Qtek 9100 review: Cheaper than expected

Office and internet

Microsoft has renamed all office applications in its mobile devices. There is no Pocket Office anymore, but Office Mobile. The greatest change is may be the lack of files of the PXL and PXW type. Instead, common formats like DOC or XLS are used. Word and Excel allow editing while Power Point is able to only read files.

Microsoft has improved its pocket Word application. The latter preserves advanced formatting quite successfully, including headers, footers, tables. It even keeps the styles. Work with pictures seems to be the only thing missing for total satisfaction.

Word Mobile

Excel mobile handles well spreadsheet files from the PC. A piece of novelty is the graphs. On all accounts, the program is quite useful for viewing of existing sheets and creating new ones.

Pocket Excel

The internet browser has long called for improvements, but it seems that Microsoft prefers to leave some field for future innovations - Internet Explorer does not support multiple windows. The browser offers a full-screen mode as well as three ways of page formatting. One of them is the option to view pages in a single column without the necessity of horizontal scrolling. You can also save a picture from the web page you are viewing.

Internet: there is a progress indicator in the status bar • standard page • context menu • full-screen mode

Landscape display mode • smaller font

Multimedia and music

The camera has a resolution of 1.3 megapixels - 1280 × 1024 pixels. Interpolated size of 1600 × 1280 is also available. The quality it provides is terrible though. The quality of common picture is not brilliant either. Videos are recorded in a format of 176 × 144 pixels. Qtek 9100 shows pictures and plays videos by the help of a simple application called Pictures & Videos.

Picture gallery

MP3 files are played through Windows Media application. The sound quality of the stereo speakers is average. Besides, you will have to hold the device right in front of your nose in other to notice the stereo effect. The earphones delivered in the original package improve significantly the sound quality. The communicator goes with a small jack. Be sure you have an adapter if you mean to plug in a pair of common earphones. I do not like the material of the cable either as curves that got once created during the packing process seem to remain forever. On the other hand, the remote control mounted on the cable is excellent.

Multimedia files player

Accessories

Beside the communicator, the original package includes the following accessories:

• USB cable
• stereophonic earphones with handsfree
  
  
  
• horizontal case with a clip to hang on a belt
  
  
  
• charger
• user manual

The package

Marek Lutonský: excellent for work

I am not going to closely link and compare the Qtek 9100 communicator neither with MDA Compact, nor with other pocket computer or communicator models as I consider it to be a brand new device. It is a perfect demonstration of interface between a communicator and Microsoft Outlook. Nor do I have any negative remarks regarding PIM. Even though I would have appreciated the implementation of 3G, I think that the available combination of GPRS and EDGE is quite successful. What's more, Qtek 9100 offers Wi-Fi as well.

As for the email client and the internet browser, it is clear that we have not still come to a technological level, where we would be able to directly compare one and the same program both in a communicator and a PC. Smaller display and limited control possibilities designate these applications as usable for field-work only. I regard highly both the hardware keypad and the applications for work with office documents.

To sum up, Qtek 9100 is a top-quality communicator offered at a reasonable price. When we first started to evaluate it, longer before we got to know its real price, we wrote that we would be pleasantly surprised if the device hit the market at a price of approximately 570 euro. Well, we are. Qtek 9100 is being currently offered for 555 euro.

Jirí Kuruc: brilliant Compact successor

As a MDA Compact veteran user I was really longing to grab and test Qtek 9100. It did not disappoint me. Its keypad as well as its WLAN support excuses its extended thickness. The new OS is much better than the one I know from MDA Compact. Nevertheless, I would have appreciated the option for changing the function of the software buttons mounted below the display. I do not like the slot for miniSD memory cards. Unfortunately, I have not had the chance to build an opinion of my own regarding the processor speed as it has been short time since I started to use the new communicator. I also look forward to testing Qtek's durability in order to compare it with the one of MDA Compact, which is pretty good. In spite of my short experience with the new communicator, I do like it and consider its price appropriate.