Motorola Z8 Preview

As we have mentioned in the beginning of this review, the RIZR Z8 is the first phone to run on UIQ 3.1 but also is the first device with UIQ without touch display. The OS is adapted for such phones and although different, still has common features with the touch-screen one, which you may see in the Sony Ericsson P1 Review.

The Home screen can be personalized to be "Active standby screen" and one can choose to see up to 5 out of 6 options including Calls, Messages, Emails, Calendar, Profiles and Music Player information. They appear as large shortcuts with information, directly on the display.
By default the main menu is visualised as a grid of 3 by 3 icons but can also be viewed as a list with 8 fields. In both cases, a scroll is present to indicate which page you are viewing, as the menu is shown in more than one, because of the large amount of objects. This reminds us more of the S60 interface, but the way you change the visualization from one type to another is showing you that the currently used Interface is UIQ.

A drawback compared to S60 and other phones with non-touch displays is that the numeric keys don’t act as shortcuts to the menu fields. This is because other UIQ phones are operated through the displays by tapping. As expected, themes can be changed to personalize the look with other colors and images.

The phonebook is coming directly from the UIQ siblings and almost no changes are made to it. The contacts are visualised as a vertical list and still we see the drawback that they can be searched by first name only, which is ridiculous. Adding a new one will sort the fields in three tabs very similar to the touch-version and the Sony Ericsson non-smart phones. A specific type of field can be added as much times as you wish.

The Calendar is also transmitted from the other version of the UIQ with all the pros and cons it has. The preview of a month is on only half the screen, using the other half to display the entries of the selected day. It can also be previewed for week (where the days are ordered in strange but rational way) or for specific day, with the latter marking the hours when an appointment is set with different color to easily manage the spare time. If two or more entries have conflict due to the selected time, this will be indicated with another color. Other features of the organizer include world clock with three alarms that can be programmed with separate times and alerts (just like other UIQ phones), Calculator, ToDo list, and Notes (Jotter).

The Messaging menu will also be familiar to user of other UIQ phones as it shares many with the version for touch-screen-featuring phones. Here also is the POP3/IMAP email client which allows you to add multiple mail boxes.

Motorola Z8 is quad-band GSM which allows it to work on any continent, which is a must for every modern phone in our opinion. The single-band UMTS 2100MHz means high speed 3G data can be used only in Europe/Asia regions where such networks are present and not in America, where 850/1900 MHz bands are used for this.


Comparing the interface of the Motorola Z8 to the one of the Sony Ericsson P1 (another UIQ phone but with touch-display):