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Motorola Krave ZN4 Review
PA rating
Motorola Krave ZN4 Review
Published on: 31 October, 2008 by PhoneArena Team
Performance:
Two areas that the Krave excels in are the call quality and signal reception. During our testing, we got a solid 3-4 bars of EV and 1X in most locations, which is 1 bar more than the V9m. When traveling into fringe areas, the signal would not drop below 1 bar and we were still able to place and receive calls. However, if you are completely out of range of a tower, you will lose a signal, no mater which phone is being used. Call quality through the earpiece speaker was excellent and sounded slightly better than the V9m. We also didn’t encounter the “ticking” sound that was present when using the Dare. Voices sounded clear and natural, regardless of the earpiece volume level. People that we called on a landline also said that our voice sounded clear and did not suffer from the Dare’s “tunnel” effect. The speakerphone was also quite good, but just like most other devices, the quality starts to derogate as the volume increases.
The included 950mAh battery is rated by Motorola to provide up to 4.3 hours of talk time or 16.6 days of standby time on a full charge. During our testing, we were able to achieve 5 hours and 25 minutes of continuous talk time by fully charging the battery, dialing a landline, and keeping the Krave connected until the battery was depleted. This is almost 1 hour longer than the rated talk time provided by Motorola, but is still 1 hour less than is available with the Dare’s included 1100mAh battery.
Conclusion:
Even though the Krave is a quality built phone, it misses the mark due to its late arrival into the touchscreen arena. The three main areas that it does well in are the call quality, reception, and accurate touchscreen. If that is all you are interested in, then the Krave might be the right device for you. However, the user interface is not designed well and lacks customization, the HTML browser does not render pages correctly and takes too long for sites to load, the 2MP camera quality isn’t as good as the V9m, and the phone lacks speed dial capabilities. Due to these issues, the LG Dare still remains the best overall non-smartphone touchscreen device currently available for Verizon. However, with the BlackBerry Storm and Samsung OMNIA launching later this year, the competition is going to become even tighter.
The included 950mAh battery is rated by Motorola to provide up to 4.3 hours of talk time or 16.6 days of standby time on a full charge. During our testing, we were able to achieve 5 hours and 25 minutes of continuous talk time by fully charging the battery, dialing a landline, and keeping the Krave connected until the battery was depleted. This is almost 1 hour longer than the rated talk time provided by Motorola, but is still 1 hour less than is available with the Dare’s included 1100mAh battery.
Conclusion:
Even though the Krave is a quality built phone, it misses the mark due to its late arrival into the touchscreen arena. The three main areas that it does well in are the call quality, reception, and accurate touchscreen. If that is all you are interested in, then the Krave might be the right device for you. However, the user interface is not designed well and lacks customization, the HTML browser does not render pages correctly and takes too long for sites to load, the 2MP camera quality isn’t as good as the V9m, and the phone lacks speed dial capabilities. Due to these issues, the LG Dare still remains the best overall non-smartphone touchscreen device currently available for Verizon. However, with the BlackBerry Storm and Samsung OMNIA launching later this year, the competition is going to become even tighter.
Pros
- 2.8” capacitive-sensitive touchscreen with flip
- Call quality and signal reception
- VCast Mobile TV
- Light sensor, proximity sensor, and accelerometer
- 3.5mm headset jack
Cons
- No menu or theme customization
- HTML browser is slow and doesn’t render properly
- Unable to assign numbers to speed dial
- Camera quality
PA rating 
- Good
- out of 10
Check prices
Check prices
| Model | Carrier | Price Today | Price after rebate | |
Motorola Krave ZN4 Black
|
 |
Free | Free | Buy |
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