In the beginning, there were yin and yang, blessings and curses, two sides of every coin. And now there’s the Motorola Q.

It’s a greatly anticipated, long-delayed cell phone with a tiny keyboard that lets you tap out e-mail and text messages with your thumbs. The Q offers two huge advantages over the popular BlackBerry and Treo smartphones: in Motorola’s words, “price point and form factor.”

The price point (that is, price) for this Verizon Wireless phone is $200. That’s half of what you’d pay for the Treo 700, and $100 less than the latest BlackBerry. This deal is for new Verizon customers, after rebate and with a two-year contract; still, it reflects Motorola’s intention to make the Q a hit beyond the metropolitan-white collar-financial district crowd. (Other carriers will get the Q later in the year.)

Clearly, Motorola has learned from the chart-topping success of its Razr cell phone: thin is in. The Q is an eye-catching, extremely thin slab. At 0.45 inch thick, it’s thinner than a closed Razr phone, thinner than a BlackBerry, and only two-hundredths of an inch thicker than the video iPod.

This hardware design, by the way, is whichever side of the coin you consider the bright side: The Q’s hardware positively clobbers everything else out there.

—NY Times