Motorola Quench XT3

Killer looks, but not great for texting

Smartphone Review: Motorola Quench XT3
by Sim Cheng Kai

05:57 PM Oct 19, 2010

The Motorola Quench XT3 is a sight for sore eyes. The back is sleek, glossy grey; a stylish assortment of silver fixtures (like a metallic rim band) adorns the body; and the phone's crowned with a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen surrounded by a black bezel.

And at $398 without a plan or $48 with a two-year contract (exclusive to M1), the XT3 is easily one of the most affordable Android handset offerings anywhere.

But the phone's good looks and affordability do come with a caveat - lower-performance hardware. Specifically, a 600MHz processor, a screen resolution of 320x480, 512MB flash storage, 256MB memory and a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash.

The XT3 runs the dated 1.6 version of Android, which means that it has a better camera gallery (you can delete multiple photos at one go); but it lacks the new contact lists, speed increments, HTML5 and Microsoft Exchange support in 2.0 and above. Though Motorola says that a 2.x firmware upgrade is forthcoming, there is no known release schedule at present.

The first thing XT3 users will notice is that scrolling - either left or right through the home screens or up and down through a list (like in the Web browser) - is sometimes choppy. And after running just a scant few applications in the background, the screen begins to show signs of lag, often freezing for a split second in the middle of scrolling manoeuvres.

The display lag emerges as a bigger problem when typing on the virtual keyboard, which is a dealbreaker for power users who trust the anto-correction feature enough to hammer out messages as fast as their thumbs can go - the XT3's screen does not update fast enough to register every key entry.

The touch panel controls below the touchscreen are nice and sensitive, but almost to a fault - while performing upward and downward strokes on the trackball, I found my thumb accidentally grazing the home or search sensors. Furthermore, the trackball is not very precise - when scrolling through links on a Google search results page, for instance, with each trackball stroke the selection cursor would travel too far some times, and not all other times.

As a phone, the XT3 works well. Voice quality and reception during calls are good and a proximity sensor turns off the touchscreen when you hold it up to the ear. You can also choose from tens of thousands of apps in the Android Market, though you might not be able to keep a smorgasbord of them due to limited internal memory.

The XT3's display lag and trackball issues are troubling but the phone's killer good looks might appeal to newcomers to Android as well as smartphone users who anticipate themselves making calls and reading Web content more often than typing long messages.

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