Motorola Q11 First Photos: An Early Look at Motorola's Next-Gen Q

In late September 2008, more than two years after the original Motorola Q had already come and gone through its Verizon launch and giveaway cycle, Mobility Today published an exclusive set of leaked photos of a follow-up device: the Motorola Q11. The post was thin on detail — a handful of sentences and an embedded Flickr slideshow — but it beat Motorola's own official announcement by roughly two weeks. This article restores what that original post actually said, checked against archived snapshots pulled from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, and separately verifies what the Motorola Q11 actually turned out to be once Motorola confirmed it publicly. It does not carry over any specs from the original 2006 Motorola Q covered in Mobility Today's other retrospectives — the Q11 was a distinct, later device, and this piece treats it that way throughout.

What Were the Motorola Q11 First Photos?

Mobility Today's post, headlined "EXCLUSIVE: Motorola Q11 Photos," presented a set of previously unseen photos of an unreleased Motorola device, at a point when Motorola itself had said nothing official about a Q11 at all. Unlike the site's earlier Verizon Motorola Q leak, which hosted its images directly on Mobility Today's own servers, this post pointed readers to an embedded Flickr slideshow rather than hosting the photos itself. The framing was brief and confident — an exclusive look at a device the site's own staff hadn't reviewed hands-on, sourced from a tip rather than an independent test.

When Was the Photo Leak Published?

Archived snapshots pin the publish date down precisely. A Wayback Machine capture from September 25, 2008 shows the post's byline reading "posted 20 hours ago"; a later capture from September 28, 2008 shows the same byline resolved to an absolute date, "posted Wednesday, Sep. 24th, 2008." Both snapshots agree, and the math checks out — Wednesday, September 24, 2008 is the confirmed publish date, credited to Mobility Today founder David Ciccone. At the time of the earliest snapshot, the post had zero reader comments, meaning the capture caught it within roughly a day of going live.

What Mobility Today's Original Post Said

The surviving body text is short enough to quote in full, since paraphrasing risks adding detail that wasn't actually there: "We were lucky enough to get our hands on some photos that have never been seen before of the Motorola Q11. This phone offers GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, 3MPx Cam and Windows Mobile 6.1.. No information as to when we will see this puppy but the photos don't look too shabby!" That's the entire substantive claim in the original post — four features listed in a single sentence, an explicit admission that no release timing was known, and a casual, non-committal read on the photos themselves. There's no mention of carrier branding, pricing, dimensions, or a keyboard comparison to the original Q anywhere in the surviving text, which is why this article doesn't invent any of those details for the leak itself.

The Flickr Slideshow and the "Giant Panda" Credit

Rather than embedding individual images, the post embedded a Flickr slideshow widget pointed at a specific Flickr user's photos tagged "Q11." That distinction matters for anyone trying to track down the original images today: they were never Mobility Today's own uploads, and a slideshow embed like this doesn't reliably survive in web archives the way directly hosted images do. The post closes with a one-line credit, "Thanks to Giant Panda," naming a source or tipster without further identification. Nothing in the surviving page explains who "Giant Panda" was, so this article isn't guessing at an identity beyond what the original text says.

Motorola Q11 vs the Q9 Family: A Naming Note

Because Motorola's Q-series naming got genuinely inconsistent across carriers and years, it's worth being explicit about where the Q11 actually sits in that lineage rather than assuming. The original Motorola Q launched on Verizon in May 2006 running Windows Mobile 5.0. In July 2007, Motorola followed it with the Q9 family — the Q9, Q9h, Q9m, and Q9c, each tied to a different carrier and all running Windows Mobile 6.0. "Q11" is not another name for any of those Q9 variants, and it isn't a carrier-specific rebrand of one either — contemporary coverage from October 2008 treats it as its own standalone model, announced separately and specced differently from the entire Q9 generation. Worth flagging honestly: no widely documented "Motorola Q10" turns up in contemporary reporting or phone-spec databases, so the numbering appears to jump from the Q9 family straight to Q11. This article isn't asserting a confirmed reason for that gap — it's simply noting that Q11, unusual as it looks next to Q9h or Q9c, checks out as a real, distinct Motorola product name once verified against independent sources rather than just Mobility Today's own post.

Motorola's Official Announcement, Two Weeks Later

Motorola confirmed the Q11 publicly on October 8, 2008 — about two weeks after Mobility Today's leaked photos ran, a genuinely tight window for a leak to precede an official reveal. Contemporary coverage from that announcement, including reporting that pegged the device as a "business-minded phone" carrying an "affordable price," lines up closely with what Mobility Today's leak had already listed: GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, and a megapixel-class camera bump were all confirmed as real, not leak speculation. Even the software detail checked out exactly — the leak's "Windows Mobile 6.1" matched the official confirmation, Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard.

Confirmed Motorola Q11 Hardware

Once Motorola's own materials and contemporary hands-on coverage filled in the gaps the leak's single sentence left open, a fuller spec picture emerged. The table below reflects specs independently confirmed through contemporary reporting and phone-spec databases, not claims from Mobility Today's original post alone.

The absence of 3G is worth calling out on its own, since it drew criticism even at the time. A device announced in late 2008 and marketed partly on business appeal, shipping with only EDGE data and no HSDPA, was already a step behind a number of competing smartphones by that point — reviewers covering the October 2008 announcement flagged this directly as a shortcoming rather than treating it as a non-issue.

Slimmer Than the Original Q? What the Numbers Actually Show

It's tempting to assume that any "next-generation" version of a phone known for being unusually thin would themselves be thinner still. Checking the actual confirmed dimensions tells a different story. The original 2006 Motorola Q measured 116 x 63 x 11.5mm and weighed 115g. The Motorola Q11 measured 117 x 64 x 11.7mm and weighed roughly 115g. Those numbers are close enough to call the two devices essentially the same size — and if anything, the Q11 was fractionally thicker and slightly larger in footprint than the original Q, not slimmer. This article isn't repeating a "slimmer redesign" framing here, because the confirmed dimensions don't support it. Whatever design refinements Motorola made for the Q11, a meaningfully thinner body wasn't one of them, at least according to the specs independently confirmed here.

Windows Mobile 6.1 and the Missing 3G

Software-wise, the Q11 sat one full point release ahead of the Q9 family, running Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard rather than the Q9 generation's Windows Mobile 6.0. WiFi was a genuine addition over both the original Q and the Q9 family, neither of which included built-in WiFi, and some coverage from the announcement specifically mentioned Boingo Mobile hotspot integration bundled with it. Integrated GPS with A-GPS assistance was also new relative to earlier Q generations, and Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support meant stereo Bluetooth headsets were usable for music. Against all of that, the lack of 3G data stands out as the clearest step backward relative to where the smartphone market as a whole was heading by late 2008.

Camera and Multimedia

The camera moved from the original Q's 1.3-megapixel sensor up to a 3.15-megapixel fixed-focus unit with an LED flash, a meaningful jump on paper, alongside basic video capture at 15 frames per second and a stated 8x digital zoom. None of this is confirmed by anything visible in Mobility Today's leaked photos themselves — the leak's own text mentions a "3MPx Cam" as a listed feature, but doesn't describe photo samples, zoom behavior, or flash performance. The fuller camera detail here is drawn from later, independently confirmed specs rather than anything demonstrated in the original leak post.

The Planned December 2008 Release — and What Actually Happened

At its October 2008 announcement, Motorola pointed to a December 2008 release window and pitched the Q11 as an affordably priced option. Some phone-spec trackers do list a formal release date of December 2008, but the fuller record is messier than a clean on-time launch. Coverage from the following year shows Motorola still presenting the Q11 in specific regional markets — a Mexico-market presentation is documented as late as August 2009 — with the device positioned primarily for Latin American markets rather than a broad simultaneous global rollout. At least one phone database lists the model's status as effectively abandoned in some markets, with user comments from as late as February 2009 noting the phone hadn't materialized as expected in their region. Taken together, the Q11 was real and announced on schedule, and did reach at least some markets — but not necessarily on the clean December 2008 timeline first promised. This article isn't asserting a single, universal release date beyond what's confirmed here.

Motorola Q11 vs the Original Motorola Q

Setting the two devices side by side, using only independently confirmed specs for each, makes the actual generational gap clearer than either leak coverage or marketing language alone.

The most consequential change isn't really about size or thinness at all, despite that being the framing a "next-gen" successor might invite — it's the shift from a CDMA, EV-DO-connected Verizon exclusive to a GSM, EDGE-only device with no direct successor relationship to the Q9 family that came between them. Readers looking for the original Q's full specs and its Verizon launch story can find that covered in Mobility Today's other retrospectives on the original Motorola Q giveaway and its own pre-release leak.

What We Could and Couldn't Verify

Given how thin the original leak post was, it's worth being precise about what comes from Mobility Today's own archived page versus what comes from independent, later verification.

Confirmed directly from the archived Mobility Today page: the post published September 24, 2008, credited to David Ciccone; the listed features of GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, a 3-megapixel-class camera, and Windows Mobile 6.1; the embedded Flickr slideshow sourced from a specific Flickr user tagged "Q11"; the "Thanks to Giant Panda" source credit; and the explicit statement that no release timing was known at the time of posting.

Confirmed independently, from Motorola's own October 2008 announcement and contemporary reporting: the Q11's full specs including its 2.4-inch display, dimensions, battery capacity, and lack of 3G; its October 8, 2008 announcement date; its initial December 2008 target release window; and later, staggered regional availability extending into 2009, primarily in Latin American markets.

Not confirmed, and not guessed at here: the identity behind the "Giant Panda" credit; the exact photos shown in the original Flickr slideshow, which isn't preserved in a form this article could review directly; a complete, universal release date covering every market Motorola may have sold the Q11 in; and any U.S. carrier launch, which no source reviewed here documents.

Why We're Preserving This Page

Short leak posts built around an embedded third-party widget rarely survive online in a usable form — once the device in question either ships or quietly disappears, there's little reason to keep hosting a slideshow embed that likely stopped working years ago anyway. This one survived because the Wayback Machine crawled the underlying page repeatedly between 2008 and the years that followed, preserving the surrounding text even as the Flickr embed itself faded. Restoring it here keeps a small, genuine piece of Mobility Today's Motorola coverage on the record, clearly framed as a historical snapshot of an early leak rather than a description of a phone that turned out, on closer inspection, to be far less of a size-focused redesign than its "next-gen Q" framing might suggest.

FAQ

What was the Motorola Q11?

A Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone Motorola officially announced on October 8, 2008, roughly two weeks after Mobility Today published exclusive leaked photos of it. It added WiFi, GPS, and an upgraded camera over the original Q and the Q9 family, but ran on GSM/EDGE with no 3G.

How did it differ from the original Q?

Software moved from Windows Mobile 5.0 to 6.1, the camera jumped from 1.3 to 3.15 megapixels, and WiFi and GPS were added for the first time. Physically, though, the Q11 was essentially the same size as the original Q — confirmed dimensions show it was fractionally thicker, not slimmer, despite some coverage framing it as a redesign.

When were photos leaked?

Mobility Today published its exclusive leaked photos on September 24, 2008, sourced from a tipster credited only as "Giant Panda" and presented via an embedded Flickr slideshow rather than directly hosted images.

Was it ever released under that name?

Motorola announced the Q11 on schedule in October 2008 and initially targeted a December 2008 release. The fuller record shows a staggered rollout that extended into 2009 and appears to have focused mainly on Latin American markets, rather than a clean, broad launch on the original timeline.

Is the Motorola Q11 part of the Q9 family?

No. The Q9, Q9h, Q9m, and Q9c all launched in 2007 running Windows Mobile 6.0. The Q11 is a separate, later model announced in October 2008 running Windows Mobile 6.1, not a rebrand or carrier variant of any Q9 device.

Did the Motorola Q11 have 3G?

No. It shipped as a quad-band GSM device with EDGE data only, a limitation contemporary reviewers specifically criticized given how many competing business-focused phones already offered 3G by late 2008.

Who was "Giant Panda"?

Unknown. Mobility Today's original post credits a source or tipster by that name only, with no further identifying detail anywhere in the surviving archived text.

Did the leaked photos show carrier branding?

The surviving text of Mobility Today's post doesn't mention carrier branding at all, and the original Flickr slideshow that would have shown the photos directly isn't preserved in a form this article could review.

The Motorola Q11 is a minor but genuinely verifiable footnote in the Q-series story: a real device, announced only two weeks after Mobility Today's leaked photos ran, that added WiFi, GPS, and a better camera without actually shrinking the phone's footprint the way its "next-gen" framing implied. It never got the clean, broad launch its October 2008 announcement promised, reaching some markets on a staggered timeline that stretched well into 2009. What survives from Mobility Today's own coverage is a single confident paragraph and a since-broken Flickr embed — thin by modern standards, but accurate as far as it goes, and worth preserving as a small, genuine piece of the site's history.