Motorola Stature i9 Review

User Interface and Phonebook

The Motorola Stature i9 not only offers a fresh take on exterior design, but the UI receives a makeover as well.  It’s not a complete overhaul, but rather a mix between the Moto interface we’ve seen on iDEN units of the past and their Sprint units.  Unfortunately in our opinion it takes the worst of the two and puts them together.  For starters, it still has the stupid offset menu key when the center d-pad has been standard for years now.  There is no back button, and while it sometimes appears as a softkey option more often than not when in a menu the user can only exit, which takes you back to the homescreen completely.



One very cool feature is that a lite version of the menu is accessible from the flip closed.  The side button will bring up the menu, and from the front you can select from Recent Calls, Camera, Camcorder, My Images, My Music, My Videos and Suspended Apps.  The menu seems to move faster from the outside, which is odd but welcome.



On the bright side the menu has been consolidated, and the main menu offers just nine items instead of 25+ on multiple pages that we’ve seen in previous iDEN units.  It can be visualized in a grid, list or tabbed style.  It generally ran quickly enough, though lag was present and at some times annoying.  Nothing out of the ordinary for iDEN phones, but still irritating nevertheless.  In terms of features it is standard Nextel fair.  There is finally a calculator, even if it is a Java app and not a proper tool.

The phonebook is what we’ve seen from iDEN units in the past.  There is plenty of room for numbers, emails and webpages, but it is not nearly as full featured as we found on the Motorola VE20. 

Messaging and Multimedia

Messaging is pretty standard as well. You’ll find standards like SMS and MMS, as well as the Sprint Mobile Email app to handle both personal and corporate email via Exchange.  Nextel’s network is notoriously slow though, so even email delivery can take a minute or two.



The media player has a decent layout, but doesn’t offer folder support and ID3 tag recognition is so-so which makes it a poor substitute for a music player.  Motorola claims support for AAC, AMR, H.263, H.264, MP3, WAV, WMV, eAAC+, AMR WB, MIDI, AMR NB, AAC+ formats, but the phone did not recognize any of our typical H.263 and 264 movies.



The 3.1 megapixel autofocus camera performed pretty well.  Some of our outdoor pictures were taken on an overcast day, but detail and color representation was still good.  Images weren’t perfect and there was some random blurring, especially from closer distances, but all in all we were impressed.  The flash was rather weak, but that’s to be expected from an LED.  The camera interface is as we’ve seen on Motorola phones for years, but an annoying quirk is that settings don’t stick and have to be redone every time you open the camera.  We preferred to actually snap pictures with the flip closed, which made for a much more comfortable and camera-like feel.