Motorola ZINE Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Marianne Schultz Published on January 28, 2009 Comment on this |
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| The ZINE's music player offers features we like to see, like on-device playlist creation and editing. PC users have 2 choices when it comes to syncing media with the ZINE while Mac users are again stuck with no options other than USB drag and drop. Viewing videos on the ZINE's relatively small screen is not enjoyable and it has limited video file format compatibility as it is. | |
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Accessing Music Software (3.19)
To see how easy it is to get to the music software, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a song is playing. On the ZINE, this requires some navigating to go to the Main Menu, Multimedia folder, and then the Music folder.
The Music folder structure
Getting to the Recently Played folder is the quickest once you're there, and this test took an average of 6.26 seconds on the ZINE, putting only slightly behind the Motorola Razr2 V8 but pretty well behind the Sony Ericsson W580i with its external controls that offer almost instantaneous access to music. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Dedicated Music Controls (2.0)
In terms of dedicated music controls that serve to control music playback when not in the music software, only the volume up and down buttons offer any control. The Shortcuts menu changes slightly when music is being played in the background, offering a direct link to go back to the music application that does not show at other times.
Music playing
Music Software Functionality and Organization (6.6)
The ZINE's music software offers playlist support, including the ability to create and edit playlists on the device itself. It also recognized the tags on our test MP3, AAC, and WMA music files. Your music is automatically sorted a number of ways by default - when you open the music application, you're presented with the following ways to view your music: recently played, all songs, playlists, artists, albums, genres, and composers. Once you're in one of these views, you can search through your music using multi-tap on the keypad. You can't rate music to use in creating playlists or sorting music, nor can you create additional folders in the main view to get quicker access to your desired music groupings. The music library updates automatically when music files are added or removed from the phone's memory or an inserted microSD card.
The music set-up menu
The ZINE easily displayed album art embedded into a test music file, though it shows up teeny-tiny in the bottom left corner of the now playing screen. Album art associated with an album as a separate file was not displayed on the ZINE. Music can be played in the background and, as previously mentioned, the Shortcuts menu changes to offer a quicker way to get back to the music application from the home screen during playback.
Creating a new playlist
The Setup menu in the music software offers shuffle and auto-repeat settings, an equalizer with a whopping 10 presets though no manual or user-customizable equalizer settings, bass boost settings, and something called Spatial Audio, which really didn't seem to do anything to change the sound of the test music we loaded.
The Equalizer presets
Overall, the ZINE's music software is quite functional, though it has no style or eye candy to speak of.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
T-Mobile does not offer an over-the-air music download service and the ZINE offers no ability to do this.
Streaming (0.0)
To test a phone's ability to stream music from the internet, we direct the phone's browser to a set radio station's site that offers streams in multiple common formats, including MP3, Real Audio, and WMA formats. The ZINE was unable to stream audio in any format.
Podcast Support (0.0)
For podcast support, we look for specific podcast organization software and the ability to directly manage subscriptions and downloads and handle synchronization with the device. The Motorola Phone Tools software that comes with the ZINE does not have any such podcast capability, nor is there any software on the ZINE itself for this.
Music Sync with PC (11.0)
As previously mentioned, the ZINE comes with Motorola software that will manage syncing multimedia and PIM day between your PC and the ZINE. The ZINE can also be connected to your PC as a USB mass storage device, which Windows Media Player will view as a sync-able device as an alternative to the Motorola software. Mac users are out of luck with no out-of-the-box multimedia syncing solution, though you can drag and drop files onto the ZINE as a USB mass storage device.
Music Formats and DRM (5.0)
The ZINE can play back DRM-free files in the WMA, MP3, AAC, and Real Audio formats, as well as DRM-protected WMA files from music stores such as Napster, Yahoo, and Urge. The ZINE matches the Razr2 V8 here.
Music Interruption (10.0)
When music is playing and a call comes in, the music pauses playback automatically and resumes once the call has ended without any issues.
Video Software Access (3.15)
To see how easy it is to access the video playback software, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a video begins playing. On the ZINE, videos are stored in the Multimedia folder just a couple of slots down from the Music folder, with no other shortcut set to it by default, and we found that the ZINE couldn't always keep up with our attempts to move quickly through the menu structure.
The Videos folder structure
The ZINE took an average of 6.34 seconds to complete this test, slower than the Samsung Instinct that took nearly 15 seconds and about a second slower than the Razr2 V8. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Video Controls (7.0)
While a video is playing, the D-pad and volume buttons serve for controlling playback. Left and right on the D-pad fast-forward, rewind, and skip to the previous and next videos. Up pauses and plays videos, down acts as the stop button, and the center select button toggles between full-screen in landscape orientation and portrait orientation. The volume buttons do exactly what you think they will.
A video playing
Video Software & Organization (3.0)
Videos are automatically sorted into 5 categories: captured videos, preloaded videos, downloaded videos, all videos, and sorted by date. There's no way to create or edit folders to customize the organization of your videos. When you select one of these pre-determined folders, the videos it contains are shown in either a thumbnail or list view. It appears that the ZINE chooses the list view for you when there are more videos than can be shown on the screen at once with a thumbnail view, and there's no way to change this.
The video album thumbnail view
The ZINE's video library automatically updates when new videos are added to the device. You cannot rate videos or create playlists. Unlike in the music application, you cannot search through videos using multi-tap on the keypad. Videos cannot be played in the background, which is not a surprise as most devices don't allow this.
Overall, the ZINE's video software is easy to use but only offers very basic organization. Though we've seen smaller screens on cell phones, the ZINE's is not large enough to make viewing videos for an extended period of time a pleasurable experience as it is, so the video software's lack of sophistication probably won't be a major issue for most.
Video Sync with PC (11.0)
As with music, the Motorola Phone Tools software that's included with the ZINE can manage synchronization of video files with PC, and you again also have the option of using Windows Media Player that will recognize the ZINE as a USB Mass Storage device with which video files can be synced. No luck for Mac users here again, with only USB drag-and-drop as the only method to get video contact onto the ZINE from a Mac.
Video Formats (2.0)
The ZINE's manual states that it can play back MPEG4 + AAC, H.263 + AAC, and Real Video + Audio files. In line with this, the ZINE could not play our test 3GPP, Quicktime, Flash, H.264, or Windows Media files and could play our Real Media and MPEG4 test files. This is pretty poor format compatibility and we're disappointed to see there's been no evolution from Motorola since the Razr2 V8 we reviewed.
Video DRM (0.0)
The ZINE is not capable of playing back any videos protected with DRM.
Video Playback Smoothness (8.0)
To test video playback smoothness, we load test video files with various bitrates and view them on the phone, looking for any issues during playback, like skipping, pauses, and other signs that the device is having a hard time with playback. The ZINE did fine with our MPEG4 test files all the way up to the 768k bitrate file, which it refused to play at all, showing an error message that the bit rate was too high for the file to be opened. Here, the ZINE does better than the Razr2 V8 but comes in behind the LG Dare and the Sony Ericsson W580i.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The ZINE is not capable of downloading videos directly to its memory from the internet, nor does T-Mobile currently offer a video download service.
Video Streaming unscored
We don't score streaming video since the standards are currently so diverse, though we do navigate to some test sites to see what the phone is capable of. The ZINE could stream video from the mobile Youtube site but not from the Windows Media mobile site nor Zoovision. T-Mobile does not currently offer any streaming video service of which the ZINE can take advantage.
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