Our Motorola Krave ZN4 review checks out the cool design and agile touchscreen on this Verizon Wireless phone. So why would we throw this one back in the oven?
Review summary of the Motorola Krave ZN4:
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 The Motorola Krave ZN4 has some great hardware, with a cool flip shell and a very responsive touchscreen interface. Unfortunately, the user interface that hardware supports is something of a letdown, with an inconsistent design and some aging apps, like the V Cast Music Store and the OpenWave Web browser, that haven't gotten better with time. In this way, the Motorola Krave ZN4 is like the opposite of the LG Dare on Verizon Wireless, which was a phone that had a unique and modern interface, but lacked the hardware to keep up. Of course, both of these phones borrow liberally from the Apple iPhone 3G's playbook, but neither of them come close to measuring up to AT&T's multimedia smartphone. We liked the cool, clear flip and the V Cast Mobile TV capabilities, but even the advanced TV features gave us trouble, and for the severe starting price, we'd have to recommend buyers look elsewhere. The Motorola Krave ZN4 feels like the first version of a phone family that might someday be great, and we'd stick with the look and feel, but everything else on this phone needs an update. Release: October 2008. Price: $180.
Pros: Responsive touchscreen interface. Cool design with the clear flip and invisible wiring. Great navigation features.
Cons: User interface feels half-baked. Some static during calls. Reception problems with V Cast Mobile TV service. Lousy Web browser with strange pointer tool. Aging messaging and music playback apps.
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Full Motorola Krave ZN4 Review:
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Design - Good
The Motorola Krave ZN4 is unique among touchscreen phones and flip phones alike. The clear plastic cover is actually quite functional. It doubles as a touchable surface for the screen beneath, and we love the way the earpiece seems to work without wires or an electronic connection to the phone. It's there, you just have to look very, very closely. With the flip closed, the Motorola Krave ZN4 shrinks the screen from an impressive 2.8-inch, 320 by 400 resolution to a more standard QVGA, and we wish Motorola had simply moved the earpiece down a bit to keep that great, large screen size, but there are plenty of features available when the flip is closed, including the V Cast Mobile TV app, VZ Navigator and even the phone, though you'll have to use the speaker.
The touchscreen on the Motorola Krave ZN4 is very responsive, among the most responsive touchscreens we've seen to date. Flick your contact list up and down and the phone responds instantaneously, and the same is true for every app on the phone. Unfortunately, for an interface, instead of using the Linux OS found on the similarly-styled, Chinese-only Moto Ming phone, Motorola has defaulted to a fairly standard (read: aging) Verizon Wireless theme, with all the familiar icons and colors you'd expect from any one of Verizon's V Cast phones.
The interface is in need of some serious polish. Redundancies abound, from the top-level screens downward. For instance, there is a menu button on the standby screen, but simply tapping the empty space beneath the icons brings up the menu anyway. The V Cast Mobile TV service is a top-level menu icon, but can also be found by digging through the Media Center menu, under an option called "MediaFLO" (the name of technology behind V Cast TV). Under the settings screen, some menus expand and drop down when you select them, some take you to a new screen altogether. Overall, it's a mess, but at least it's a mess that responds quickly to your touch.
Actually, while the icons and apps on screen are quite responsive, the transitions between screens were pretty slow. This was evident when we tried opening apps, but nowhere more so than when we were making calls. When we put the Motorola Krave ZN4 to our head, the icons wisely disappeared. But if we needed to access the keypad or our contact list while in a call, it took a couple seconds for these to come back when we pulled the phone away.
Calling - Good
Calls on the Motorola Krave ZN4 sounded pretty good, but we heard some static on all our calls. Still, the phone did a great job eliminating background noise. Whether we were using the speakerphone to make calls with the lid closed, or driving down the highway with our windows open, our callers never had trouble hearing us. Visual voicemail, which arranges incoming phone messages as icons you can pick through out of order, is available on this phone for a price (which is true for most of the features on this phone; best to sign up for a good, inclusive plan). Battery life on the phone was surprisingly impressive. We managed to make a call that lasted about 6 hours, which is more than the 4+ hours Verizon Wireless promises.
The phone includes speaker-independent voice dialing, which you can even use while the lid is closed, unlike the standard number dialer. In this configuration, the phone defaults to the speakerphone, which seems smart, but to hang up you still have to open the phone, which was not so smart. Similarly, the phone has easy conference calling, but you'd hardly know it because the button to join calls actually says "Swap." That button cycles through swapping and joining two calls without giving the user much control.
The contact list was also disappointing, though perhaps it won't be for long. There were plenty of fields for phone numbers and a couple e-mail addresses, but little else could be stored in the address book. Eventually, Motorola says this phone will get Exchange server capabilities, which should dramatically improve the contact list experience (not to mention the calendar and e-mail).
Music - Mediocre
The Motorola Krave ZN4 uses a 3.5mm headphone jack for music, and that's about the best thing we can say about the music experience. The V Cast music store was the least responsive app on this phone, and we often found ourselves pressing the wrong buttons or waiting while the music player loaded up the next half of the list we were scrolling through. Often, the V Cast store would simply start loading for no reason, then change nothing on our screen. Quite mysterious. Songs purchased from the V Cast store sounded clipped and small, probably because of their low bitrate compression. The player itself was also simple and disappointing. You can't shuttle through songs by touch, and only the most basic playback controls were available through the cryptic, tiny icons on screen during playback. Worst of all, the music stops as soon as you exit the music player. There was no way to keep playing music while we checked out the browser or used the GPS navigation software.
Video - Good
We're big fans of Verizon Wireless' V Cast Mobile TV, but the Motorola Krave ZN4 is probably one of the worst representations of this normally impressive video service. With the phone open, the video spans the wide length of the 2.8-inch screen, but the phone is somewhat cumbersome. With the flip closed, the phone resizes the video to make room for the earpiece, and all we got was 320 by 240 QVGA on a screen that looked somewhat pinched by comparison. Our biggest problem, though, was with the service reception. While we've had great experiences in the past using the V Cast Mobile TV in our part of suburban New Jersey, near New York City, the Motorola Krave ZN4 could hardly hold a signal. The video player seemed to suffer even more when we held the phone in our hands, as opposed to resting it on a table, and the video would always cut out when we gripped the device tightly. Even worse, video quality just wasn't up to par with other V Cast Mobile TV devices we've seen. Talking heads on Fox New Channel seemed pixilated and blocky, an effect we've never seen on V Cast TV, which is usually far superior to the streaming V Cast Video service, but no so much on the Motorola Krave ZN4.
Messaging - Good
We're pretty sure that Motorola knew we'd be making a lot of typing errors with the Motorola Krave ZN4. That's why they moved the backspace key ("CLR" on this phone) way up above the rest of the QWERTY keyboard. We like that the phone quickly switches to a horizontal QWERTY layout when the built-in accelerometer feels itself tilted sideways, but we had a lot of trouble typing. Mostly we missed the top row of keys with our fingers and ended up accidentally tapping within the text selection area, which jumped the cursor and caused us to type in between and before our intended text. In portrait mode, the phone reverts to a 12-key numeric layout with iTap for intuitive typing, but these keys were not quick enough to keep up with a real typing expert. They may be responsive for a single tap, but tap a bunch of keys in a row to write a message and the phone has trouble keeping up.
For messaging apps, the Motorola Krave ZN4 features an acceptable assortment. Gmail isn't listed as one of the preset e-mail options, but the phone had no trouble loading up our inbox when we typed in our e-mail address in the Mobile E-mail app. For instant messaging, the Motorola Krave ZN4 gets the same IM client, with AOL, MSN and Yahoo access, that Verizon Wireless has been using for years. SMS and MMS delivery seemed a little sluggish, but we were sending all of our messages across network carriers, so maybe that was the problem. SMS messages can be read with the flip closed, which is nice, but hardly a special feature. We're still waiting for a picture message we sent from the Motorola Krave ZN4 to make it to our Apple iPhone 3G on AT&T.
Web browsing - Mediocre
It isn't that Motorola didn't make an obvious attempt to make the OpenWave browser on the Motorola Krave ZN4 a bit more finger friendly. It's just that the attempt made things much more frustrating. When you move your finger across the browser screen to navigate Web pages a small ring with an arrow pointer pops up and follows your touch. Instead of tapping directly where you want to go, you move the pointer over the desired link. Then, you tap again to select. On that second tap, the pointer always moves, which makes for confusing browsing. Also, because the pointer only points upwards and slightly towards the center from your fingertip, not all the links on a Web page will be accessible. We'd give them points for trying, but we'd rather just award points for a method that works, instead of an attempt that makes browsing more difficult. Our recommendation would be to load a serious Web browser onto this phone, something more like the Opera browser, and go from there.
GPS Navigation - Very good
Thankfully, Verizon Wireless has some excellent GPS navigation software, and the Motorola Krave ZN4 does a nice job with VZ Navigator. The phone's only real unique contribution to the package is the ability to switch screen aspect ratios by rotating the phone, but this feature was very responsive. Otherwise, VZ Navigator found us quickly, with no trouble, wherever we were, whether we were buried between tall buildings in New York City or buried near the back of our townhouse without much view of the GPS satellites in the sky. Maps could be moved and browsed by dragging our fingers across the screen, but loading up new segments of the map took a couple seconds, and we wish Verizon Wireless had bestowed this phone with speedy EV-DO Rev. A capabilities, instead of the standard Rev 0 we find on the Motorola Krave ZN4. Of course, first we'd like a better Web browser, then some faster networking to go along with it.
Camera - Mediocre
Pictures from the 2-megapixel camera on the Motorola Krave ZN4 were pretty bad, though not completely irredeemable. Colors were fine, with some nicely saturated hues, but details were pretty messy. Light was also a significant problem, and we had images that were blown out even on a cloudy day.
Fall Foliage from the Car
The Motorola Krave ZN4 did an okay job capturing some of the fall tones, but details were completely gone, and we couldn't tell one single leaf from the next. Plus, leaves near the top of the image, against a cloudy backdrop, were so overexposed that even some of the branches disappeared, and purple fringes overtook the skyline.
Self Portrait
The camera did a fine job with the color of our shirt, but lost most of the details in this happy snap.
E-bay shot
Once again, colors look good, saturated and fairly accurate in this action figure picture. Still, even the largest text on the card looks blurry, and the small numbers near the top were completely illegible.
Price and availability
The Motorola Krave ZN4 is available now on Verizon Wireless for $180 with a contract agreement.
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