Motorola KRZR K1 Review

Motorola dictates the design direction in mobile phones for years, and their most apparent examples are the RAZR-phones, that became the most popular device and the ones the other manufacturers regulate their models with. After a few models from the RAZR and SLVR families achieved their missions as best-sellers, Motorola decided to use another style that was sure to become a hit – shiny reflective surface. We first saw it in pre-production units of the PEBL U6 (called V6 at that time) but it didn't hit the stores due to the easy-to-catch fingerprints thing, and was available in ordinary black, and various “sweet” colors later. After a while, the same glass-finish appeared on the H5 Miniblue Headset, which is still not commercially available.
The KRZR (Crazier) family from Motorola and the K1 – the first GSM phone of the family is combination between this innovative surface and the styles of RAZR, PEBL and earlier Motorola phones. Unlike the RAZR which it inherits, it replaces the boring gray surface with glass-blue one and rounds the corners in the style of the PEBL, but unfortunately adds some thickness to the “ultra-slim” RAZR, fattening it with 2mm from 13.9 to 16, which is 15% increase and puts it out of the “ultra-slim” category, founded by the original RAZR V3.

Our box included only the phone, battery + charger, a case for the phone and a manual.

The KRZR K1 is narrow clamshell with unique look and feel, standing out in the crowd, not only by its surface but also by its proportions. It measures 4.0" x 1.6" x 0.6" compared to 3.9" x 2.2" x 0.5" for the original RAZR. The ratio of height:width of the front side of the KRZR is 2.5:1 while it is 1.7:1 in the case of the RAZR! It's narrower than the phones we are used to, which helps it to look much more elegant, stylish and of course extraordinary. It feels very comfortable in the hand: when the phone is closed it is easy to reach the side keys, and we are happy that finally they are situated on the bottom shell instead on the upper one that houses the displays, as it was in earlier Motorola phones. Sadly, even thought the right key is big enough, pressing it is not very easy. Although its average weight of 3.6oz or 102grams, we felt the K1 in our pockets, which is probably due to the narrower design; it didn't felt heavy though and you may consider wearing it in a shirt's pocket.

	V3-KRZR-Chocolate-KG320	V3-KRZR-Chocolate-KG320	V3-KRZR-Chocolate-KG320
V3-KRZR-Chocolate-KG320	V3-KRZR-Chocolate-KG320	V3-KRZR-Chocolate-KG320	Camera comparison

Although it is fragile looking with its glass-like surface, the KRZR has very solid construction both closed and opened! It is very well built and we did not hear any creaking noises even we quizzed it hard, unlike other phones that sound as if they are breaking apart while a text message is entered. The clamshell opens as it should, and doesn't wobble without a reason. Even the battery cover is very solid and its brilliant construction allows you to remove it when you want to without any effort – just push the silver key and slide it out a second.

Lacking even music-dedicated keys on the phone, we found ourselves opening the clamshell very often. This can be accomplished with one hand only but is not the easiest operation, as the phone also lacks auto-opening mechanism. Unfortunately the spring-assist helps only if the phone is positioned horizontally, while if it is held vertically the spring is powerful enough only to half-open the shell. When K1 is already opened, it is also comfortable to use and you feel the phone solid in your hand – it has high-class metal feel, just like its predecessor.
 
Closing is soft, and the sound produced when the two shells meet is quieter than it was with the RAZR. Unfortunately after a week of usage the “bang” heard when the shells meet become quite more apparent. Just like it was with the RAZR, the KRZR's display presses on the phone's keypad which after a short usage gets greasy and the lines dividing the keys or the d-pads are imprinted on the display's surface. Once again, the buffer that Motorola have used to divide the display with the keypad when the phone is closed is not enough to avoid this flaw, just as it was in the V3i.

The front side of the phone houses the external display of the K1. It is small rectangular unit with low quality that is used mainly used for caller ID and service information. The color display shows the time, as well as the battery and signal level and it uses the same background image as the internal display.
From here you can easily change the profiles of the phone using the side keys. It can also be used for viewfinder of the camera when taking self-portraits with the phone closed, but its quality is low and the colors it represents are not realistic showing rather grayish colors.
We were able to see the time using it in outdoor environment without the need to light it up which is good as most displays of this type are totally unusable in direct light. If it is dark, you can press the Voice Command key on the right to turn the backlight on.

The internal main display is similar to that of the RAZR – it has mediocre resolution of 176x220 pixels and can show up to 262k colors. It's relatively small in size (2 inches) and although its good brightness and contrast, its colors are not very realistic and the images displayed on it look soft and not very detailed. Compared to the RAZR V3i, the K1's display is definitely brighter and perfectly readable even in direct sunlight, but if it is dirty you may have some troubles as it will reflect the light.

V3 next to K1

Except the side keys, you don't have any other control over the phone when it is closed. Unlike the CDMA version of the KRZR – the K1m, the GSM version doesn't have touch-sensitive keys (LG Chocolate first used those type of keys) “hidden” below the external display to be used as multimedia shortcuts for the player of the phone.

Right side

Left side

The keypad of the K1 left us with mixed up feelings - the keys are well sized and if your fingers are not very fat, you'll be able to press them without any problems, but doing this a little harder that what we've liked. The tactile response helps for entering text but the same of the *-key is almost zero. The other issue we experienced was with the “0” key – if it is pressed slightly, it does click, but does not do anything. We do not think this would be the case with all KRZR – probably we just have a slightly defective unit, but still make sure you check your keypad thoroughly.

The whole keypad is flat, as those of the RAZR phones and none of the keys are raised – only flush metallic surface that keypad beautifully reflects the light refracting it, in contrast to the exterior glossy surface that can be used as a mirror. It's in deep blue metallic color, similar to the exterior.
The only relief is the one of the horizontal and vertical lines dividing the keypad in rows and columns. As we've said, they are horizontal and vertical straight lines, positioned at 90 degrees, unlike the RAZRs that had just horizontal curved lines.
The characters are white and are lit in light blue; they are easily readable in different lightning conditions. Unlike the V3i, the backlight is not in two shades of the blue, which would give better visual border between the keys.

K1 KRZR blue backlight

V3 RAZR and K1 KRZR

The d-pad is relatively big, but uncomfortable for use and we often made mistakes with the sides, pressing not the key we wanted but one near-by. The central position is the only one of it that is fine.

Just like the predecessor of the phone (V3i), the K1 has hidden service lights: they indicate the charging and the active Bluetooth, in respectively green and blue color. The lights can be seen only when they are flashing, and are situated to the left and right of the external display. Once again, Motorola haven't put any service light to inform you of missed alerts (call, messages, etc).

The bottom part is free of any ports and connectors, and in order not to be completely empty, the designers have put some microdots that resemble perforations and add to the classy look of the phone contrasting to the reflecting flush surface in blue.

Interface:

You won't be surprised by the interface of the phone if you've ever used any Motorola phone in the past.
The four directions of the D-pad are shortcuts, which operation can be user-assigned and you can choose if you want to see their icons all the time or keep them hidden. Pressing the center key opens the main menu that is displayed in old-fashioned 3x3grid of icons or a list, depending on user's choice. As with previous models, the animated icons can be reordered and shortcuts assigned to them, but they won't have any by default. Thanks to the themes, you can graphically change the appearance of the phone, but the three preloaded changed nothing but the background images. We believe that other themes may have greater effect, as it was with those of earlier Motorola phones (V3i, L7, etc)

An interesting flaw we experienced during our test is that after a few theme changes, a bug appeared and in the service lines (the top and bottom) the phone displayed part of the image of a theme that is not currently used. Changing to other theme didn't help as well as restarting the phone and even removing its battery. We've no idea why it happened and how it may be removed.

Phonebook:

The phonebook is pretty standard: the contacts can be viewed either as a plain names-list or as a list with called ID image and the number (you can choose alternative numbers added using the left and right directions when you have selected a specific contact). Searching for a contact is done by typing a character directly through the keypad – searched are the fields for the first or last name, but any words after the first in a field will not be searched through. For example, if you have
First name: Joe One
Last name: Third
and search for “One”, Joe One Third will not be found as a match.

 
Setting a ringer or Picture Id while entering a new contact is easy as well as adding additional numbers - just use Options-Add number and you will have two new fields – for the number and its type – a big improvement for Motorola! There is a BirthDay field, but it is pretty much useless as the phone will not notify you on that date about the event.
Organizing the contacts by groups is available, but seeing a specific group is not an easy operation and the user will have to “filter” the displayed contacts by a group. You can see a single one, and then the other, but it requires lots of steps through the menus – for the time required for the operation, a search through the names can be performed. Still, it is nice that the user can set shared ringer and picture ID for a whole group, as well as create new groups.

Using the phone's calendar, the user can browse it by month or week, as well as by a single date. Adding an event is done in a few simple and logical steps and you will have options for reminders. A nice addition is the Lunar Date, although it will be useless to most people and can be switched off.

The voice recorder can be easily activated with the right side key or through the menus. It can record as much as the available memory allows which can be a lot, thanks to the slot for microSD cards. The latter is situated bellow the battery cover as it was with the V3i, but not below the battery itself and so you can swap cards without powering the phone off.

The KRZR also supports speaker-independent voice commands: by pressing the voice key on the right side you will open the dialog box for commands. You can choose if you want to use the speakerphone, which we found more convenient. Dialing names directly from your phonebook or numbers by digit-dialing is possible. It is also possible to train the KRZR for better accuracy and it is done in 10 steps taking a few minutes. After we've adapted the digits we had a great success and we found this system usable, but you may have some problems with the names in your phonebook. Once again names like “Brother”, “Mother”, “John” and “The Boss” were correctly found in almost all of our tries, but we weren't able to call contact with name “Amy”.

Messaging:

In a few steps you can write a text message, and if you insert some multimedia files you'll be composing a MMS. Using the iTap you can achieve incredible speed of typing and it is really easy to get used to it.
The phone also comes with preloaded templates which are handy for fast sending of a message, especially the multimedia templates.

IMAP and POP3 email protocols are supported and we setup our account in just a few minutes. The default e-mail download limit is 300 KB, which can be adjusted. An option to download all, graphics only or music only attachments is present as well.

Connectivity:

The KRZR K1 is quad-band GSM phone that works in all GSM networks on any continent. It is 2G phone supporting EDGE data, but we'd prefer to see 3G UMTS support here for video calling option which will be a major improvement over the predecessor.
Locally, it can be connected with computer via miniUSB standard port (located on the right side under a plastic cover) or with Bluetooth, which is also used for connection with wireless accessories, like headsets for example. The latter can be done via few steps using the Bluetooth field in the main menu and we are happy that the multimedia A2DP profile is supported that allows streaming of stereo audio wirelessly.

It's sad to see that the mediocre internet browser of the KRZR doesn't load properly regular HTML pages. We tried to read PhoneArena's news but the site wouldn't open. Simple pages optimized for phones like Google load up fast, thanks to the EDGE data, but reading one on such a small screen is not something we want to do often. At the end of the connection, the phone shows the transmitted data for a few seconds, but it is shown in bytes instead of kilobytes which would have been much more convenient!

Camera:

2-megapixel camera

The camera can be directly started through the home screen, and it loads in about five seconds, which is average to slow performance, but we were really disappointed when we had to take a photo – the wait was about up to 8 seconds after the shutter key was pressed.
The camera interface itself it pretty mediocre – it is in portrait mode and shows just a few indicators – in the upper right corner number of images that can be taken, their size and the memory they would be saved on (phone or card). In the down left corner there is animated d-pad which allows changing the setting – by default it controls the digital zoom, but up and down allows changing the settings for Color Style, Exposure and White Balance. Self-timer can also be setup (with two settings: 5 or 10 seconds delay) and have four options for pictures resolution and three for its compression.

We want to warn you that unlike the D900 (Samsung's 3-megapixel shooter), the KRZR is not designed to shoot in portrait orientation: it takes images with resolution 1600x1200, but they are rotated at 90 degrees and are not well oriented. In order to achieve normal results, the image should be manually rotated at the computer and then it will have resolution of 1200x1600.

The camera performed well during the tests: its main drawback is the lack of auto-focus, which is a must-have feature nowadays. The captured images came out with balanced exposition, realistic colors and not much noise and so plenty of detail for 2-megapixel camera of phone. Due to the lack of autofocus many images may occur blurry (out of focus) which may destroy a photo. As it lacks any kind of flash (even single LED), using it for shooting at no lightning is useless (except night photos), but the indoor images with average light were very good for a camera of this class.

Audio:

As it was with the V3i, the KRZR has two players: a simple sound player and music player written in JAVA. The first one has very plain interface, browses all the songs on your phone and can order them in playlists you create. During a track playback, the name and continuance are shown, as well as the size and the bitrate. Thanks to the A2DP profile, the music can be streamed and listened on wireless Bluetooth headphones.

K1 and H820

Don't expect miracles from the video player. It has the same plain interface as the sound player but happily can play in full-screen mode. Watching high-quality videos is not possible, as the phone once again doesn't support H.264.

Software:

The K1 is Java MIDP 2.0-capable phone and comes preloaded with a few Java applications. One of them is called K1 Help which is handy when you don't know your phone well – it will give you hints how to use specific features of it.
Of course you can easily add additional applications/games that you download on your own.

Performance:

During out testing, the KRZR was very responsive and fast in most menus. The only longer wait is when saving 2 mega-pixel images and the delay was about 7-8 seconds.
It's a pity that phone looking as good as the KRZR has crappy reception! In our basement signal reception test, it performed very weak, and definitely below the average. We expect that it won't be a rare situation to drop a call when you are in area with weak signal.

Once connected, it performs reasonably well: the outgoing sound is about the average in strength and voices sound very realistic and clean, without additional undesired sounds – your partner will understand you easily and will hear you as if you are next to him. The incoming sound is also one of the good features of the phone – it's strong enough for noisy environment and is detailed and clear at the same time.

The battery that powers the phone is BC50 with capacity of 700mAh. You will be lucky if you use the phone for more than three days after it is fully charged, but it may happen depending on your usage of the phone. If you use the music player and the camera, two days would be your average battery life.

Conclusion:

The KRZR K1 is image-maker: it successfully inherits the RAZR family sporting design and style that put it out of the crowd of boring phones you are used to – it's narrow, blue, shiny and fashionable piece of art. Sadly it has very weak signal reception, but the voice quality during a call reminds you that the used phone is of high class. The KRZR packs average features in perfectly looking solid construction, but we'd like better implementation of the features like higher resolution of the screen (QVGA is not science fiction anymore) and auto-focus for the camera.

the KRZR K1 easily gets dirty

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

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