Motorola handsets are often well-made, and the Karma QA1 is no exception. It measures 3.5 by 2.5 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 5 ounces. It's a little squat and heavy, but manages to look classy. The Karma has a black rubberized case with an aluminum grey accent band around the front panel edge. The 2.5-inch, 320-by-240-pixel LCD was bright and colorful, and the slider mechanism felt smooth and solid. The four-row keyboard has raised, oval plastic keys with a positive engagement. I enjoyed typing on it and made very few mistakes.
Features and Performance
The Karma is a quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and dual-band 3G (850/1900 MHz) device. It felt a little weird to hold up to my head because of its wide girth and slide-out keyboard. Nevertheless, voice quality was clear and punchy in both directions, with no background hiss thanks in part to Motorola's well-regarded CrystalTalk technology. Reception was excellent; I usually saw five bars and solid 3G signal, even indoors in a rural part of Massachusetts. Calls also sounded fine through a paired Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset. The speakerphone was well-balanced and just loud enough for outdoor use providing you're not at a construction site. The Karma lasted 4 hours and 23 minutes on a battery rundown test, about average for 3G AT&T phones.
The home screen features Web page links for Facebook, MySpace, and JuiceCaster, a less-used social networking app. There's also a pop-up shortcut menu for the alarm clock, Bluetooth settings, and some other commonly used features. The Karma's tiered menu structure is a little weird, with duplicate icons across numerous submenus. But getting around was quick thanks to the UI's fast response time. Unfortunately, AT&T loaded the Karma with a ton of useless branded content and other bloatware, with well over a dozen icons sprinkled throughout the menu system.
Sorting through the chaff, AT&T Mobile E-Mail offers access to Yahoo, AOL, Windows Live, and common ISP accounts, but lacks Gmail support. The IM client also offers Yahoo, AIM, and Windows Live access (but not Google Talk); it also only showed my mobile AIM buddies, which was a disappointment. The GPS chipset hooks into the TeleNav-powered AT&T Navigator ($9.99/month) for voice-enabled, turn-by-turn directions. The GPS radio sometimes took several minutes to lock into my position, but the TeleNav app worked great once it did. The Opera 8.60 for Synergy browser displayed WAP pages quickly, though fonts were a little squished compared with other devices. Various desktop HTML pages were a tremendous mess; stick with WAP sites and you'll be fine.
Multimedia
The Karma works well as a multimedia device. The standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack was welcome. The microSD card slot was hidden beneath the battery cover, but didn't require removing the battery. My 16GB SanDisk card worked fine, and there's also 100MB of onboard storage. Music sounded OK over a paired set of Motorola S9-HD stereo Bluetooth headphones. The app displayed album art when available, and had no trouble playing MP3, AAC, and WMA files. You can buy tracks over the air from Napster and eMusic, and there's an XM Radio client ($8.99/month) on board as well. There's no standalone video player icon, but you can get around that by searching through the 'My Stuff' Application. The Karma played .3GP video files smoothly even when expanded to fill the screen, including a two-hour movie. The Karma works with AT&T's Cellular Video and MobiTV for streamed video services. Those clips played at inconsistent frame rates as usual, but at least audio stayed in sync and aspect ratios were correct. Java benchmark results were mostly poor with the exception of good graphics and video processing results, so the Karma could do as a gaming device in a pinch. The phone packs a 252 Mhz ARM9 processor, pretty decent for a midrange feature phone.
The Karma's 2-megapixel, fixed-focus camera with LED flash takes blurry, mottled, overexposed photos. About half were unusable, while the other half looked like washed-out pictures from VGA cameras of years past. Even well-lit outdoor shots featured blurry green messes where trees should have been. Recorded videos were of decent resolution (320-by-240-pixel) and played smoothly. But the poor optics contributed to a pasty appearance and a terminally dark cast indoors.
Aside from the poor camera, it's tough to fault the Karma. It gets most things right for a feature phone, and doesn't make the same mistakes that trip up competing handsets, such as using non-standard headphone jacks or burying the microSD slot underneath the battery. The LG Xenon GR500 has a roomier, more comfortable QWERTY keyboard along with a 2.8-inch touch screen; it's currently our Editors' Choice for AT&T feature phones. The $79 Nokia Surge is a messaging-focused handset like the Karma, but the Surge includes more powerful software and is a real smartphone requiring a more expensive data plan. If a hardware QWERTY keyboard isn't as important, the $99.99 Samsung Solstice SGH-a887 gives you a 3-inch touch screen with haptic feedback and plenty of media features, although it makes the headphone jack and microSD card slot mistakes I mentioned earlier.
Spec Data* Price as Tested: $49.99 - $249.99 Street
* Service Provider: AT&T
* Operating System: Other
* Screen Size: 2.5 inches
* Screen Details: 320-by-240, 262K-color TFT LCD screen
* Camera: Yes
* Megapixels: 2 MP
* 802.11x: No
* Bluetooth: Yes
* Web Browser: Yes
* Network: GSM, UMTS
* Bands: 800, 850, 900, 1800, 1900
* High-Speed Data: EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
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