Motorola ZINE Cell Phone Review - Software
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Marianne Schultz Published on January 28, 2009 Comment on this |
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| The ZINE has a stable operating system that's a little laggy in some areas, though its browser offers a decent feature set for a device that's not a smartphone. We're sincerely bummed that only demo versions of a couple of games are included, but the FM radio makes up a little for that as an alternative time-killer. | |
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OS (3.0)
The ZINE's operating system is a proprietary one that doesn't seem to have changed much from the Razr2 V8. We found it to be stable though a bit laggy at times, particularly when getting around the T-Mobile myFaves shortcuts and when trying to move quickly through menus. While myFaves can be a useful feature, we find that it takes over some useful shortcuts that would otherwise be present. You can turn the myFaves shortcuts off, which will help if you want to get to menu items a little more quickly in general.
The ZINE does offer more functionality than the typical feature phone we see - as noted in the Organizer section, it does have the full complement of applications normally found on smartphones, though they're less robust comparatively, which is not surprising or all that disappointing given the ZINE's primary purpose. The one gripe we do have is the lack of intuitiveness in the OS. For example, there's the issue we saw when trying to switch from a text message to an MMS message as we noted in the Messaging section. Also, changing the text entry modes can't be fully controlled via the Text Entry option in the main Settings menu - you need to do this in an application, like Tasks or Notes, when you're in the midst of creating a new item.
Home Screen Score (4.0)
The ZINE's home screen is dominated by the T-Mobile myFaves shortcuts, as previously mentioned, right smack dab in the middle. At the top is typical information you'd expect to find there - signal strength, battery level, and other status indicators, time, etc. As noted in the Tour and Design section, there are some indicator lights hidden in the top border of the screen to show Bluetooth and charging statuses.
The ZINE's home screen
At the bottom of the screen are the labels for the soft menu keys that will get you to Shortcuts and the Main Menu. Unlike on some smartphones, there isn't any upcoming appointment information shown on the home screen unless there's a calendar alarm that has not yet been acknowledged. Overall, the ZINE's home screen is sufficient for high level information, but not nearly enough for busy users who have a full schedule and tasks to keep up with though this doesn't bother us since this is not the ZINE's target user.
Extensibility (3.0)
The ZINE can run Java applications, but its extensibility beyond this is fairly limited. If you want to be able to select from thousands of 3rd-party applications to add functionality to your phone, you'd be better off with a Windows Mobile or Symbian device, or even an Apple iPhone.
Customizability (4.0)
The ZINE's home screen wallpaper can be changed and you can also apply themes that will change the entire look and feel of the interface. The ZINE comes only with a handful of themes, but you can find more online and download them directly on to the device. You can re-arrange the main menu items and choose between different listing styles as well. There isn't any way to selectively change system fonts and sizes.
The Themes menu and the Main Menu customization menu
OS Responsiveness (5.0)
As mentioned briefly in the OS and Multimedia sections above, we did experience some periodic lag when navigating menus quickly or opening multimedia applications. We've seen worse, but we still wouldn't categorize the ZINE as stellar in this area but more as fair to middling.
Browser Features (7.0)
The ZINE's browser is capable of viewing WAP and standard HTML web pages and can also show Javascript elements though Flash and Java are no-gos. Frames aren't quite rendered correctly by the ZINE and RSS feed subscriptions are no supported. Images on web pages can be saved to the device to be used as wallpaper, a screensaver, and more. Web pages can also be saved for offline viewing - once saved, they appear in the Web Pages section of the browser, however we don't see much use in this since pages are saved into separate files for each image on the page separate from text and there's no way to easily piece it back together for coherent viewing. The browser supports encryption and you can clear caches, history, and cookies easily.
The browser showing our site
Browsing Interface (0.0)
The ZINE's browser is the Motorola Symphony browser, which is a departure from the Opera browser on the Razr2 V8. However, the ZINE's browser appears to be identical in layout and function to that on the Razr2 V8. The Options menu is still accessible via the left soft key that offers navigation options, access to bookmarks, and more. Getting to the history is a little more tricky - you must first choose the Go To command and then go to History in the Options menu that appears there. As on the Razr2 V8, the ZINE's browser is capable of having multiple windows open at once.
The browser's history
On the ZINE's relatively small screen, full web pages take a lot of button-pressing to navigate around. There's no way to change the orientation of the view to see pages in landscape mode nor can the font be changed. Bookmarks can be organized into folders though they can't be searched. The history is saved between browsing sessions, which is a pleasant departure from what we usually see on feature phones.
The browser's bookmarks
Overall, the ZINE's browser offers functions that make light web browsing entirely feasible, but the small screen and the sometimes-tedious level of D-pad navigation that's required to get around web pages ruin the experience a little.
The browser's menu
Browser Access (5.71)
To see how easy it is to start browsing the web, we do a different sort of timing test here to take data network connectivity and hardware capability out of the equation. We "time" how quickly we can get to a web page by counting the number of steps required to do so (we count the entry of the URL as a single step). On the ZINE, this takes 7 actions starting with accessing the Browser in the Shortcuts menu on the home screen, which is the highest number of steps among our comparison phones.
Gaming (3.00)
The ZINE comes only with demo versions of 2 games - Tetris and Midnight Pool. The D-pad makes for a good gaming control, but we always find it disappointing when no full versions of games are included with a phone since you are required to spend some money to buy full versions in order to kill time while waiting at the DMV if a little gaming is on your mind. Finding Java games is not a problem and T-Mobile offers games that can be downloaded over the air directly to the ZINE, though at a price - $2.99 for a monthly subscription or $6.99 for unlimited use for the games we browsed.
The 2 demo games that come with the ZINE
The ZINE's D-pad offers good control for the demo games though the soft menu keys are poorly placed relative to their on-screen labels. Its screen is a decent size for your average cell phone game, so periodic game playing to while away a little time is a workable proposition.
Tetris demo
Calculator (6.0)
The ZINE's calculator is almost exactly like the one on the Razr2 V8, offering the basic standard arithmetic functions plus percentage, square root, and other more advanced calculations, though ability to do nested calculations without resorting to the memory functions. It also has a currency converter function, though you must set the exchange rate yourself which somewhat negates the utility of it since you could calculate a currency exchange using multiplication without going to the menu if you know the rate.
The Calculator application
Alarm (8.0)
Here again, the ZINE mimics the older Razr2 V8 in functionality with a maximum of 3 alarms and identical settings and options.
The 3 alarms
We still like the level of customizability here - you can set up more complex repeat timing beyond the standard daily/weekly/monthly settings we usually see, and you can choose the alert sound, snooze timing, and volume level for each alert individually. As long as you don't need more than 3 alarms set at any given time, the ZINE should suffice s your alarm clock.
Setting an alarm
Document Software (0.0)
The ZINE does not come with any document viewing or editing software.
Other Software (1.0)
The ZINE has an FM radio application which will open only when you have a stereo headset plugged in. In this application, you can save up to 27 presets, which should be enough to satisfy all but the most frequent traveler who has favorite radio stations in multiple locations. This adds additional functionality to the ZINE worth 1 point.
The FM radio application
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