Motorola ZINE Cell Phone Review - Audio Quality
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Marianne Schultz Published on January 28, 2009 Comment on this |
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| The ZINE performs quite well in terms of the sound it sends and receives, presenting no major issues for you or the person on the other end of the line. With a lower-than-ideal side tone, however, you may find yourself speaking more loudly than needed to compensate. | |
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General Audio
With its 5.0-megapixel camera, the ZINE promises, on paper, to be good enough to replace your dedicated digital camera in many circumstances. However, how it performs as a phone is still an important factor. We test a phone's audio performance in three areas - the audio you hear while on a call, the audio sent from the phone, and how much of your own voice is piped back to you, called side tone, which helps you gauge how loudly you're speaking. We do all of this using guidelines defined by international audio experts and testing equipment and software that cell phone manufacturers use themselves - we use a head and torso simulator (HATS) made by Bruel & Kjaer and the SoundCheck software by Listen, Inc. For more information on how we do our audio testing see this article.
Sound Receive Frequency Response (8.33)
This test focuses on the quality of the sound received by the phone, and our testing equipment examines how well the phone transmits the voice of the person with whom you're speaking and it does this by transmitting a set batch of known sounds at specific frequencies in a test call and analyzing what is heard through the phone's speaker. On the chart, the outside limits that a phone should not surpass are prescribed by the red lines, and ideal performance would manifest as a smooth curve through the middle of the area defined by the outside limits.
The ZINE's Sound Receive Frequency Response chart
As you can see from the ZINE's chart, its performance results do not present a smooth curve through the defined limits in red, coming close to the upper limit in the lower frequencies and taking a swift dive toward the lower limit in the lower frequencies. With the sound level in dB along the Y-axis, this means that the volume of audio received in these frequencies will vary - in the lower frequencies, audio received may sound louder than it should be, and at the upper frequencies, audio may be cut out where the limit is surpassed. Overall, however, this is not bad performance and the ZINE earns one of the better scores here among our comparison phones.
| Cell Phone | Motorola ZINE | Nokia N82 (Unlocked) | LG Dare (on Verizon) |
| Score | 8.33 | 4.81 | 7.73 |
| Received Sound Frequency Response Graph |  |
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| Cell Phone | Samsung Instinct (on Sprint) | Motorola Razr2 V8 (on T-Mobile) | Sony Ericsson W580i (on AT&T) |
| Score | 7.25 | 9.16 | 7.65 |
| Received Sound Frequency Response Graph |  |
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Sound Send Frequency Response (8.62)
This test focuses on how well your voice is sent by the phone through its microphone. Our testing equipment and software evaluates this by transmitting a known range of sounds through the phone's microphone on a test call, and then analyzing how the sounds are actually transmitted by the phone. As with the sound receive frequency response test, the red lines show the outer limits which should not be surpassed, and ideal performance would be a smooth curve through the middle of these limits.
The ZINE's Sound Send Frequency Response chart
As you can see from the ZINE's performance result chart, it doesn't touch or surpass the limits, though it gets a little close in some areas. This means that audio sent by the ZINE won't fluctuate too much in volume across various frequencies and the person on the other end of the call should hear you without any major issues at all. The ZINE earns the best score in this area relative to every other one of our comparison phones.
| Cell Phone | Motorola ZINE | Nokia N82 (Unlocked) | LG Dare (on Verizon) |
| Score | 8.62 | 7.22 | 6.74 |
| Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph |  |
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| Cell Phone | Samsung Instinct (on Sprint) | Motorola Razr2 V8 (on T-Mobile) | Sony Ericsson W580i (on AT&T) |
| Score | 6.75 | 7.46 | 6.17 |
| Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph |  |
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Handset Side Tone (5.51)
Side tone is the amount of your own voice piped back to you through the phone's speaker that helps you judge how loudly you're speaking. If a phone's side tone is too high, you may think you're talking too loudly and the person you're speaking with may have a hard time hearing you when you adjust by speaking more quietly. If a phone's side tone is too low, meaning less of your voice is piped back to you than the ideal level, you'll think you're talking too quietly and may end up speaking louder than you need to as a result. The ideal side tone level, as defined by audio experts, is -18dB, and it's expressed as a negative number since it's specifically relative to the volume of your own voice through the phone's microphone. The ZINE's side tone is -22.49 decibels relative to the volume of your voice through the phone's microphone, meaning that it's lower than the ideal. This means that you'll hear less of your own voice than you should ideally, and you may compensate by speaking more loudly than necessary. Comparatively, the ZINE earns the lowest score among our comparison phones with this side tone level.
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