Long time MobileCrunch readers may know that I have a bit of an aversion to Motorola. They’ve never done anything wrong to me, personally – it’s just that every handset they’ve released in the past 4 years is a mundane, haphazard piece of garbage. However, I’m glad (though a bit reluctant) to say that they’ve strayed from this path with the Evoke QA4; it has its flaws – but as far as phones that tiptoe the line between smartphone and featurephone go, the QA4 seems pretty nifty. Check out our impressions and the full hands-on demo video after the jump.
The main screen is primarily dedicated to a widget panel, which always show one of seven widgets (Myspace, USA Today, RSS feeds, Google Search, Weather, Picasa, and Youtube). Hopping from one to the other is a matter of a quick finger slide, and any panel you don’t find yourself using often can be disabled within the settings. Unfortunately, the Motorola rep said the seven widgets that come out of the box are all that we can expect; they don’t currently plan to release any new ones, nor open up development to others.
Our main fault with it is that they went with a number pad for the slide out layer, rather than QWERTY. If you’re going to bulk it up with a slider layer, at least make it a keypad that can’t be almost faultlessly replicated on a touchscreen. Beyond that, it seemed like a decent piece – the slider was smooth, and the touchscreen was responsive. The silver bezel around the face seems gaudy, but we’ll write that one off as a personal nitpick.
looks pretty cool, but the design is not quite pretty like the Iphone, Samsung or Nokia.
I am buying two of these phones–one for me and another for my son. I liked the way it feels and even really like the other way to make calls with the simple non-qwerty set up(it will be faster and probably safer. I think Motorola was very thoughtful and practical in the different aspects of this phone. I have feeling it will be a hit with a lot of women and young people as for many of us cellphones are most important for our social lives which is definitely our priorities. Thanks for your review. Also I did read that there maybe developments for more apps–please tell Motorola that is worth pursuing–as this phone will be all I need in a cell phone.