Mostly black with silver accents, the Q Global's design appears sleeker and more BlackBerry-like than ever. Weighing in at a mere 4.6 ounces and measuring 4.6 inches high, 2.6 inches wide, and just under half an inch thick, it sports a landscape-format 320-by-240-pixel screen that also brings the Samsung Blackjack to mind.
I found thumb typing on its keyboard--which has undergone a complete overhaul from that of the original Q--quite comfortable and certainly easier than it was on older versions. The familiar navigation pad and keys (seven in all) between the screen and the keyboard are augmented by BlackBerry-like controls on the side of the device, for up and down scrolling, selecting, and going back through menus.
But when trying to access features or programs that weren't accessible via the hardware buttons, I found navigation surprisingly complicated. For example, there was no quick way to get to the settings, which on many Windows Mobile smart phones appear on the main Start menu.
I found the Q 9h fine as a phone. In my informal tests, voice calls sounded good, and Web browsing and e-mail access was a pleasure on the speedy 3G network.
The Q has a built-in 2-megapixel camera with lots of menu controls, including image resolution, brightness, white balance, flash, and up to 8X digital zoom. But I was disappointed in the high-res images I captured: They were grainy and fuzzy on my PC, even those that looked good on the Q's much smaller screen.
On the other hand, I was impressed by the multimedia playback. A video of Enya's May It Be, which included a fair amount of Lord of the Rings film footage, looked terrific and sounded great, when run in full-screen mode on the mobile version of Windows Media Player. The video was stored on a Micro SD card that slipped easily into a slot on the Q's left-hand side, a big plus over the slots that sit under the battery (and therefore require opening the case) on some smart phones.