Sprint has officially announced the availability (mid-Januray online and mid-February in stores; $299 with two-year agreement) of the Motorola Q Windows Mobile 5-powered smartphone and Laptop magazine has already taken a good look at it. Let's just say that Sprint didn't exactly pull out all the stops to improve its Q in comparison to Verizon's. There's a new coat of paint, a Sprint-specific data management program and a mobile NFL portal. That's about all that differentiates it.

The same old problems still haunt the Motorola Q on Sprint. A lack of dedicated volume controls and awkwardly placed backspace key mar an otherwise just-ok design. The Motorola Q is also wider than the Samsung BlackJack (available from Cingular), another popular consumer-oriented smartphone. Also, Sprint's Q was quite a bit slower than Verizon's offering. Kinda lame, Sprint.

At the end of the day, if you're a Sprint customer, the Motorola Q isn't a terrible deal. It's no better than Verizon's Q (and is worse in the aforementioned respects) and the BlackJack actually makes use of Cingular's music and video service, something the Q doesn't do on either service. Essentially, tread this way only if you have to. – Nicholas Deleon

Sprint MOTO Q [Laptop]

Press Release [Sprint via Everything Motorola Q]

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