Motorola MOTO Z6c

The Z6c looks and feels a lot like the Motorola MOTO Z6c, Verizon's sliding mobile TV phone. Like the Z6tv, this device is a smooth, rectangular slider, with a nice little plastic bar at the bottom of the screen that lets you slide the body up to reveal the keypad.

The keys are small, but they sport raised rubber guides to prevent mis-dialing. The smallish, 2 inch, 320 by 240 pixel screen is bright, and there's a fleshless 2 mega pixels camera on the back.

The Z6c and Z6tv use different chip sets, which means they have somewhat different features and different phone performance. The Z6c has no mobile TV, and it isn't as good a voice phone as the Z6tv.

The Z6c fell behind our benchmark Motorola E815 in being able to connect calls, and volume wobble in the speaker phone was more noticeable than on the Z6tv.

Ear piece volume was pretty loud, with enough in ear feedback to prevent your having to yell into the phone.

Voice dialing works over wired or Bluetooth headsets, though you have to use an included adapter to plug in standard wired headsets the phone's only port is a micro USB that's also used for charging and syncing.

Talk time, at over 5 hours, is excellent. The phone paired Plantronics 520 headset without a problem.

The Z6c had an uneasy relationship with our Motorola S9 and Plantronics 590 stereo Bluetooth headsets, though. We heard hissing in the former and buzz when playing music in the latter. The handset syncs music with Windows Media Player but doesn't have mass storage drivers for use with other PC or Mac programs.

If you don't use Windows Media Player, you can use a card reader to copy CBR MP3 or WMA (but not VBR MP3 or any AAC files) directly onto a memory card. You store music, photos, and videos on a micro SD card slipped into a slot under the back cover you don't have to remove the battery to get at it, which is nice.

The phone handled a 4GB card but would only read the first 4GB of larger cards. It also played videos in 3GP format 176 by 144 pixel videos appeared blocky but smooth, while 320-by-240-pixel videos were jumpy.