Motorola MOTOZINE ZN5 User Reviews

Bottom line this is a strong durable and reliable phone. Takes great pictures which are worth printing out. Thin and nice fits in pockets even with the camera lens there.Dropped many times still great,many people complain about constant turns offs and ons its true but all you have to do is take some electrical tape and wrap around edge so battery is tighter. Only 2 bad things Memory card location and Video quality is well ehh ok. Great music player too nice clarity and loud. Thanks P.S So Durable that i can even play football with this in my pocket.

 I don't know what everyone is complaining about. I bought this phone used 8 months ago and I drop it probably 3 times a day and it still works. I climb up shelves all the time at work to put things away and this phone has fallen out of my pocket ( darn tiny/shallow female pant pockets, I'm jealous of the deep pockets men have) from around 10-15 ft above tile flooring and lands face down, "exploding" everywhere (back comes off and battery falls out), and has dings and dents in every corner and it still works perfectly. My little brother steals my phone and chucks it on our tile floor. it's been stepped on. This thing has been through A LOT of abuse and IT STILL WORKS GREAT!! I mean my sister's classmate dropped her new phone 2 feet onto carpet and the screen cracked. This lil guy is amazing. The only problem I have is with charging but I think it's just because my charger is broken. It charges fine with my sister's charger. The person that complained about the battery reading just needs to learn how this phone displays the battery meter. It'll be less bars when you plug it in to charge because that shows how much battery life your phone currently has and when you unplug it it'll add another bar to it because it now has more than the amount previously shown. It'll display full bars but show the correct amount a few seconds later (mine takes 2 seconds) because the phone display starts at full and subtracts accordingly after you unplug it. Just the way it was designed. Not a glitch: there's nothing wrong with it. Sometimes it does turn off by itself. I'm guessing thats just because the battery is a bit loose. I solved the problem by sticking in a small folded piece of paper like a fortune from a fortune cookie. Hasn't turned off or restarted on it's own since. The camera is great! I love it! I take a lot of pictures and never had a problem with my camera. I can zoom up super close and see all the intricate details in my pictures. Sometimes it takes a little longer to view my pictures (around 15 secs) but that's probably because the phone memory is close to being full. The music quality is pretty good. I had a Motorola ROKR before and it's pretty much the same thing. If I were to pick between the two I'd choose the ZN5. It plays pretty loud and well for a phone designed for pictures. I love it. I text a lot and occasionally it'll lag behind a few letters because I text pretty fast. I text throughout the day (10,000-8,000 texts a month) so my phone gets a lot of usage and abuse. It hasn't let me down yet. It's a solid phone. I have no idea what all the other people are complaining about. It's great! Despite all the abuse it's gone through it has out lasted my cousins' blackberries, sidekicks, razrs, and all the other phones they go through every year. Plus I like the size. Fits in my hand. not too big not too small. I dont like that I have to charge it every night though. Its pretty reasonable considering how much I use it throughout the day though. and it charges pretty fast (around 2-3 hours from completely dead to full). I would not complain about battery unless compared to my boyfriend's international phone the has a WAY longer battery life and he texts more than I do and it also has a 5 megapixel camera. He can text and use his phone all day for 2-3 days and not have to charge. I'm jealous of those darn international high tech phones!! still love my phone though! 

Exceptional mobile phone. Actually I consider it to be the Motorola’s MASTERPIECE. Motorola is known to manufacture mobile phones with rock solid built quality using top notch & expensive materials like steel, aluminum, mineral glass rather than glossy plastic commonly used by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG. This always has been Motorola’s strong point. The ZN5 is no exception either; it is almost built in metal & has a thick scratch resistant mineral glass over the TFT display matrix which is excellent. The assembly quality is truly exceptional. All the parts sit tight, there’s no slightest play between the details. The handset feels like a monolith. The casing frame and the side edges are painted silver. The surface coating sports a very high quality. The back panel uses metal as well, though the lower part is rubber, which is very practical – the scratches and worn spots are kept away. The Motorola ZN5 measure 12mm in thickness, which is a rather nice achievement - it actually puts it in Top 5 of slimmest 5 MP camera phones. The body thickness however increases around the camera area to up to 16mm.The display in ZN5 is way ahead of the European contenders like Nokia & Sony Ericsson. Actually mobile phones which are manufactured in Japan by Japanese companies have exceptional displays & generally are way better than the European counterparts. Just think about top LCD screen manufactures of the world – Sharp, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, JVC,etc all reside in Japan. Whereas European mobile phone manufactures use TFT displays manufactured by local European companies, Motorola uses TFT display manufactured by Sharp Corporation of Japan. The display has class leading brightness and contrast levels, the colors are maximally natural and saturated. Undeniably, the best 2.4 inch QVGA display to adorn a mobile phone so far.The morphing keypad, called ModeShift and first introduced in Motorola E8, is also present in ZN5. It's got haptic feedback on every key press and key designations and backlight change in accordance to the currently used application and makes life a lot easier instead of running through menus & submenus of the current running application.The phone is all about the camera and it does not disappoint on this ground. Believe me, it is the BEST 5 MP CAMERA PHONE with the most advanced 5 MP CMOS camera module currently available on the market today, make no mistake about it. It uses Carl Zeiss optics and has mechanical shutter like Nokia N82. On the review of www.mobiset.ru they compared the pictures taken by ZN5 & Nokia N82 [ZN5 only contender] of a same object (say a poster) located far away under high magnification and found that ZN5’s picture contains higher level of details and better color saturation than N82. The Kodak's participation has brought the Kodak Perfect Touch technology to the ZN5 which can make any picture taken look sharper & brighter. Motorola ZN5 is also the industry first to introduce VARIABLE APERTURE technology in the camera unit of a mobile phone. In layman's terms, theory says the variable aperture allows the camera to choose either the benefit of better-than-standard light sensitivity or better-than-standard sharpness throughout the photo. The ZN5 camera will offer two apertures values. Technically the photos at smaller apertures (indicated by a larger F-stop value) should be sharper and with larger depth of field than photos shot by any other 5 MP camera phones on the market. The camera will automatically pick between F2.8 (the standard for all camera phones) and F5.6 (when there is enough light). Now that may not mean much to you, but a tighter aperture such as F5.6 will actually bring less lens issues and better corner-to-corner sharpness.  ZN5 has the most powerful xenon flash found on any mobile phone. It can take pictures at pitch dark with ease because of xenon flash and produce bright pictures. The ZN5 also offers direct image upload to KODAK Gallery, as well as integration of the ShoZu client, which can upload images to various social networking clients.The hardware found in ZN5 almost represents the hardware of a stealth fighter plane i.e. built to kill its opposition. Running on a Freescale MXC275-30 platform having 532 MHz ARM11 applications processor & 208MHz Digital Signal Processor (DSP) speaks for itself. It has 64 MB RAM & 128 MB ROM. Also it has two Image Processing Units (IPU) instead of one, one is the Freescale IPU that comes with the MXC275-30 platform capable of handling up to 2 MP images & the other is Texas Instruments dedicated DM299 IPU which has a ARM7 processor embedded in it capable of handling up to 5 MP images. Thus ZN5 thus have hardware capable of handling 5+2=7 MP images and thus can handle image & video much better than any of its 5 MP opposition. Internal memory is 512 MB which is huge, no opposition can match that and also you can extend it up to 4GB with a microSD card.Audio sound quality from the music player is awesome. Believe me some of the renowned Russian websites like www.smape.com, www.mobile-review.com, etc known for their thorough review have told that the ZN5 can challenge the mighty Apple iPod on this ground which, literally speaking is phenomenal for any mobile phone. Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP), 3.5mm audio/video jack (TV-out) all adds to the list making it a perfect choice instead of a dedicated portable music player. After using Nokia N82, Sony Ericsson K850 and also Samsung, LG phones of the same price range, I have to accept that ZN5 is the best of them all when it comes to PURE SOUND QUALITY. It's not much of a secret that every music phone manufacturer does everything to outreach its competitors in the sound quality. Now, one has to know the difference between sound quality & volume. The ICEpower audio chips commonly found in Samsung mobile phones boosts sound volume which has no effect on the quality making them one of the loudest in the market. Both Motorola & Nokia tends to put more emphasis in the idea that quality should prevail over volume. The utilization of dedicated DSPs in Nokia & Motorola offers an unmatched quality of sound since DSP puts into action sophisticated algorithms & advanced audio codec’s to improve the audio signal rather than making the sound louder. The DSP separates unwanted noise from the audio signal, and only then is passed to the amplifier. ZN5 utilizes a dedicated 208 MHZ StarCore SC140e DSP and a selection of advanced audio codec’s. The Spatial Audio technology polishes the resulting audio signal to a state of perfection rarely seen on a mobile phone these days. I also looked in the RMAA sound test graphs as published by different websites, the sound characteristic needs no explanation, because we face one of the best decisions at the personal audio market, ZN5 is not ashamed to compare itself with players from Creative ZEN, Sony, Cowon or even Apple iPod. I am dealing with one of the best solutions for pure listening pleasure, with a clean sound devoid of any colorings, embellishment or ornamentation in the sound, commonly found in Sony Ericsson phones. Now I can easily hear many of the previously obscure details in the compositions of a complicated music composition, and if desired, with a quality headset, can clearly set apart all the instruments used in the music composition, thus I am able to focus not only on the primary instrument, which is audible, but also on the fact that what instrument I want to hear. Setting the radio stations on the inbuilt radio is a lengthy process, but I don’t mind simply because the radio have amazingly strong reception quality and the sound is loud, crisp and crystal clear making it the best radio I have seen so far on any mobile phone.This mobile phone is capable of playing videos of very high bitrates (Higher bitrates means better quality) due to its 2 IPU’s & 208 Mhz DSP. Bitrates as high as 240x320@25fps, 1100 kbps can be played easily.Besides functionality, the quality of assembly and materials is the lodestone around which a phone’s success is built, playing a decisive role in the customer’s choice. Better materials and assembly allow a handset to live longer and sustain more damage. A very famous website www.smape.com did a rigorous durability test on ZN5 and at first rode over the ZN5 lying in the road on a SUV weighing 2.5 tones. The ZN5 passed with flying colors. Only the mineral glass cover over the display was cracked but the mobile phone operated normally receiving calls, playing music etc. Then they put it in a freezer for several hours at sub zero temperature, then did a spin in a washing machine for an 30 minutes, dropped it from the hand several times, merged it in a glass of beer and lastly cleaned it in running tap water. After that they dried it for a night besides a room heater and it started working the next morning!!! I think this is enough of an example of the phone’s durability. Later dismantling the phone, looking at the hardware it was found that while Motorola avoids using glue as much as possible while making the phone (much favored by Sony Ericsson), and the ZN5 is also  remarkable for a total lack of technical apertures on the chip, commonly found under all onboard components in Nokia and Samsung products. Please don’t take this point for an attempt to start another holy war, an ordinary consumer shouldn’t normally get concerned about this sort of things. Every company does their best to minimize the production costs, but somehow it’s ZN5 alone that uses metal not only for product image purposes (like the face and back panel pieces), but inside the casing as well – to ensure a maximum durability. What goes to the above-mentioned apertures, those have a bad habit of harboring condensated moisture, leading to the decay of neighboring components and lowering the chances for successful recovery after drowning. These subtle nuances concealed from the buyer is what constitutes the difference in lifespan of differently crafted products.I cannot stop praising the phone isn’t it!! One has to remember ZN5 is a smartphone since it comes with an MOTOMAGX LJ 6.3 operating system (Linux) and not just plain Java software. So third party software’s and modding options are limitless.  Also Motorola’s renowned CrystalTalk technology is also present which suppresses unwanted background noise while talking with the phone.Lastly, I want to say even if it sounds demoralizing, that there is no phone in the world that happens to be absolutely perfect. Every phone has its pros and cons and it depends on the user needs that how the person will rate his/her phone. 

We purchased 4 of these phones with a new T-Mobile contract in spring 2009. We had admired the phones, but took the plunge when they had a one-day only online special to get the phones FREE with a 1-year contract.

The pictures on these phones are AWESOME!  However, that was the *only* good thing 4 different users liked about the phones.  I would never recommend this phone to anyone for any reason.

One phone was water damaged, so we have to take that into account.  It did recover, but only after weeks of strange behavior as if we were pushing all the buttons. But at least it started to work again.

Texting on the phones is a pain. Slow & laggy.  Internet connection is VERY slow,  even compared to an older T-Mobile Dash we replaced one of the phones with.  We eventually stopped using the internet on the phones altogether, having tired of waiting upwards of 5 minutes to load a simple webpage.
Battery life was an issue on all the phones. It would show a full battery, then a few minutes later we'd be down to one out of three bars.  When we plugged the phone in, the battery indicator might show 2 bars of life left, then as soon as we unplugged it it would show the battery as full; if we plugged it in again right away, it showed low battery again.  Very quirky and unreliable, and we noticed the same thing on all 3 of the phones we kept.

After a few months, the camera just stopped working on the phone we took pictures with the most.  T-Mobile replaced it with a refurbished phone, and within a couple of months that camera stopped working too:  All that would happen when trying to use the camera was an error message "Camera is busy".

The only feature that we learn to love about the phones was the camera, and one by one the cameras stopped working.

I saw that T-Mobile discontinued this phone after such a short time and I believe it is due to the unreliability & poor quality.
 

Exceptional mobile phone. Actually I consider it to be the Motorola’s MASTERPIECE. Motorola is known to manufacture mobile phones with rock solid built quality using top notch & expensive materials like steel, aluminum, mineral glass rather than glossy plastic commonly used by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG. The ZN5 is no exception either; it is almost built in metal & has a thick mineral glass over the TFT display matrix which is excellent. The set looks a feels like a monolith.
Actually a very famous website www.smape.com did a durability test on ZN5 and in one of their tests they rode over the ZN5 lying in the road on a Honda CRV weighing 2.5 tones. The ZN5 passed with flying colors. Only the mineral glass cover over the display was broken but the mobile phone operated normally receiving calls, playing music etc.
The display in ZN5 is way ahead of the European contenders like Nokia & Sony Ericsson. Actually mobile phones which are manufactured in Japan by Japanese companies have exceptional displays & generally are way better than the European counterparts. Just think about top LCD screen manufactures of the world – Sharp, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, JVC,etc all reside in Japan. Whereas European mobile phone manufactures use TFT displays manufactured by local European companies, Motorola uses TFT display manufactured by Sharp Corporation of Japan.
The phone is all about the camera and it does not disappoint on that ground. Believe me, it is currently the BEST 5 MP camera available today, make no mistake about it. Only the Nokia N82 comes close. Motorola ZN5 is also the industry first to introduce VARIABLE APERTURE technology in the camera unit of ZN5.
The hardware found in ZN5 almost represents the hardware of a stealth fighter plane i.e. built to kill its opposition. Running on a Freescale MXC275-30 platform having 532 MHz ARM11 processor speaks for itself. Also it has two Image Processing Units (IPU) instead of one and thus can handle image & video much better than its opposition. Internal memory is 512 MB which is huge, also you can extend it up to 4GB with a microSD card.
Audio sound quality from the music player is awesome. Believe me some of the renowned Russian websites like www.smape.com, www.mobile-review.com, etc known for their thorough review have told that the ZN5 can challenge the mighty Apple iPod on this ground which, literally speaking is phenomenal for any mobile phone. After using Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung I have to accept that ZN5 is the best when it comes to sound quality.
This mobile phone is capable of playing videos of very high bitrates (Higher bitrates means better quality) due to its 2 IPU’s & 208 Mhz DSP. Bitrates as high as 1100 kbps can be played easily.
Some technical details of Motorola ZN5
HARDWARE
Platform : Freescale MXC275-30, using patented Mobile eXtreme Convergence (MXC) Technology
Applications Processor : 532 Mhz, ARM11
Width of Machine Word : 32 bit
Level 2 Cache : 128 KB
Digital Signal Processor(DSP) : 208 Mhz . Handles digital audio (MP3), video data. Includes Symphony Audio Processor.
Image Processing Units : 2 instead of 1 resulting to zero shutter lag & high bit rate video playing capability.
RAM : 64 MB, SDRAM
Internal Memory : 512 MB, Flash EEPROM
ROM : 128 MB
User accessible memory : 512 – 128 = 384 MB
GRAPHICAL SUBSYSTEM
Display Manufacturer : Sharp Corporation (Japan)
Display Type : Color, Transflective TFT display, Transmissive Micro Reflective(TMR)
Display Color Depth : 18bit/pixel (262144 scales)
Display Diagonal : 2.4 inch
Display Resolution : 240 X 320 (76800 pixels)
Dot Pitch : 166.6 pixel/inch
Video Out : NTSC/PAL resolution, Proprietary connector
BUILT IN DIGITAL CAMERA
Sensor Type : CMOS
Sensor Diagonal : 7.1 mm
Lens Manufacturer : Carl Zeiss
Lens Material : Plastic
Lens Diameter : 3 mm
Lens view angle : 62 degrees (diagonal), 52.6 degrees (horizontal)
Focal Length :5.56 mm
Aperture : Variable Aperture (Industry First for Mobile Phones)
Aperture mechanism : Automatic
Aperture range : f2.8/ f5.6
Focussing Technology : AutoFocus
Focus Range : 30 cm to infinity, Macro – 10 to 40 cm, Landscape – 5cm to infinity
Shutter Type : Mechanical shutter
Shutter Speed : 1/60 – 1/1000 seconds in Auto mode
Zoom : 4x
Max Resolution : 2592x1944 pixels on the sensor, 2560x1920 on a JPEG file (the difference is due to image processing algorithms).
Dot size - 2.2um.
Camera viewfinder : 2.4 inch 320 x 240 pixels 262 k colors at 30 fps.
Flash Type : Zenon
Flash module length : 8mm
Red Eye Reduction : Yes
Video Capture : 176X144 pixels @ 15 fps
Image Capturing & Video recording software provided by KODAK.
OPERATING SYSTEM
OS Name : MOTOMAGX
OS Version : LJ6.3
Latest Firmware Version : R6637_G_81.03.0ER (as on 12/12/2009)
Firmware obtaining Website : www.opensource.motorola.com
VIDEO PLAYING CAPIBILITY
File Type : MP4 (most efficient)
Maximum Bitrate : i) Maximum of [ 1000kbps @ 29.97fps, 320 X240 video & 128 kps audio, NTSC]
ii) Maximum of [ 1100 kbps @ 25fps, 320X240 video & 128 kbps audio, PAL]
This mobile is capable of playing video files having 3 times the bitrate (350 kbps is the standard) than its competition. Thus the video quality is exceptional almost like High Definition Movies.
BATTERY : 920 mAh, BX50

My brother has had this phone for a while now, my friend had his phone but quickly switched. The screen is VERY fragile and both of theirs have cracked. The phone randomly turns on and off on its own and you must be careful when you put it down or it will restart itself. The phone lags and doesnt have any great features.

Basically, the only reason I bought the phone in the first place was because of the 5 megapixel camera, and it ended up being the only thing I liked about the whole phone. I had a lot of problems with it lagging and it would also turn on and off by itself and do other annoying things like open the camera screen without me touching the button or opening the lens. And the end call button stopped working after a few months use. PLUS, the thing is really big and made an awful bulge in the pockets it did fit in, and wouldn't fit in most. The calender was also extremely unorganized and when an alarm was set to go off a day before an event, and I clicked to view the event, it always opened up the wrong day and I had to reopen the calender to see what it was reminding me of. I would not advise anyone to purchase this phone and after the year of annoyance I've put up with, I would not advise the purchase of any motorolla phones, in my opinion this one was poorly made.

if you like to take a lot of pictures, use wifi a lot or like to recieve messages and emails, then this is the perfect phone for anyone.

Its a nice phone and takes excellent pictures. I Had this phone for two weeks and returned it because it keeps turning off and coming back on by its self. I had a full charge on the phone and got an inportant phone call. When I picked the phone up, it turned off and came back on. I lost my call and I didn't know who called me but luckly he called me back. This can't happen in my line of business so I had to let it go. Trash it!

The motozine zn5 is what motorola has been needing for a long time coming. This phone is not perfect but addresses alot of the issues that plagued previous motorola phone. The Camera is phenominal however it lacks certain manual features like shutter control. The web browsing is nice but downloading third party apps is a no no un less approved. the 3.5 jack works wonders. It is a feature rich phone, having a mp3 media player limited video playback. the video recording on the camera could have been increased, as well as the xenon flash power control. the keypad is nice beeing all flat looks to be long lasting.
 
the main issue i see is Tmobile and all the blocks they put on a phone which could have been loads better.
i have had this phone since the beginning of january 09

Sorry, I just had to. Anyways, about the phone: It's great for everything, but texting and taking pictures; the two things I look for in a phone. Boy, did I make the wrong choice. It was my first domestic-available phone in a long time (after my N95-1, N96-3...), and it ties with the N96. Way worse than the N95, though. Wi-Fi only works for uploading pictures and internet, but that's only if you have a data plan. Bought it new for $40, sold it for over $200. Buy it when it's free on a two-year (new contract), and sell it!

I bought this phone the day it became available, because of the camera feature. It absolutely takes the best pictures of any cellphone I have ever owned, The phone quality is also very good. The problem with the phone is the software to operate the WiFi feature is available at the presant time, and T-Moble doesn't know if or when it will be available from Motorola. Which makes the WiFi feature unavailable for this phone. If it is not an issue it is a really quality purchase

I want to first say this device is not perfect, but it is nice. I waited for a few months for T-Mobile to release this device and from day one that I got to see it to now I have been pleased overall. The camera is great! It rivals my Sony DSC-W50 6 megapixel digital camera even! For example, if I take photos at a certain event with both my digital camera and the Motorola Zine ZN5, and put them all in one folder, I can't tell them apart! Talking on it as a phone works nicely, it posses a nice call quality and it slips in my pocket easily. I find the phone to be pretty easy to use which is one major factor of to why it was purchased. I have had it randomly restart on me about once or twice for unknown reasons, something I never encountered with previous Motorola products. The WiFi on this device does work and the browser gives me the basics. Wikipedia.org does not work, but youtube.com, facebook, MySpace, and Dictionary.com work nicely. The T9 in text messaging is quick to adapt to your language and works nicely as a text messaging device. Email works only part of the time. I don't know if this is T-Mobile, Yahoo!, or the phone's fault, but it is an annoyance. The PDA functionality of the device is rather basic but it does offer syncing with Microsoft Outlook, though I have never taken advantage of that. I find that Motorola phone Tools is cumbersome to use unfortuneately. I like the device overall though, so I am quite satisfied!

I LOVE this phone, it does everything and has everything it even TALKS to you and reads your text messages if you want it to! Has GREAT camera and does video better then my camcorder. The screen is the clearest I ever seen, has a radio and you can preset 24 stations and it also has a MP3 player that rocks! The battery seem pretty good andI have been playing with it non stop, it takes a little getting used to the buttons and to locate everything but so far it is worth the price....I already took photos and printed a 8x10 which is flawless and you can even connect this to your TV so watch the videos you record which can be up to 2 hrs or connect to computer and download or upload, there is so much this phone does that I can not even tell you....the only thing is I am afraid I'mgoing to drop it and break it..So far this is the best phone I have ever had, even the signal strengthis strong. Comes with everything you need USB cable, TV connect cable, micro memory card and adapter so you can download to printer or computer without phone, Motorola tools CD, headphones that sound good the list goes on, I ported over from Cricket so yes people I was in the dark ages and now I'm free!