Digital Trends

Motorola Krave ZN4

October 14th, 2008 | by Stewart Wolpin

Sound Quality

Sound in every usage was loud and clear for voice, music and ringtones. Motorola's Crystal Talk technology gives voices plenty of landline-like clarity and bass with only occasional cell phone network warble. There's also a speaker in the Krave's chin. Even though the speaker is mono, it produces quality and volume similar to that of a cheap clock radio, which actually isn't a bad thing for a cell phone. 

Functionality

Ultimately, the touch cover is supposed to make using the phone easier. It doesn't.

For instance, you get four on-screen shortcuts – messaging, phone dialpad, menu and contacts – when the touch cover is down, and a different set of shortcuts – music player, V CAST TV, My Pics and VZ Nav – when the touch cover is flipped up. You cannot access any other menu item when the touch cover is down. When the touch cover is flipped up, you have to touch the Menu icon to get the full main menu grid.

It begs the obvious question: Why not just make the full array of shortcuts and menu items visible all the time, regardless of whether the touch cover is up or down?

Calls have to be answered with the touch cover up. Just like the iPhone, Krave's screen goes blank when you lift the phone to your ear, and its touch capabilities are deactivated. When you bring the phone down away from your face, the screen lights back up but you have to tap an on-screen "touch to unlock" screen button before you touch the "end call" icon.

Entries into the phone book include multiple phone number and email form boxes, but no options to input snail mail addresses. When you add a name, you have to rotate the phone sideways to get the QWERTY keyboard. You don't get auto caps on first and last names, but the keyboard stays in uppercase instead automatically reverting to lower case after you tap the first letter. The keyboard lacks similar niceties when tapping prose for messaging.

Krave is pre-configured for Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, AOL, AIM and Verizon.net POP3 and IMAP email, and offers mobile POP3 email options for Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live, Gmail and AOL mail so your friends can check their email without creating a permanent account. To activate your email accounts you need only input your name and password – no other SMTP or security settings are required.

You also get AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo! Messenger, MMS and SMS messaging and chat. You move from SMS message to SMS message simply by swiping the screen sideways.

Image Courtesy of Motorola

Video

In addition to its music capabilities, Krave includes V CAST TV, the Qualcomm MediaFLO broadcast subscription TV service. V CAST TV can only be activated from the main screen, touch cover up, but once activated can be viewed and controlled with the touch cover down. Video appears quickly when you boot up or change channels; rotating the phone to horizontal fills the 240x320 portion of the screen.

You also can import non-DRM (unprotected) videos to watch, but at press time we didn't have a spec sheet so weren't sure which formats the Krave would accept. 

Web

The Krave's WAP 2.0 browser is nearly impossible to navigate. Instead of touching links to move around, the phone has a large ring-like cursor with a small pyramid-shaped gem as the pointer. You move the "ring" cursor around until the tip lands on a link. When the middle of the ring fills in a light blue, you tap it to activate the link. The center of the ring turns red when the link is activated.

The problem being that the cursor ring doesn't stay put. Lift your finger up, and if shifts a bit. Tap the ring and it moves again instead of activating the link. I just couldn't get it to work. I've never encountered such a maddening Web experience. And this maddening experience doesn't even take into account the tiny text and graphics, making aiming the ring cursor and reading even harder. Pages took between 7 to 10 seconds to load on the Krave, 2 to 5 seconds slower than most EV-DO Rev. A phones I've used to boot. 

Camera

The 2MP camera lens is located on the rubberized rear, recessed to avoid accidentally smudging the lens. There's no flash and no self-portrait mirror.

When you tap the camera screen, gray touch control icons appear. On the right is a +/- 8X continual zoom control. On the left side are a video/still switch icon, a photo gallery icon, and an exit button. When you rotate the phone to portrait mode, the icons automatically switch positions.

Like video, what you're about to shoot doesn't fill the entire screen, just the 240x320 pixel section. With the touch cover down, the extra 80 pixels is blank. When the touch cover is up, you get three tappable thumbnails to review the last pictures you took.

Shutter lag is about two seconds – the screen goes blank while the shot is processing. Pictures taken in direct sunlight are filled with popping colors and only slightly fuzzy edge detail. Images lose a bit of their color and depth of field vitality in overcast or darker conditions. Without a flash, you'll be lucky to get a blur-free image.

QVGA 12 frame per second 3GPP2 videos are barely watchable, which is par for the course.

Conclusion

Even with music playback that lasts nearly 16 hours - eight more than the iPhone - the Krave is still a disappointment. The touch cover is a great technology unto itself, but here, instead of making the Krave easier to use, it's actually more often a hindrance, both physically and functionally. Many of the Krave's other functions, especially the QWERTY keyboard, lack the attention to intuitive detail that makes the iPhone such a joy to use. It just doesn't seem as if the operating system and touch technology are matched very well. I'd love to see this technology better developed and matched with Android or LiMo, the Linux mobile operating system that Verizon has committed itself to. Overall, a shame, really…

Pros: 

• Innovative touch-sensitive protective cover screen
• Loud and clear conversation sound quality
• Easy to use MP3-like music player with 3.5mm headphone jack
• Bright 2.8-inch touch screen


Cons: 

• Touch cover physically restricts QWERTY keyboard use
• OS does not seem well-matched to touch interface
• Awful WAP 2.0 navigation
• Better for music than video