Motorola adds another sliding phone into its arsenal with the new Motorola Z9. The Z9 is solidly built, with a lot of metal in the body. It measures 4.5 by 2.1 inches and has a thickness of 0.5 inches. The display is a large, bright 320-by-240-pixel screen protected by a thick but clear protective plastic. The slide is spring-loaded and feels smooth. Motorola’s CrystalTalk provides the Z9 with crystal-clear sound quality even in noisy environments. It comes with a built-in GPS navigation feature that's powered by Telenav, as well as AT&T's one-way Video Share service. Multimedia fans will be able to play several music and video file formats using a microSD card or via the 50mb onboard memory. Web browsing using the unit’s Opera 8 browser can be done via 3G, though the reviewer noted that the Z9 was less able to capture weak 3G signals than the Motorola V9. The 2MP-camera turned in excellent images taken outdoors, but extremely blurred ones in low light. Battery life tested in 2G mode yielded 10 hours 21 minutes of talk time. If the bland design isn’t much of an issue, the Motorola Z9 is a solid choice for a powerful phone with a wide range of capabilities.

Motorola Z9 is the first non-smart phone to be offered by AT&T that provides GPS service. Reminiscent of the Motorola RAZR V9, the Z9 has the same sturdy build as well as the glossy finish. However, the reviewer stated that the Z9 is a tad bigger and bulkier than the RAZR, the Z9 being a slider. For just $9.99 a month, Z9 users can turn their phones into GPS devices, offering turn-by-turn directions as well as POI searching. The program is quite flexible, allowing you to configure whether you want to see the shortest route, the traffic-optimized one and even key-in preferred streets and highways. Upon testing the GPS capabilities of the Z9, the reviewer noted that there are times when the phone will take a long time before updating your location. Call quality in general is excellent, thanks to Motorola’s CrystalTalk. Multimedia with the Z9 isn’t stellar: just enough to get you by. Buffering both for video and audio suffered stuttering. It also features a camera with flash, though the reviewer stated that picture quality was blurry. If size and bulk isn’t a big issue, and you need a slider that delivers excellent calls, there is the Motorola Z9.