Motorola Z10 First Impression Cell Phone Review - Imaging & Software
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Mark Brezinski Published on January 10, 2008 Comment on this |
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Imaging
Imaging is what the Z10 is all about. It has a 3.2-Megapixel camera, and a burst mode that's rumored to be capable of three frames per second. The PR reps were also boasting the camera only took 1.5 seconds to snap a picture, but according to our tests that isn't very fast. There is also a front-mounted lens for self-portraits. Typical of a camera-oriented handset, you'll find all the amenities: flash, auto-focus, white balance settings, and sharpness correction. We felt the live preview of both tended to blur a bit, but never lagged far behind on a fast pan. The interfaces for video and still capture are virtually identical. The full screen is used, with a few transparent tools or reminders scattered about. Video is captured in QVGA, but there are also two other size settings. Unfortunately, these are called "small" and "medium", which isn't very helpful.
Probably the most important feature of the phone is its video editing software. Clips can be cropped, cut down, and linked together. Music can be overlaid on the clips, and you can opt to include scene transitions. From what we could see, the program was very intuitive and could even be a way to fix up some YouTube fodder on the go. There are a few video upload clients on the phone as well, allowing you to quickly get your video up on YouTube, Yahoo!, Google, or ShoZu.
Making/Receiving Calls
Making calls was relatively easy with the Z10. We didn't get a chance to check out many of the call management features, however, since the phone didn't have a SIM card.
Messaging
Like the call features, we unfortunately weren't able to check out the SMS/MMS or email interfaces. We were able to see that MMS and SMS messages were separated, however. Also, the PR rep said the email client was the same as on the Z8, meaning it will support both POP and IMAP. Regardless, this doesn't look to be a phone for the hardcore emailers and texters out there.
Organizer
The organizer on the Z10 is slightly better than average. The calendar has a pretty standard day and month view, but week view is a bit unorthodox. The days are basically thumbnailed and listed side-by-side as opposed to the usual grid of hours versus days. Tasks looked to be fairly basic, but included a field for categories and a separate tab for notes. Contacts use a tabbed system as well, which we generally think is a good way to break up the usually endless list of fields. Though this functionality is better than average, it's not up to smart phone snuff.
Multimedia
The Z10 will be able to handle all sorts of files: AMR, AAC AAC+, MP3, WMA, 3GPP, H.263, H.264, and Mpeg 4 are all supported. The music player seems to receive typically good treatment in terms of library organization; the video player receives typically sub-par treatment. The media player definitely looks nice, and displays file information as well as its number in the playlist. It uses the d-pad as it's always used: left and right will skip around, center is play/pause.
Software
The Z10 has a UIX operating system, which means its worthy of the label "smart phone". UIX is a very extensible interface, and means you'll be able to find a Z10-friendly version of a large range of applications. The phone seemed a bit sluggish, and the floor models seemed prone to crashing when opening larger applications, but these issues might be fixed by release time.
As far as the software the phone's given, we were a bit underwhelmed. In general, the software was better than average, but not as good as we'd have expected from a smart phone. The home screen contained a media player plug-in, but it wasn't working on any of the floor models. Holding the menu button will open up a quick list of shortcuts. The was a file manager that seemed intuitive and powerful. The alarm functionality seemed more comprehensive than what we're used to seeing, but there was a limit of three alarms. The calculator was very basic: the only buttons beyond the four basic operators were +/-, %, and squar eroot.
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