Why I buy this one ?
- Sleek metallic slider phone with bright 2.4-inch LCD and dual-band 3G network compatibility
- AT&T Music downloads and Cellular Video streaming content; real-time video streaming with AT&T Video Share; AT&T Navigator turn-by-turn A-GPS service
- MicroSD expansion (up to 8 GB); 2-megapixel camera with video capture; Bluetooth for headsets and stereo music streaming
- Up to 4 hours of talk time, up to 13 days of standby time; measures 4.48 x 2.11 x 0.55 inches (HxWxD)
- Includes: Handset, Battery, Charger, User Manual, AT&T Navigator, Parental Controls Insert

What our customer's say!

"Great phone but with a Major Flaw", I recently purchased this phone as part of my new contract, on Amazon.
I loved it the 3 days I had this phone after which I realized all that glitters is not gold !!

The battery cover at the back of the phone is where the problem lies. There is supposed to be a small lever located at the back of the phone, pressing which you can release the battery cover. But in my case, the back cover refused to work in sync with this lever,(which in any case is flimsy and is prone to damage sooner). Rather every time I would use the slider function of the phone the back cover would slide off too.

Needless to say, it was very annoying. I spoke to the Motorola customer servc. and they sent me a new back cover, thinking the back cover might be damaged. But the problem persisted. So I am now looking for a new phone. Its no point changing the phone as the lever looks flimsy and in future might get damaged and I don't want to take any chances.

For me this is a major annoyance which won't let me use an other wise nice phone.

Some pros (if you are ready to work with a sliding back cover as well):
1)very clear calls.
2)Being able to customize the shortcut keys.
3)Good pictures and flash, various options in this like -indoor lighting, zoom etc.
4)Good looking phone, nice color.

There is another problem too. The slider part kind of feels a little loose. After the phone is closed you still feel it will slide open. If such was my feeling in 3 days, I am not sure how the phone will handle everyday usage.
Also I guess the phone exterior and screen is prone to scratches, and given the lovely color, any scratch or paint chipped off would be quite evident.

Bottom line:
I would have kept the phone if the back cover was behaving well and promised to do so in future. But from other reviews and my experience it looks like a designing issue. Hope they fix it soon.


"Very happy with this phone!", I got this phone from Amazon in August and still love it. I love the larger size, slightly heavier weight (than other cell phones), fit, and finish. I have big hands and hate how small some cell phones are. I put an 8 GB memory card in it and it holds tons of songs, pictures, ringtones, etc, with room to spare. The sound quality can't be beat. I hear people loud and clear and they hear me. Paired with a Motorola 700 series Bluetooth headset (from Costco), it works flawlessly. No one ever complains about background noise. The screen size is bright and clear. The camera feature takes decent pictures but its not a true replacement for a digital camera. It will get you by if needed though. Recorded videos have a wave effect if you don't hold the phone steady, but overall great audio recording abilities. I have not used the GPS feature. I only text a few messages per day and it takes some getting used to with the keys. The keys are small metal buttons that you push. After a while you become used to it. I think I would want a full QWERTY keyboard if I did a lot of texting.

The top of the phone is shiny which can lead to it being slippery. The back has a somewhat tacky feel to it. I ended up purchasing a black rubberized grip phone protector that snaps to the front and back of this phone (purchased on Amazon). I wouldn't use the phone without one because it is an expensive phone to drop and I would hate to scratch it!

The phone remains locked if it is in the closed position. This avoids accidentally calling people. To answer it you just slide it open and/or hit the green answer button. The slider has a very solid feel to it. The best way to describe it is that it feels like solid metal pieces compared to plastic pieces of cheaper sliders.

This phone was great when the power goes out because you can shuffle through your music and it has a decent sounding speaker. You can also use the camera "flash", which is really just a bright LED light, as a flashlight if you need one.

Due to the shininess of the front of the phone, I found it easiest to clean off oil and fingerprints by wiping the phone down with a microfiber towel. Battery power is good. If you don't talk a whole lot, it will last you several days. If you talk moderate to a lot and/or listen to music through the speaker, then of course you will have to charge it more often. The phone can be charged over your USB port on your computer. Pick up a car charger for a few bucks and you'll always be able to charge it.

I haven't had any problems with dropped calls through AT&T with this phone which is a big change from my prior Sony Ericson z525a (worst phone ever).

If you want a nice looking solid built phone with great call quality and nice features, then this phone is for you. If you want to text all day long or play a ton of games, then you might want something else.

"Good phone, not same mini USB I'm used to", Mini-USB is a different size than other m-usb connections. The box comes with an adapter, but keep that in mind before you make the purchase!

Good slider phone, reception is better than my other phone, though you can't help reception when there's nothing to help.

Strong, sturdy, takes good photos. I got it because it has the important aspects of a phone. I don't really need the net capabilities, but 3 G seems pretty good. I got an 8gig microSD to add into the phone to hold more music. It took the phone all day to sync itself with the music. Also, when the phone is full of music, any music-related menu is going to be delayed processing for a while. I think it's just overload of the number of files it's sorting through.

A little bit heavier than my old SLVR. Definitely an upgrade from the slvr

"Slippery Slider", This trendy looking phone looks great and works wonderfully as long as you're willing to keep the back cover on using some tape. I had to return mine because I couldn't deal with pulling my new phone held together with masking tape out in public ...or private. :-( Both my son and I got the same phone on two different dates and both phones had the same problem. Design problem here? I'm out hunting for another phone that's well put together.

"Does Not work Out of Box", I have received a Damaged phone , i was not able to put the battery cover. Amazon has replaced the phone . But the same problem with the replacement phone with some exceptions little bit of better than the other one. Seems to be some genuine problem with the phone or may the products with amazon.

The battery life is poor.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"the battery SUCKS!", 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!

"Good for calls and browsing, bad for texting and awful for photos", 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.


"Great phone", 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.

"Forget Video on this phone!", 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.

"Great Phone", 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.