Motorola MOTO U9 review

Motorola is hoping to make a splash with its MOTO U9 - a glitzy clamshell mini-mobile that touches on the strokable allure of Motorola's curvaceous PEBL design of two years ago but which updates it with a far glossier look and a timely feature overhaul.

The U9 is unashamedly aiming for mass market appeal, with an attention-grabbing shiny mirrored shell in pink, purple or black, a smooth rounded design, and a wallet-friendly price tag - it's available for under £100 on pre-pay deals.

Where the original PEBL has an air of refinement, with rubber-feel casing, a slide-and-spring metal hinge and weighty feel, the MOTO U9 sings out "look at me!" Apart from the reflective shell, though, an eye-catching element of the U9 is its now-you-see-it-now-you-don't external display. An OLED screen hides behind the front of the shell and fades in through from behind the casing when certain functions are activated. And it's not just for a bit of show - the screen also features touch-sensitive music controls for when you fire up the phone's onboard MP3 player.

The mirrored shell and hidden screen combo has been done before, first on Sony Ericsson's Z610i back in 2006, but while it's not groundbreaking, it's an attractive design flourish on a phone pitched at this price level. Adding to its appeal too is the compact size; it measures a pocketable - and handbaggable - 90(h) x 48.6(w) x 16.4(d)mm and weighs 87.5g.

Motorola isn't aiming the U9 at those looking for a cutting edge mobile. In contrast to the outer gloss, functionality beneath the metallic-finish shell is low-key: as well as its music player, it features a rather basic 2-megapixel camera (with video capture and playback), an email client, stereo Bluetooth connectivity, plus MicroSD memory card expansion.

There's no 3G onboard, so downloading and browsing is confined to GPRS and EDGE data rates where available. A few extra applications have been loaded up - such as Rough Guides software, and an eBay tracker - to go alongside a smattering of standard mobile organiser tools.

Motorola has, though, done some work beneath the shell on the user interface, an often criticised element of many previous Motorolas. Here, Motorola has made the unradical decision to adopt a more conventional menu and navigation set-up, in essence similar to that used by other mobile makers. As a result, the U9 will feel comfortable to use for anyone who's not tried a Motorola before - or who was put off in the past by Motorola's idiosyncratic way of doing things.

The inside of the clamshell isn't as attention-seeking as the outside. There's a 2-inch 262k-colour QVGA internal display, and a typical Motorola-style numberpad. The RAZR-inspired pad has flush keys on a subtly textured plastic panel, with ridges between the well-spaced number. There's a circular navigation D-pad, surrounded by softkeys, call and end buttons, a clear key and a musical note-marked fast-access button to the music player.

The direction buttons on the navigation D-pad can be assigned shortcuts for a range of functions you want to access quickly. The main menu panel is a user-friendly icon-based grid by default, but it can also be switched easily to either a list or carousel-style menu. All reassuringly conventional.

On the outside the shell is where Motorola is obviously looking for attention. The shiny metallic paint job on the front covers everything but the 2-megapixel camera. The back of the phone has a contrasting rubberised texture of the original PEBL. The external 'hidden' display is a 1.45-inch OLED display that merges apparently seamlessly into the phone behind the outer mirrored shell. It's a 128x160 pixel 65K-colour screen, which glows quite subtly through the surface of the phone - perhaps too subtly.

Like many clamshell external screens, it shows caller ID details and info about incoming texts, so you don't have to open the shell to see who's calling before you take a call or look at a message. You can read and reply to messages with the shell closed too, using pre-stored stock responses. It appears through the shell when something activates it. And when its waiting in standby, there are a selection of screensavers to choose from that give it a bit of a ethereal look - a flaming fire being particularly striking.

It comes into action in a more active way when the music player is engaged. Switch on the multi-format player from the control panel inside, and the internal screen displays a list of categories to play tracks from - recently played, shuffle songs, all songs. playlists, artists, albums, genres and composers. Select a track to play, and you get a tidy-looking interface with track details and a song progress bar displayed onscreen - as usual, the navigation pad takes care of music controls.

Close the lid, though, and the external display takes over, showing you track details and providing touch-sensitive control keys for forward, back, play and pause. This is useful if you don't want to flip the phone open when you're listening to music, and naturally you can lock the touchpad to avoid accidental pressing. There's no haptic feedback (a gently vibrating buzz) though, to let you know button have been successfully pressed, so it is possible to double press if the keys aren't immediately responsive.

Again, touch sensitive external music controls have been done before by Motorola and other manufacturers, so it's not blazing a trail here. But it's an eye-catching extra that some users might enjoy.

Motorola supplies the U9 with a set of stereo headphones, but these are of the same average quality normally boxed with mobiles. They're connected via the microUSB connector on the base of the phone, so you'd need an adapter to slip in better quality headphones that use a 3.5mm jack. Alternately you could hook up a wireless stereo Bluetooth set (Motorola itself offers some high quality - and good-looking - sets, although any stereo Bluetooth pair will do).

The music performance through the in-box headphones is reasonable but not impressive. The external loudspeaker is another option, but is lacking in quality with a quite tinny sound.

The music player is capable of handling a wide variety of music file formats, and can be easily synced with Windows Media Player software on a PC using a supplied USB cable. Alternatively, you can load up tracks by dragging and dropping tracks into the U9's memory card in mass storage mode. With only 25MB of onboard user memory, a MicroSD card is a must if you want to use the U9 for music - it can handle cards up to 4GB capacity. These are tucked away under the phone's battery, so you have to power-down to swap cards.

A basic 2-megapixel camera perches on the front of the shell. Image quality is generally disappointing; there are no dedicated camera buttons, an autofocus system or flash to up the quality of shots, and few adjustments can be made to the automatic metering settings. In reasonable conditions, shots are average for an entry-level 2-megapixel cameraphone. In low light conditions, however, without added illumination quality diminishes, with increased picture noise resulting in grainy snaps.

(You can see a more details on the Motorola MOTO U9's camera capabilities and sample images taken with its camera in our related article, Motorola MOTO U9 Camera Samples.)

Video capture isn't a stand-out feature either, with maximum resolution limited to QCIF quality (176x144 pixels) at 15 frames per second, producing a typically low quality mobile phone video experience.

Extras like user-independent voice control and dialling, plus a facility to have messages read out by the phone are included as part of Motorola's standard phone gadgetry. A calendar, calculator and world clock also bulk up the office tools line-up, and there is an email client for accessing your regular POP3 email accounts from the phone.

As for bread-and-butter functionality, voice call performance was consistently good, and the U9's power performance was creditable too. Talktime between battery charges is estimated by Motorola to reach up to 6 hours 10 minutes in optimum conditions, with standby of up to 350 hours. Real-life, we managed a comfortable three to four days with average use.

Additional applications include Java software that enables you to get Rough Guides city information to your handset over the air, and there are embedded quick search options for both Google and Yahoo!. An eBay auction tracker may appeal to other bargain-hunting U9 buyers.

At its sub-£100 price, Motorola is hoping the MOTO U9 will appear something of a bargain itself. If you're after a fashion-phone that won't break the bank, it has the basic tick-list features - music player, swappable memory and 2-megapixel camera - to satisfy the budget buyer. The mirrored shell, with its ghostlike external display effect and touch music controls will add some appeal too for its target wallet-watching audience, even if its other features are limited.

Motorola MOTO U9 technical specifications.