Customer Rating: 
Summary: the battery SUCKS!
Comment: I really love my Motorola z9. It is a beautiful phone and the color is rich and beautiful! The screen color is clear and bright. There are a lot of great features that are great about this phone. Motorola could have added a few more ring tones there is almost no selection. And it totally sucks that I can't use itunes so i basically can't use the music player because i would have to buy all new songs. and who wants to do that?
I gave this phone 4 stars because the battery sucks. I literally got this phone last friday 08-08-08 and it is only the 12th and i have had to charge it at least 4 times. i can't talk as much as it says that i can which is annoying. but other than that this is a great phone.
oh yeah, i also ordered this on amazon.com thinking that i could extend my contract and instead of extending my contract they signed me up for a new account. so they were going to charge me for an entire new account PLUS my old one. so i quickly canceled the order and ended up going to an at&t store. so be careful when your order from amazon. make sure they aren't setting up a new account but that they are just extending yours (for current customers). good luck!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good for calls and browsing, bad for texting and awful for photos
Comment: I got spoiled a bit by my LG CU500, and that's the first phone that I used a lot of features on. It's my basis of comparision. I used that phone for calls, texting, photos, and limited browsing, in that order.
What I like about the Z9:
Reception:
The Z9 performs quite well as a plain old phone. It gets great reception, it sounds good on both ends. The phone book is intuitive and easy to use. The speakerphone is decent. The stock ringtones are all boring but they're LOUD. The "Vibrate" setting is a little subtle for my tastes. Since this gadget is primarily a phone and it does that job excellently, I'm going to keep this phone even though a number of other features are making me crazy.
Build Quality:
It's a classy color and an attractive design. It's weighty and has an executive look to it. The slider operates smoothly.
Connectivity:
I also like the connectivity of this phone. I put in my Micro SD card and it was immediately recognized. I plugged the Z9 into a USB port on my desktop and (after switching it to USB in the Connectivity menu) had immediate access to the files on my phone. I bought a Jabra BT3030 and was up and running in less than two minutes.
Music:
The music player on this phone is nice, there's the option to sort music into albums and create playlists. There's also Spatial Audio, Shuffle, and Bass Boost. The music player is controllable with a Bluetooth headset. I did find that songs created as custom ringtones were too loud to listen to through the earbuds on my Jabra, so my SoundForge settings will have to be different for MP3s. I like my ringtones LOUD because I work outside with a lot of ambient noise, and I also like to leave my phone in one room of my house and then wander off. But I want to be able to hear when I'm sixty, so I won't be listening to super-loud MP3's on my headset.
Browsing:
The big bright display makes browsing fun. The G3 network is fast, and the phone cheerily and quickly downloads all sorts of big graphic files. Between the better browsing capabilities and the issues with picture texts (see below) I was well over my data usage limits within two weeks of buying this phone. Hmpf.
What I hate:
The camera:
The camera takes blurry photos at every distance I've tried. You can take big blurry photos or small blurry photos, but if you take a big blurry photo, you can't crop it down before you send it. As far as I can tell there is absolutely no photo editing software on this phone, which means you can't crop, rotate, change contrast or color balance, and it means if you want to send a picture text, you're sending (and paying for) the entire file. I find the camera on this phone to be almost unuseable.
Texting:
Texting - This phone is so big that it's impossible to text with one hand; welcome to the ranks of the Chipmunks. Two-handed texting is still cumbersome, because the T9 dictionary on this phone doesn't make sense to me - there's no logic to it that I can see. For example: I type "I" and get "it", "IN" gets me "instead" and if I type "INST" I get "hosted". I'm trying to get used to typing with both thumbs so I'm looking at the keyboard, and when I look up, T9 has produced a bunch of random nonsense because it sometimes chooses the longest word it can think of. It also hasn't learned that if I press the punctuation key and then 7, I expect to see "apostrophe S". It seems to learn about half of the combinations I use frequently. There's about three times as much futzing that needs to be done to send a text with this phone as on my last one. I used to be able to text one-handed and without actually looking at the phone until right before I hit Send.
Also, if I scan through my Outbox, I can't tell who I've sent the texts to, unless I open the text up, and then go to Message Status. Which is ridiculous.
Games:
I downloaded EA Tetris, and every time I went to open the game, it wanted to access the network to check my license. I was already wary of data overages, so one time I told it never to access the network again, and it hung up every time I tried to open the game after that, saying it "couldn't access the network". When I reinstated its permissions, EA said my "subscription was expired". I paid for the full-blown game! I've seen online that another person with the Z9 had the same problem with the same game.
Weight:
This thing is heavy. It's nicely made, as I said, and feels substantial, but the extra mass makes me very scared for the moment when I (inevitably) drop this phone on pavement.
The ear speaker:
Is pretty small and if you let the phone shift slightly while you're talking, suddenly you can't hear the other person. You have to be overly precise about holding this phone to your ear and then not move it from that spot. So you can't use your shoulder to hold this phone to your ear - which means one hand will always be tied up, unless you go Bluetooth. (The speaker on my CU500 was really big.)
I don't know about:
The GPS service, mobile email.
UPSHOT:
It's excellent at calls, bad for texting, horrible for photos, great for browsing (too great), and surprise! the music player is a nice bonus. Doesn't make up for the texting issues but I'll take it anyway.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great phone
Comment: After agonizing about buying an Iphone or other smart phone (and having to pay an extra $30/month for a data plan), I realized that what I really needed was a phone to which I could add my Outlook Contacts and Calendar info above all, and do emailing. This phone does all that (with add'l software; see #2 below) and more, and has a ton of features (including voice dialing, which the iPhone doesn't, and recognizes any name in the address book...you don't have to record individual voice tags).
I do have three recommendations:
1) Buy the Unlimited Media plan (only $15/month on AT&T) - you'll be browsing quickly with this phone and you don't want to pay for unit charges.
2) Most importantly - buy SyncCell software. This amazing software ($25) allows Motorola phone users (and a few others) to sync their Outlook contacts and calendar from their PC screens (no Mac) directly to the phone via usb cable. Think about it - no having to hit those tiny little keys to enter names, phone numbers and calendar info one at a time...just highlight and transfer!!
2) And lastly, buy the 8GB micro SD card - I've already loaded over 40 CDs and 600 tracks, and have only used 3GB of space.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Forget Video on this phone!
Comment: Purchased a 4GB SD Chip for this phone, downloaded a 400MB TV show, tried to watch, got to the 1 and a half minute mark of a 59 minute show, and the phone read: "Not enough memory for application."
Wuzzup wit dat? I purchased a 4 GB SD chip for a REASON, Motorolla! This phone was rated #5 on CNET's "Best Cell Phones" catagory!
I guess "Best Cell Phone" doesn't mean "Working Video on a Cell Phone", right?
SHAME on putting video on a cell phone that can't handle it, Motorolla! If only you had "done the right thing" and kept video capability off the Moto Z9, I WOULDN'T HAVE HAD ANY EXPECTATIONS THAT IT WOULD WORK!!!
Only 2 stars since, I feel if a cell phone has certain features they should work. Reception IS clear, however I'd ALSO expect less dropped calls for a 2 hundred dollar phone.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Phone
Comment: I've had this phone now for 3-4 months. A huge upgrade from my previous Samsung (Sprint) phone. I'm not a big tech user. I don't download ringtones, watch movies on my phone, or really know what "3G" means. What is important to me are the ease of the phone, call clarity, looks (of course), and durability. The phone is easy to use. Never really even bothered with the manual. Navigation is simple on the very clear, bright screen. Menus are easy to navigate and follow. The call clarity is excellent. 100% better than my Samsung. I'm not too sure if it's the phone or AT&T but my calls are now clear and I get service where I did not get before with my Samsung/Sprint phone. The look of the phone is great. I've had several people remark how great the phone looks. A very nice dark, rich red. As a guy I was a bit concerned about getting a "red" phone, but this phone looks gorgeous. It feels good too. Nice weight. Feels very sturdy. When the phone slides open it just feels "good". Can't explain it any other way. The battery life seems to be excellent. I can easily go two days on a single charge. So far the phone has been very durable.
Now if you're into 3G stuff, GPS, video calls and all... I can't tell you if this phone is good or not. I just don't use my phone for that. If you text alot you probably should get a phone that has a small keyboard.
The only minor complaint I have is the power cord that I use to recharge the phone. The connection is tiny and the connection head is rhomboid shaped. I sometimes have to struggle about 5-10 seconds trying to connect it to the phone. A better shape would have been just a plain circular head. This is a very minor complaint, but it can be slightly annoying.
Summary: the battery SUCKS!
Comment: I really love my Motorola z9. It is a beautiful phone and the color is rich and beautiful! The screen color is clear and bright. There are a lot of great features that are great about this phone. Motorola could have added a few more ring tones there is almost no selection. And it totally sucks that I can't use itunes so i basically can't use the music player because i would have to buy all new songs. and who wants to do that?
I gave this phone 4 stars because the battery sucks. I literally got this phone last friday 08-08-08 and it is only the 12th and i have had to charge it at least 4 times. i can't talk as much as it says that i can which is annoying. but other than that this is a great phone.
oh yeah, i also ordered this on amazon.com thinking that i could extend my contract and instead of extending my contract they signed me up for a new account. so they were going to charge me for an entire new account PLUS my old one. so i quickly canceled the order and ended up going to an at&t store. so be careful when your order from amazon. make sure they aren't setting up a new account but that they are just extending yours (for current customers). good luck!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good for calls and browsing, bad for texting and awful for photos
Comment: I got spoiled a bit by my LG CU500, and that's the first phone that I used a lot of features on. It's my basis of comparision. I used that phone for calls, texting, photos, and limited browsing, in that order.
What I like about the Z9:
Reception:
The Z9 performs quite well as a plain old phone. It gets great reception, it sounds good on both ends. The phone book is intuitive and easy to use. The speakerphone is decent. The stock ringtones are all boring but they're LOUD. The "Vibrate" setting is a little subtle for my tastes. Since this gadget is primarily a phone and it does that job excellently, I'm going to keep this phone even though a number of other features are making me crazy.
Build Quality:
It's a classy color and an attractive design. It's weighty and has an executive look to it. The slider operates smoothly.
Connectivity:
I also like the connectivity of this phone. I put in my Micro SD card and it was immediately recognized. I plugged the Z9 into a USB port on my desktop and (after switching it to USB in the Connectivity menu) had immediate access to the files on my phone. I bought a Jabra BT3030 and was up and running in less than two minutes.
Music:
The music player on this phone is nice, there's the option to sort music into albums and create playlists. There's also Spatial Audio, Shuffle, and Bass Boost. The music player is controllable with a Bluetooth headset. I did find that songs created as custom ringtones were too loud to listen to through the earbuds on my Jabra, so my SoundForge settings will have to be different for MP3s. I like my ringtones LOUD because I work outside with a lot of ambient noise, and I also like to leave my phone in one room of my house and then wander off. But I want to be able to hear when I'm sixty, so I won't be listening to super-loud MP3's on my headset.
Browsing:
The big bright display makes browsing fun. The G3 network is fast, and the phone cheerily and quickly downloads all sorts of big graphic files. Between the better browsing capabilities and the issues with picture texts (see below) I was well over my data usage limits within two weeks of buying this phone. Hmpf.
What I hate:
The camera:
The camera takes blurry photos at every distance I've tried. You can take big blurry photos or small blurry photos, but if you take a big blurry photo, you can't crop it down before you send it. As far as I can tell there is absolutely no photo editing software on this phone, which means you can't crop, rotate, change contrast or color balance, and it means if you want to send a picture text, you're sending (and paying for) the entire file. I find the camera on this phone to be almost unuseable.
Texting:
Texting - This phone is so big that it's impossible to text with one hand; welcome to the ranks of the Chipmunks. Two-handed texting is still cumbersome, because the T9 dictionary on this phone doesn't make sense to me - there's no logic to it that I can see. For example: I type "I" and get "it", "IN" gets me "instead" and if I type "INST" I get "hosted". I'm trying to get used to typing with both thumbs so I'm looking at the keyboard, and when I look up, T9 has produced a bunch of random nonsense because it sometimes chooses the longest word it can think of. It also hasn't learned that if I press the punctuation key and then 7, I expect to see "apostrophe S". It seems to learn about half of the combinations I use frequently. There's about three times as much futzing that needs to be done to send a text with this phone as on my last one. I used to be able to text one-handed and without actually looking at the phone until right before I hit Send.
Also, if I scan through my Outbox, I can't tell who I've sent the texts to, unless I open the text up, and then go to Message Status. Which is ridiculous.
Games:
I downloaded EA Tetris, and every time I went to open the game, it wanted to access the network to check my license. I was already wary of data overages, so one time I told it never to access the network again, and it hung up every time I tried to open the game after that, saying it "couldn't access the network". When I reinstated its permissions, EA said my "subscription was expired". I paid for the full-blown game! I've seen online that another person with the Z9 had the same problem with the same game.
Weight:
This thing is heavy. It's nicely made, as I said, and feels substantial, but the extra mass makes me very scared for the moment when I (inevitably) drop this phone on pavement.
The ear speaker:
Is pretty small and if you let the phone shift slightly while you're talking, suddenly you can't hear the other person. You have to be overly precise about holding this phone to your ear and then not move it from that spot. So you can't use your shoulder to hold this phone to your ear - which means one hand will always be tied up, unless you go Bluetooth. (The speaker on my CU500 was really big.)
I don't know about:
The GPS service, mobile email.
UPSHOT:
It's excellent at calls, bad for texting, horrible for photos, great for browsing (too great), and surprise! the music player is a nice bonus. Doesn't make up for the texting issues but I'll take it anyway.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great phone
Comment: After agonizing about buying an Iphone or other smart phone (and having to pay an extra $30/month for a data plan), I realized that what I really needed was a phone to which I could add my Outlook Contacts and Calendar info above all, and do emailing. This phone does all that (with add'l software; see #2 below) and more, and has a ton of features (including voice dialing, which the iPhone doesn't, and recognizes any name in the address book...you don't have to record individual voice tags).
I do have three recommendations:
1) Buy the Unlimited Media plan (only $15/month on AT&T) - you'll be browsing quickly with this phone and you don't want to pay for unit charges.
2) Most importantly - buy SyncCell software. This amazing software ($25) allows Motorola phone users (and a few others) to sync their Outlook contacts and calendar from their PC screens (no Mac) directly to the phone via usb cable. Think about it - no having to hit those tiny little keys to enter names, phone numbers and calendar info one at a time...just highlight and transfer!!
2) And lastly, buy the 8GB micro SD card - I've already loaded over 40 CDs and 600 tracks, and have only used 3GB of space.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Forget Video on this phone!
Comment: Purchased a 4GB SD Chip for this phone, downloaded a 400MB TV show, tried to watch, got to the 1 and a half minute mark of a 59 minute show, and the phone read: "Not enough memory for application."
Wuzzup wit dat? I purchased a 4 GB SD chip for a REASON, Motorolla! This phone was rated #5 on CNET's "Best Cell Phones" catagory!
I guess "Best Cell Phone" doesn't mean "Working Video on a Cell Phone", right?
SHAME on putting video on a cell phone that can't handle it, Motorolla! If only you had "done the right thing" and kept video capability off the Moto Z9, I WOULDN'T HAVE HAD ANY EXPECTATIONS THAT IT WOULD WORK!!!
Only 2 stars since, I feel if a cell phone has certain features they should work. Reception IS clear, however I'd ALSO expect less dropped calls for a 2 hundred dollar phone.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Phone
Comment: I've had this phone now for 3-4 months. A huge upgrade from my previous Samsung (Sprint) phone. I'm not a big tech user. I don't download ringtones, watch movies on my phone, or really know what "3G" means. What is important to me are the ease of the phone, call clarity, looks (of course), and durability. The phone is easy to use. Never really even bothered with the manual. Navigation is simple on the very clear, bright screen. Menus are easy to navigate and follow. The call clarity is excellent. 100% better than my Samsung. I'm not too sure if it's the phone or AT&T but my calls are now clear and I get service where I did not get before with my Samsung/Sprint phone. The look of the phone is great. I've had several people remark how great the phone looks. A very nice dark, rich red. As a guy I was a bit concerned about getting a "red" phone, but this phone looks gorgeous. It feels good too. Nice weight. Feels very sturdy. When the phone slides open it just feels "good". Can't explain it any other way. The battery life seems to be excellent. I can easily go two days on a single charge. So far the phone has been very durable.
Now if you're into 3G stuff, GPS, video calls and all... I can't tell you if this phone is good or not. I just don't use my phone for that. If you text alot you probably should get a phone that has a small keyboard.
The only minor complaint I have is the power cord that I use to recharge the phone. The connection is tiny and the connection head is rhomboid shaped. I sometimes have to struggle about 5-10 seconds trying to connect it to the phone. A better shape would have been just a plain circular head. This is a very minor complaint, but it can be slightly annoying.