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Want to Play Some Music?

Only a few keyboard-equipped phones do a good job of combining multimedia tools--such as a music player, a camera, video capture, and mapping--with office apps. The Motorola Q Music 9m from Verizon Wireless comes close. Music is certainly a big part of the Q Music 9m's appeal, thanks to the device's nice, loud speaker. The thumbwheel located on the side of the phone lets you scroll through on-screen buttons to specify operations such as playing music, launching the camera, and downloading songs from Verizon's V Cast Music service. The thumbwheel feels a little stiff, however, which makes the scrolling motion a bit slow and uncomfortable to the thumb.

The Q Music 9m holds its own when it comes to productivity tools, too. It includes Documents to Go, a suite of apps for creating, editing, and viewing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, as well as for viewing PDF files.

In general the Q Music 9m's keyboard is better than the one on the original Q. The rubbery texture of the keys helps make the keyboard comfortable to use. Nevertheless, I was disappointed with the location of the backspace key. Instead of making it one of the QWERTY keys, Motorola presents it as a flat key next to the power/end button. This design decision made for slow typing and annoying errors. The deal breaker for me, though, is the phone's slow performance. The Q Music 9m chugged along slowly when performing just about any task--browsing, opening apps, toggling between apps, you name it.

Good for Texting, Easy on the Wallet

The Samsung SCH-u740 from Verizon and the T-Mobile Sidekick iD aren't brand spanking new, but they're well equipped to handle your text messaging and calling needs. Both devices have built-in QWERTY keyboards and are affordably priced (under $150 each).

If you fancy thin and light, go for Samsung's SCH-u740. It sports a unique dual-hinge design that enables it to open as a standard clamshell phone or sideways from the left, which is how you'd use it in typing mode. When closed, it is impressively compact--about the size of the Razr V3--given that it has a full keyboard. The keys do feel crammed together, however, and they're very tiny and slippery--not ideal for users who have large thumbs.

The Sidekick iD is larger than the u740, and has a roomier keyboard. If you enjoy pinging friends over IM, the iD is a good choice; AIM, MSN, and Yahoo come preinstalled on this phone. Get the Sidekick iD from T-Mobile, and you get unlimited text messaging for $30 a month; a voice plan costs extra, starting at $30 for 300 minutes. The iD is pretty bare-bones otherwise: It doesn't include a camera or offer Bluetooth, for example. The SCH-u740, in contrast, has both of those features.

For reviews of other keyboard-enabled handsets, consult PC World's Top 10 PDA Phones.

Comments or questions? Drop Grace Aquino a line.