Motorola KRZR K1m Review

Camera:

Motorola KRZR K1m in shooting mode

The quality of the 1.3MP CMOS camera is unreliable and quite disappointing. Most pictures looked muted, had bad color representation, purple fringing, and soft edges. Even though most pictures came out undesirable, there were a small few that did looked better. We are not sure why, considering that the same settings were used on all pictures taken. Just like on the Chocolate, the KRZR and RAZR also seem to have a problem with the Auto White Balance, which will cause some pictures taken outside to have a blue tint to them. Pictures taken indoors also suffer with being blurry and having poor color quality. Since there is no Flash on the phone, it is impossible to take pictures in total darkness.
Despite the fact that the camera quality is far behind that of other phones, such as the A990 and even the VX8300, it does take pictures relatively easily and has many options to choose from. To access the camera, press the camera icon button on the left side of the keypad, and then press the round center button on the navigational pad to snap the picture. There is a 1 second lag from the time the center button is pressed until the photo appears on the screen, then you must choose to either Save or Erase the picture (there is no auto-save feature). Saving the picture to the memory card takes an additional 4 seconds. Because of this, it takes a total of 7 seconds to take one picture, save it, and then take another picture. This would be a problem if you needed to take pictures quickly and fast together.  However, this is still faster than on the RAZR where it takes 10 seconds to take a picture, save it, and then take another.

Pressing the right soft key will open the camera's Options menu, which include settings for:

• Resolution:  1280x1024, 640x480, 320x240, 160x120
• Self Timer:  Off, 3 sec, 5 sec, 10 sec
• Brightness:  -2, -1, 0, +1, +2
• White Balance:  Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Darkness
• Shutter Sound:  Shutter, Silent, Quack, Boing
• Color Effects:  Normal, Antique, B&W, Negative
• Multishot: On, Off
• Fun Frames:  There are 10 Fun Frames to choose from
• Storage Device:  SD Card, Phone

Pressing the camera icon button twice will open up the Video Recorder. Just as with the pictures, the video quality is lacking and almost useless. This is partly due to the fact of the KRZR only being able to record in 176x144 resolution.

There are a few menu options available:

• Brightness:  -2, -1, 0, +1, +2
• White Balance:  Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Darkness
• Duration:  Short (10 sec), Medium (15 sec), Fit to Vid Msg (15 sec), Long (Max Memory)
• Color Effects:  Normal, Antique, B&W, Negative
• Storage Device:  SD Card, Phone

Overall we were very dissatisfied with the pictures and videos produced from the KRZR. The only improvement with taking pictures with the KRZR is that it is faster than with the RAZR. Even if the KRZR K1m (for Verizon) employed the same 2MP camera that was used on the K1 (GSM version), the quality would still not be good as other phones (see the K1 review for the pictures). The only solution would be for Motorola to start using a higher quality sensor, such as a CCD, and use better lenses in their phones. Then, maybe, Motorola's camera phones could start competing with other manufactures.

Motorola KRZR K1m (left) compared to Motorola RAZR V3m (right)

Audio:

Both MP3 and WMA music playback can be accomplished quite easily when using a MicroSD card.  Format the card in the phone first, then put the card in the USB reader attached to your computer and copy/paste the music files to it. After the files are copied, place the card back into the phone and access the My Music menu. Music is categorized by Genre, Artist, Albums, Shuffle, and Playlist. Once the song begins to play, the display will show the song information, album art (if there is one) and track time position, but there are no graphic equalizers. Closing the flip while a song is playing will illuminate the blue backlit touch-sensitive controls on the front of the phone. In the center is the Play/Pause button, to the left is the Rewind/Skip Back button, and to the right is the Fast-Forward/Skip Ahead button. It is easy to use the front music control buttons and they have a fast response time. We also like that the blue backlight does not turnoff until you exit the music player. Even though the phone only has 1 mono-speaker, the sound quality was remarkably good and much louder than on the LG Chocolate. However, the placement of the speaker on the back of the phone is a poor design, so the phone must be turned over to hear the full quality of the music. A better placement for speaker would have been on the side of the phone down at the bottom. Since the Bluetooth A2DP profile is not supported, you cannot use the music player to connect to a stereo Bluetooth device, so you are limited to the built in speak or wired headphones. It would also of been nice if there was a FM transmitter, like on the LG Fusic, so that you could listen to the music on any FM radio.

Software:

All Verizon phones, including the KRZR, use Qualcomm's BREW software format for the downloadable Get it Now applications. One of the most useful applications is the VZNavigator program. With it, you can enter in a destination and the phone will plot a route from where you are and guide you to the destination. While driving, you will be given turn-by-turn directions on the screen and a voice will read the driving directions to you. The only downside to using the VZNavigator on the KRZR is that the display is smaller than other phones, which cause the on-screen maps to be smaller. We used the VZNavigator program in South Florida and it was able to guide us easily to destinations with no problems. We highly recommend this program for people who do not have the costly built-in GPS systems in their car.