Motorola ZINE ZN5 Review

Camera:

The 5MP camera with Xenon flash is really as quick as advertised. Startup, focusing and storing are no more than a second each  and once you start snapping pictures, it’s hard to stop.  As is typical for Motorola, the interface is not beautiful but is user-friendly.  There are several indicators on the view-finder, accompanied by the functions of the 5-way pad: type of focus, Low Light mode (on/off), tagging, flash and white balance.


The quality of the pictures is of course the most important things for a camera. In our tests we got very nice outdoor images when the sun was up; they had really high detail level, real colors, but there still was grain. We would say that the MOTO is as good as the Samsung G600 in such condition, but when there’s no sun, the quality of the photos drops considerably.



The ZN5’s performance indoors is not that impressive. When the pictures are small they look OK, but once viewed on large screen you can see that the noise “kills” the detail. The Xenon flash performs well up to 7 feet but if you try to shoot something at about 14, you’ll get results worse than some LED cameraphones.  The Nokia N82 and Sony Ericsson K850 are much better in this aspect.

For pictures in darker environments you can use the Low Light option, which employs the Kodak Imaging technology with optimized settings for dim  environments.  Unfortunately the results are very disappointing due to the heavy noise. Despite KODAK’s technology, Low Light is nothing more than Night Mode seen in other phones.


The maximum camcorder resolution of the ZN5 is only 144 x 176 pixels, which is quite shameful for a 5 megapixel shooter. You could still use the videos for MMS, but they are not good enough for YouTube or to watch them on a big screen.

The ZN5 is one of the best phones for daylight pictures, but that’s about it. Indoors and at night the results are quite disappointing. Beyond that, in this day and age many phones that are not considered camera-oriented can record videos in QVGA.


Multimedia:

All multimedia files available can be found in the Media Finder.

You will be able to filter your tracks by Artists, Albums, Genres, and Composers or by Playlists. The interface shows information on the track and has a tiny album art cover, which we would have preferred to be bigger. When the player is minimized to play in the background, the lower part of the home screen transforms into a shortcut to it.

The sound quality from the loudspeaker is good, but is not loud enough. The included ROKR headphones don’t change anything. You won’t be able to understand what people are saying to you while you are wearing it, but you’ll still hear the passing cars on the street. However, the 3.5 mm jack means you can use a better set..

Do not expect to watch high-quality clips on this phone. Files with a resolution larger than the display’s (QVGA) and high bitrate (such as 512 kbps) do not play, even at 15fps.