Moto's Q11 - the next BlackBerry?
And whatever happened to the Motorola Q10?
Motorola has finally unveiled a phone that has been doing the rumour rounds for a number of months now - the Q11, the successor to the Q9 smartphone.
Looking not a little unlike a BlackBerry or a member of the Nokia E-Series, the Q11 at least packs some decent specifications.
Of course, anything that packs a full QWERTY keyboard is going to get a comparison with other handsets, but at least Moto has got some aspects of this handset right.
The most important thing with this model, which is likely to debut in December, is the fact it's "affordable" according to the press statement.
Spec-wise it measures up nicely with the likes of BlackBerry's new wunderkind, the Bold. 128MB Flash, 64MB RAM and an optional microSD card up to 32GB are all nice touches, although TechRadar is pretty sure there aren't any 32GB microSD cards out there. But it's good to be prepared.
Solid
A 3MP camera is adequate, though no autofocus and a simple LED flash aren't really going to win any photography awards.
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Super-cool GPS is all present and correct, powered by a decent 1150mAh battery, which is good for around 450 minutes talktime, and standby time of up to approximately 195 hours.
Oh, and hello Mr Wi-Fi, good to see you there too for some whizz-bang internet fun. But if you stray outside a hotspot, then woe-betide he who connects to the magic network in the sky.
In a poor showing, Motorola has forgotten to put in 3G. Well, it probably didn't forget, but it might help explain why there's only GPRS/EDGE in the handset.
We're all waiting for the first Moto touchscreen handset to see how it measures up, but for all the emailing freaks out there, this Q11 should keep you ticking over nicely.
Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grew with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.