI is cleaner and better organized than its iDEN predecessor, it still suffers from the same flaws found in Motorola CDMA models, most notably a lag when buttons are pressed.

The user will find just 12 top-level icons, all on the same page: Web, Call History, Media Player, Walkie-Talkie, Missed Alerts, Music, Messaging, On Demand, Pictures, Contacts and Settings/Tools.  As noted this menu layout is almost identical to other Power Vision phones, with the only difference being the addition of the Walkie-Talkie option which forced the combining of Settings and Tools.  The menu can be sorted in a grid, list or tab menu.  Again, menu items correspond to the key pad in grid view, but are rearranged in list and tab view making keypad navigation impossible without memorization.  Oddly enough, instead of putting the new menu item (Walkie-Talkie) in place of the merged item (Tools,) Motorola chose to put it in the normal position for On Demand and moved that down to the traditional Tools location.  As always, we continue to question the logic of Motorola software designers.

From the homescreen the left and right softkeys are preset to Favorites and Contacts and are not customizable.  The Favorites menu allows the user to assign up to 12 shortcuts to different menu items such as content, tools, web bookmarks, pictures/videos or actual menu items.  Utilization of this feature allows the user to be much more efficient with the phone.

Our previous experience with Motorola UI’s has been less than stellar, and the Deluxe is no different, with glitches and lag takeing away from the overall experience.  For instance, if the user quickly presses menu + a number (to launch a menu item) the number will be displayed on the screen as if dialed (and as if the menu button was not pressed,) however hitting the back key takes the user to the menu instead of the expected homescreen.  The user must wait for the menu to actually appear on-screen before using a keypad shortcut to get around the menu system, a rather annoying lag/glitch.  Also, as we have seen previously, actually selecting an item from a list of options with radio buttons is frustrating.  The user must navigate with the d-pad to highlight the intended item and then press the, center ok button to select the radio button, then press the left soft key to actually select said item.

Phone Book:

As it is nearly identical to the V9m, the phonebook on the Deluxe is very good.  It can hold up to 1000 entries, with up to five numbers, one DC number and an email address each.  Each contact can have a custom picture ringtone, and be assigned to preset or user generated groups.  You can also store a website, memo, birthday, job title, company and address as well.  You can search the phone book by name, and the phone supports multi-letter search.  The left softkey allows the user to directly send a message of any type to the highlighted contact, while the right brings up a full options menu including edit, select multiple contacts, send contact (via Bluetooth or Walkie-Talkie,) and a few others.

Organizer:

The Deluxe features the same calendar we were fond of on the V9m. It comes preloaded with many holidays, and appointments can be added. These can be single or multi-day appointments, and can be set as a one-time incident or repeating occurrence. The alarm clock can handle up to 10 custom alarms, and the calculator offers an advanced mode that handle certain features like square roots, percentages and memory.

As they have in the past, Motorola utilizes VoiceSignal for their speech recognition software. It can be used to not only voice dial numbers and contacts, but also to check the status of items such as signal and battery and to initiate text and picture messages. It does not have dictation software however, so the user must type out the message using the keypad. As noted before the multi-function button of a standard wired headset will not launch the Voice Command, but a press and hold of the button on iDEN specialty headsets (the ones with the extra ring around the 2.5mm post) will launch it, as will a press of the multifunction button of a Bluetooth headset. Lastly, it can be launched via holding the talk key.



The Deluxe features the same tools set as the V9m, including a tip calculator and world clock, as well as a stop watch, currency and unit converter. It has 79MB of onboard memory, and supports microSD cards up to 2GB. Items such as music, pictures, videos and sounds can be stored on the memory card to free up system resources for the phone.

Messaging:

All the messaging options you would expect are present on the Motorola Deluxe. Text messaging uses the standard SMS gateway, while picture and video messaging are handled by Sprint’s Picture and Video Mail service. When content is sent it is also automatically uploaded a personalized Sprint website, a feature we rather like. Initiating, composing and sending a message is straightforward; from the contacts menu the user can initiate any of the three messages from the left softkey, or a message can be started from the messaging menu. Once a picture or video is taken the user is given the option to send it immediately.



Text input is offers either the standard abc mode, or the predictive “Word” method, a term other manufactures often use for T9 but here is actually is a slightly revamped version of Motorola’s iTAP. The only noticeable difference between this iteration of iTAP and standard T9 is that word options are selected via a drop-down menu initiated with the down arrow instead of hitting the 0 key to cycle through options.

Connectivity:

The Deluxe is an EV-DO rev 0 phone, which means users can surf the web and download content at broadband speed. All data traffic runs over the CDMA network. Bluetooth is the older version 1.2 and the HFP, HSP, DUN, FTP, OPP, A2DP and AVRC profiles are supported. Headset paring was very simple, the Deluxe tries to auto pair using common passwords, and it was connected to the Motorola S9 and Plantronics 510 headsets in just a few seconds. When used as a headset sound quality was passable but not great, users sounded loud enough but there was often static and callers complained that we sounded “distant.” Music playback was much better, with sounds being rich and static-free.

File transfer via Bluetooth was ok. We were able to successfully push both images and music files to the phone, but objects could not be pulled and the phone does not give the user the option to send multimedia files. The only objects we were able to send were contacts. Files were sent to the internal memory and can only be found via the file manager. This means that pictures sent to the phone cannot be viewed in the My Albums option in the picture menu, even when moved to the memory card. Interestingly, audio files sent over Bluetooth could be set as ringtones but those transferred to the folder via memory card cannot. Both show up under the My Sounds option, but the Assign option disappears when an external memory sound is highlighted. Audio files sent over Bluetooth cannot be moved to external memory.

Internet:

The Deluxe uses the Obgio WAP 2.0 browser found on most other Sprint handsets. It is a decent solution, and the Sprint portal allows for quick and easy navigation to most common destinations such as weather, news and sports. It does not handle HTML sites well however, and unfortunately like the V9m there were compatibility issues with Opera Mini. One annoying quirk of web usage is that the user is not given a predictive text option, so typing in web addresses and searches can be cumbersome. The web experience of the Deluxe was as good as can be expected from a non-smartphone.

Camera:

The Deluxe features a 2mp camera with camcorder. Despite being the same resolution, the camera is not as good as the one found on the V9m, and images were at times grainy and edges blurred. Color representation was not too bad, but reds seemed a bit muted while blues were enhanced. Results were better in natural lighting conditions and the flash improved color representation at close range.

The camera has digital zoom up to 4x, even at the highest resolution, and has a self timer option. It takes approximately 2s to load the application, and 1.5s to capture the image for an overall 3.5s for the process to capture an image. To take a second picture the user must hit the back button so it takes around 3s in between pictures which is still good. For quicker shooting the phone has a multi-shot mode which can take 2 or 4 pictures in succession. Other options include fun frames, color tones and image controls for resolution, image quality, brightness and white balance. Disappointingly, there is no option to turn the shutter sound completely off.



Videos can be recorded at a maximum resolution of 320x240 and 15 frames per second. They were typical for cell phone video, nothing to write home about but it gets the job done. With the memory card inserted the user is given the option of shooting for Video Mail or Long Video, the former limiting the video to 30s in order to be sent via the Sprint’s Video Mail service. Long Video will allow recording until the memory is full.

Audio:

The Deluxe has support for mp3, aac and aac plus files, can handle a 2 GB microSD card and music can be played through the player in the Sprint Music Store or via the native media player.

Using the Sprint Music Store the phone will display all the applicable song information, including artist, track title, album and the album art (if available.) At the bottom of the screen is a small time progress bar as well as the play/pause and track forward and back icons. There are no visual cues of this, but an up or down press on the d-pad allows you to scroll through the music and select another track while the current one plays. Music playback continues with the flip closed, though the album art is no longer displayed. The player can be launched from the outside via the play/pause key on the right side.

The Music Store player has support for playlists as well as shuffle and repeat features. Songs can be sorted by title, artist or genre. Unfortunately there is no text based search for the player and it can be cumbersome to find songs that are buried at the bottom of the list. Music can be purchased from the Music Store or sideloaded by the user. We did have a compatibility with a particular mp3 file that has played fine on other handsets, but overall sideloaded tracks play just fine and album art will be displayed if it is embedded in the file.



The native media player can be launched in two ways. The first is via the menu shortcut, but from here users can only play media in the MEDIA/voicerecords directory. Using the file manager found in the Tools menu the user can browse any directory on the phone, and songs in the MUSIC folder (the only folder the Music Store uses) can be played as well. The file we had problems playing via the Music Store played fine with the native media player. There are downsides however, as the media player does not support playlits or shuffle, does not read ID3 tags, does not support album art and cannot play items downloaded via the Music Store. Unfortunately you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Video playback is handled by the native media player. Here the user will find both Sprint TV and Sprint Radio offerings, as well as user generated/sideloaded content. Sprint TV offers a mix of live content and video clips from various providers, including ABC, NFL Network, The Weather Channel, Comedy Central, ESPN and many others. It does not use the newer interface, so finding channels is more confusing. One gripe we have with the player is that video clips are very small and for no apparent reason they do not utilize the real estate of the display. The view can be switched to widescreen however, which does fill the screen in landscape mode. We had some issues with the phone locking up multiple times during video playback, requiring a restart. While we appreciate the native media player option, we would prefer to see it side by side with, and not exclusive to, the new Sprint TV application.

Software:

Like every Sprint phone the Motorola Deluxe utilizes the Java platform for games and applications. Users can download content directly from Sprint, but the phones are open to both paid and free third party content as well. Sprint offers a wide variety of games from classic arcade to the latest in 3D games. Applications also have a wide range as well, and you can find anything from diet trackers to instant message clients to GPS navigation.



GPS is handled through Sprint Navigation, which is a re-branded offering of TeleNav. The user is guided through the route by voice prompts, and the application automatically checks for and re-routes the user around traffic. There are many other useful features, such as the ability to find nearby ATMs, businesses by category, restaurants by cuisine and check gas prices in the area.

Performance:

The performance of the UI lies somewhere in-between the V3m/K1m and the V9m. It does not suffer from the horrible lag often found on the former two devices, but lag is noticeable and is a bit slower than the V9m. Scrolling through menu items and lists is fluid enough, but there is a noticeable delay when an item is selected. This lag can last anywhere from 1-2s and is just long enough to frustrate us, though short enough that we feel bad about complaining about it. However, when compared to the lightning fast Sprint UIs from Samsung and Sanyo, as well as LG’s (which is just a fraction of a second slower,) we feel it is a valid complaint. Despite occasional lockups and restarts, the software on the Deluxe is a bit more stable than the V9m.

Sound quality on the phone was very good from the handset; callers sounded loud and clear and reported the same of us, even when signal was weak. However, with a Bluetooth headset callers complained that we sounded distant and when on speakerphone they complained that we could not be heard with the unit just a few feet away. On our end the speakerphone is very loud and we had no issues hearing the caller. Reception was good, and we did not notice any quality degradation even in low signal areas. DC was lightning quick as always.

It should be noted that, as a Power Source device, the phone lacks a CDMA 800 band which eliminates most of Sprint’s roaming agreements and drastically decreases the calling area when compared to a CDMA-only handset. The iDEN radio is used only for DC calls, so theoretically the user may be in an area where they have only voice service or only DC service. Without the 800Mhz band the CDMA calling area is still larger than iDEN, so we recommend this phone to users coming from iDEN but caution current CDMA users who will notice a drastic decrease in their calling area. For CDMA users wanting the DC service you will either have to sacrifice coverage or wait until 1Q 2008 when Sprint has announced their High Speed PTT service (QChat,) running over the EVDO rev A network and backwards compatible with the Nextel DC.

Talk time is rated at 3.5 hours (210 minutes) but in our testing we were able to achieve 251 minutes, well above the stated time. This is a very welcome finding, especially given that previous PowerSource devices had a particularly short battery life. The standby life was not as impressive however, and there were times when the phone would die within 24 hours of charging with no talk time and very limited web use. In fact, during the writing of this review, the phone went from completely charged to dead within five hours. There was about 20 minutes of talk time and under five minutes of web usage, and when not being used the phone was closed and all backlights off.

Conclusion:

The Deluxe does what it sets out to do fairly well: introduce iDEN users to the power of Sprint’s CDMA network. The phone has a full feature set and for iDEN customers the device is smaller than what they are used to. The build quality is excellent, and while the menu lag can be frustrating, the UI is a large upgrade from iDEN phones and relatively stable compared with its Motorola CDMA counterparts like the V9m. When taken in context the Deluxe is a success and we highly recommend it to iDEN power users and tech lovers who just have to have their walkie-talkie.