- The Good: Slick look with a vibrant front panel; touch-sensitive buttons for music playback are sweet; slimmer and heavier form factor adds to phone's visual appeal
- The Bad: Not enough onus given to features to make them better; should be a 2-megapixel camera; video shooting and playback is choppy; music playback could offer better results for the ears
- The Verdict: A great-looking phone that needs to offer more
Motorola has been known to give its phones catchy four-letter names, of which the RAZR has easily been the most popular. It's not hard to see why, given the thin form factor and big screen.
Yet in all fairness, the RAZR isn't — and never has been — the most feature-laden handset on the market, nor was it the most reliable. Was it always a matter of style over substance? Maybe, but cell phones are becoming fashion accessories anyway, so that doesn't make it a bad move on Motorola's part.
But this isn't a review of the RAZR or its allure to the general consumer. Rather it's one on the KRZR K1m, a model with a similar name, but not much else.
Not so thin, but oh so slim
At first glance, the KRZR K1m comes across as a similar-looking model to its predecessor but it's actually quite different. The general craftsmanship seems to have been designed with the success of the RAZR in mind: flip, same keypad and a similar colour scheme. Even the small display screen on the front is just about the same size.
Despite these similarities, the KRZR is a much prettier phone. The slick veneer looks both lush and rugged in its metallic and glass form with a chrome bottom, even if it is a magnet for fingerprint marks and smudges. Indeed, Motorola has been so confident in the overall design, they've promised that the glass panel on the front is virtually unbreakable. Tempting though it was, I never really conducted a test to find out for sure.
The most noticeable thing about the KRZR is that it's slimmer and longer — at the expense of being thicker and heavier. The difference in thickness and weight is not all that great (0.3 ounces), but just enough to make the phone feel like a distinct model, as opposed to a spin-off of a previous iteration.
Taking a peek under the hood
Looks aren't everything, considering what cell phones are expected to do nowadays. Truth be told, the KRZR isn't being marketed as an answer to feature-hungry users, but it is supposed to offer enough to keep consumers satisfied.
This effort to reach out to a variety of consumers and try to do several things well is part of the problem with the KRZR. Motorola and mobile music have been a pretty good match, for the most part. Although you can download tracks through the Web, the MicroSD card shipping with the phone also gives you the leeway to put your own music on — no matter how you originally got it.
Playing the music is easy, as the K1m gives you the option of listening to it with the flip open or closed. When closed, the front panel will show you touch-sensitive controls for easy navigation. When put to the test, these responded very well, and didn't seem to suffer from the kind of oversensitivity that could frustrate owners of the LG Chocolate.
So while the setup is nice, the quality of the music doesn't seem to follow suit. The biggest issue is the lack of clarity, which doesn't mean the music is inaudible, only that it doesn't sound consistently good. The stock headphones might be part of the issue, except I didn't get a chance to compare them to any others because they're connected through a small USB port.
The music lacked depth, ultimately, and there was a slight hissing sound in the background that would sometimes creep up during phone conversations, which would get worse if someone on the other end was using handsfree to talk. Still, it's not enough of a problem to really take marks away from the KRZR.
A newer look, but no new features to match
The K1m really doesn't have any new features or enhancements that would characterize it as an innovating phone. In fact, its features are not all that different to those offered by the RAZR. The 1.3-megapixel digital camera in the K1m is unusual because the KRZR K1 sports a 2-megapixel camera. Reasons for the disparity aren't really known, but it comes across as a bit of a wacky move on Motorola's part.
Downloading content is standard and easy to get the hang of, except that disappointing price points continue. Plans ranging from $10-$20/month offer plenty of music downloads but in order for you to sign up, you'd have to really get your money's worth, otherwise expect to drop $2 per song for starters.
Shooting video and playback is shaky. You have the option to send a multimedia message, which is standard now, but it doesn't turn out all that well because of the choppy frame rate and erratic quality.
Not too crazy about the KRZR
The KRZR K1m is really part of an evolution in design rather than an evolution in features, which will no doubt serve loads of consumers well, especially when Motorola begins launching more colours for the K1m.
While I wasn't 'crazy' over the KRZR, I could understand and appreciate its visual appeal. Holding it in public places and showing it to random strangers for their opinion elicited a lot of the same reactions and responses: "this phone is just cool."
Indeed, but if only there were more and better features to match that visual concept. After all, who could withstand a phone that looks cool but does a lot of cool stuff too?
