Motorola Z9 (AT&T)

Another top notch, high end mobile phone from Motorola, the new Z9 scores high on all performance measures. It's the best feature phone AT&T has to offer.

On the outside, the Z9 feels chunky; it's long and wide (4.5 by 2.1 inches), but not very thick (0.5 inches), though it feels thicker than it is.

On the top half, there's a large, bright 320 by 240 pixel screen, just a smidgen larger than the display on the V9. Below the screen, there's a cursor pad that looks like a scroll wheel (it isn't, actually) and some action buttons.

Sliding the screen up reveals a keypad of large, flat number keys with finger guiding dots.

The keypad on our Z9 had a very minor build flaw wherein the plastic pulled away from the contacts slightly on the "5" key (it was minor and almost unnoticeable).

Like all of Motorola's RAZR2 line, the Z9 is very solidly built. There's a lot of metal in the body, and the slide is spring loaded and feels smooth. The display is covered with a thick but very clear layer of protective plastic.

If price is no object and you want crystal clear sound quality, the RAZR line is the way to go. The secret sauce is CrystalTalk, Motorola's built in noise canceling software, which tweaks calls to make them sound better in noisy environments. The quad band Z9 continues that tradition with excellent call quality.

Even in noisy situations, voices punch right through the din. The speaker phone, while not outrageously loud, is very clear, and there's no distortion. In testing, the Z9 worked well with a Samsung SBH500 stereo Bluetooth headset. Since the phone comes with an adapter, you can use its micro-USB charging port with a standard 2.5mm headset (3.5mm music headphones aren't supported out of the box).

Nuance's excellent VoiceSignal system provides voice dialing and other limited voice commands over a wired or Bluetooth headset. Battery life, which we tested in 2G mode, was fine, yielding 10 hours 21 minutes of talk time.