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The camera can be best described as average, and that may be doing it a kindness. Certainly my test shots, as usual taken with the camera on auto settings, did not perform wonderfully.

The coloured dish, photographed indoors under normal household lighting conditions is rather dark and grainy. The chair, which has become my standard outdoor shot, shows variation in its white tones and definition is not what it could be. The white flowers fare better, with an acceptable level of detail as far as camera phones go and less over-exposure than I had anticipated. All the test images, however, appear to suffer from a spurious colour shift at the centre of each exposure. Odd.

Interestingly you can set the phone to automatically send all photos to a list of contacts you specify. Not sure that is a good idea, really, but there you are.

As well as voice dialling you can set up a talking phone system where the phone reads stuff out to you such as the caller ID and content of incoming texts and emails. The voice used is rather more human than some, but making the setting is fiddly enough that you may not bother with it.

Yes, there is mobile email support, and there is an HTML Web browser which, frankly, I'd steer clear of on a quad-band phone with a 2in screen. There is a calendar, to do list, three alarms, world clock, calculator, and notepad too.

Verdict

So has Moto done enough with the U9 in view of its present difficulties? Well, the front OLED display is distinctive, the shaping is old-hat but remains attractive, and there is a reasonable array of software on board. Other mid-range mobiles do have better battery life, though, and I think a company with such a good past design pedigree could have done better.

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