By Juniper Foo and Antonio Tan, CNET Asia
09/11/2006
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39051199,39268300p,00.htm

Take the Razr, do a nip tuck, and the result: One svelte bombshell dressed to kill in glossy metallic blue and a width just over 3/4s that of the old V3. In keeping with tradition, Motorola has wrapped another four-letter name around its latest issue, the KRZR (pronounced cray-zer). We know it looks good. Now let's find out if it's all eye candy or if the KRZR is really an evolved Razr V3 as some say.

Design
If you liked the iconic Razr and any of its variations that have since emerged, the KRZR is clearly a Razr V3 put on a strict diet. But it's also much more. Its narrow frame is topped off by a hardened blue glass finish, the back borrows the matte feel of the PEBL, while the bottom piece has been given perforated dimples that add a modern element to the overall look. Even the ends of the hinges have been given a jeweled touch.

The body's magnesium and polished chrome composition imbues the KRZR with a solid, well-built construction despite the slenderer heft. However, this has also contributed to the K1's weightier 103g to the V3's 95g. While we're on the matter of dimensions, interestingly, the KRZR may be narrower (42mm), but in all else, it is longer (103mm) and thicker (16mm) to the Razr's 53 x 98 x 13.9mm. That said, the K1 feels great in hand and operating this one-handed is quite easily accomplished, with the side buttons finally within comfortable reach.

There are hidden service lights to the left and right of the external display, which emerge once the phone is in either active Bluetooth mode (a blue status light) or being charged (a green status light). There are no lights in the case of missed calls or messages. Instead, the phone plays an alert which we found good enough.

To accommodate the narrower frame, everything within has been trimmed down, from the keypad to the internal screen. Fortunately, this has in no way affected the user experience, with the 1.9-inch internal display maintaining the same brightness at 65,536 colors and 176x220-pixel resolution.

Now we come to the crux of owning such a shiny bauble. Whichever way you look at it, the K1 is a fingerprint magnet. Barely 5 minutes out of its box, and the KRZR had morphed from glossy beauty to greasy gremlin.

Inside, the same problem that plagued the Razr continues to annoy in the KRZR. As the keypad and display become oily with use, the lines that divide the keys and the D-pad outline would imprint themselves onto the screen in a grid fashion. You can probably play Tic Tac Toe on it, but this really mars the viewing experience, particularly in bright sunlight. So word to the wise: Keep that cleaning cloth handy.

Features
Here's where the K1 starts to falter. Unlike the CDMA K1m version out in the US, there are no dedicated music buttons on the K1. So this makes the GSM edition even less remarkable in the features department. What you can expect here is a pretty basic camera-phone with just enough features to raise it above mediocrity.

Motorola has bumped up the camera sensor to 2 megapixels from the Razr's 1.3-megapixel shooter. However, there's no photolight and no autofocus. Not surprisingly, images taken during our tests seemed washed-out, while low-light shots tended to be blurry. Note that there's no dedicated camera icon in the first-level menu grid.

We found it fastest to access the camera via the right softkey shortcut. Otherwise, you have to access the Multimedia folder to get to the Camera mode. The lower key on the left edge also activates the camera, but oddly we could do so only when the clamshell was closed.

The camera interface keeps it simple. Indicators include remaining photos that can be taken, camera or video mode, self-timer, storage media (phone or memory card), zoom, and an animated D-pad to allow changes in settings for Color Style, Lighting Conditions, 8x digital zoom, Exposure. Pressing Options gives you picture resolution and compression, shutter tone including silent, self-timer and storage. In-camera editing offers brightness and contrast, color styles, and effects such as Blur and Mirror.

The video mode shoots clips with sound at 15fps, with the length limited only by the available memory. Again, video quality is so-so with lots of ambient noise picked up, though that shouldn't matter too much on YouTube.

The KRZR utilizes the microSD format for expandable storage and bundles a 128MB card with the phone; a media so tiny we almost lost it among the desktop clutter. It's useful to note that the microSD flash memory card is getting cheaper these days, with the largest 2GB card retailing for as low as S$126 a piece.

To access the card slot, you'll have to remove the back plate, a rather poor location for those who habitually remove their storage media for transferring files. Nothing, however, can be worse than removing the SIM card from its slot. There's no way around this except to remove the battery, then remove the memory media, before pushing the card out through the slot window. At least Motorola has thought to add a tiny icon that shows which end of your SIM card to insert.

	It was easy to slip in the SIM card into slot, hell to remove.

The music player supports MP3, AAC and AAC+ files, and you can create playlists and search through albums, songs, genres and artists. Options include shuffle or repeat. However, while the loudspeaker is certainly loud, output is mono, and we found that higher volume settings sometimes caused the speaker to vibrate and distort the audio, with Nora Jones' soulful Don't Know Why suddenly developing a vibrato. Multimedia A2DP profile is supported, so music on the phone can be streamed wirelessly to a stereo Bluetooth headset.

Good things have been said about the improved interface, new cancel key and more intuitive iTap. As you press each key, it predicts the potential word you might be trying to type, even "learning" those words that you use frequently. Which is great for newbies. But what's good for the goose, may not be good for the gander here.

When we put this to heavy texters familiar with T9 who thumb off messages without looking at the screen, they apparently found it impossible to get familiar with the text input system. As an illustration, pressing "5", "6", "9" typically gives you the word "low". But if you toggle this to "joy", the next time you key in those numbers, you get "joy" instead. Unfortunately, there's no joy in it for serial texters who now find they can't SMS without looking at the screen. Besides, the KRZR doesn't seem to be able to handle speedy texting, with the message often lagging behind the texter's efforts.

The KRZR does, however, improve on the Razr by saving a draft of the message upon exiting.

Ah, yes, those new to Motorola's user interface will find that sending a simple message is a lot more convoluted. The company employs a checkbox system against each name in the phonebook. For multiple senders, you can neatly check the boxes of your recipients. But for a single sender, it's one step more for you to undertake. Similarly, to delete a message, you have to check those you no longer require. To select all the checkboxes, you'll need to troll through a couple more steps. As a caveat, most observers have lamented that the user interface is constantly evolving. So be warned that there's always a learning curve for Motorola users.

Other onboard features include a very clear voice recorder, alarm clock, calendar, currency calculator, speakerphone, USB connectivity, email, PC syncing, wallpapers, Google, and voice dial and commands.

We particularly enjoyed the selection of preloaded Java applications onboard. The K1 Help is a handy tour of how to use specific features on your phone. However, the Block Breaker Deluxe and Sudoku Platinum had us hooked. Of course, you can add your own applications and games that you've downloaded on your own.

Performance
Again, not a strong suit, the KRZR takes a good 13 seconds to start up, from powering-up to the menu screen. Enough time to juggle some balls and freshen up your makeup. But since phone makers don't generally expect you to switch off your phone, that's a minor annoyance.

On the road, the KRZR occasionally suffered poor reception. Voices of the other parties though the ear piece were sometimes indistinct, and we often had to ask the other party to repeat himself several times. Oddly, our counterparts in the UK and US had no issue with their KRZR, although other models of phones did okay in this portion of our tests.

The saving grace was the battery life, which was terrific. Rated at 6 hours of talktime and 300 hours on standby (or 12.5 days), the KRZR K1 powered on for four to five days on a mix of calls, text messages, games and Bluetooth connectivity.

Conclusion
Motorola has proven once again that it's a master at design, and the KRZR successfully inherits the style mantle of the iconic Razr V3. At S$438 with a two-year plan and S$868 without (both inclusive of a Bluetooth H500 headset), the K1 is a high-end flip phone targeted at consumers willing to pay a premium for style. But for those who reckon it's all smoke and mirrors with the KRZR, there's no dearth of alternatives out there in the mobile phone jungle.