Motorola KRZR K1 Review

Camera:

2-megapixel camera

The camera can be directly started through the home screen, and it loads in about five seconds, which is average to slow performance, but we were really disappointed when we had to take a photo – the wait was about up to 8 seconds after the shutter key was pressed.
The camera interface itself it pretty mediocre – it is in portrait mode and shows just a few indicators – in the upper right corner number of images that can be taken, their size and the memory they would be saved on (phone or card). In the down left corner there is animated d-pad which allows changing the setting – by default it controls the digital zoom, but up and down allows changing the settings for Color Style, Exposure and White Balance. Self-timer can also be setup (with two settings: 5 or 10 seconds delay) and have four options for pictures resolution and three for its compression.

We want to warn you that unlike the D900 (Samsung's 3-megapixel shooter), the KRZR is not designed to shoot in portrait orientation: it takes images with resolution 1600x1200, but they are rotated at 90 degrees and are not well oriented. In order to achieve normal results, the image should be manually rotated at the computer and then it will have resolution of 1200x1600.

The camera performed well during the tests: its main drawback is the lack of auto-focus, which is a must-have feature nowadays. The captured images came out with balanced exposition, realistic colors and not much noise and so plenty of detail for 2-megapixel camera of phone. Due to the lack of autofocus many images may occur blurry (out of focus) which may destroy a photo. As it lacks any kind of flash (even single LED), using it for shooting at no lightning is useless (except night photos), but the indoor images with average light were very good for a camera of this class.

Audio:

As it was with the V3i, the KRZR has two players: a simple sound player and music player written in JAVA. The first one has very plain interface, browses all the songs on your phone and can order them in playlists you create. During a track playback, the name and continuance are shown, as well as the size and the bitrate. Thanks to the A2DP profile, the music can be streamed and listened on wireless Bluetooth headphones.

K1 and H820

Don't expect miracles from the video player. It has the same plain interface as the sound player but happily can play in full-screen mode. Watching high-quality videos is not possible, as the phone once again doesn't support H.264.

Software:

The K1 is Java MIDP 2.0-capable phone and comes preloaded with a few Java applications. One of them is called K1 Help which is handy when you don't know your phone well – it will give you hints how to use specific features of it.
Of course you can easily add additional applications/games that you download on your own.