Motorola Z10 review

Motorola Z10 Review

Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

Reviewed on: 9 June 2008

Sticking to its bendy guns, Motorola has launched another phone that flexes -- the Z10. While it looks very similar to its predecessor the Rizr Z8, the Z10 has a few upgrades that give it an edge. But are the Z10's improvements enough to keep us entertained or is this bendy phone a flop? We've bent over backwards to give you our thoughts.

The Z10 is available now for free on a monthly contract through O2. 

Design
Almost a year later and the bendy design still packs a punch. Similar to the Z8, people stared at the Z10 with fascination when they realised that it bends as you slide it out. The bend isn't just a crowd pleaser, though; it gives the Z10's ear speaker and mic a better position against the side of your face during calls, which slightly improves audio quality.

We found the Z10's keypad underwhelming and feel that there should be more space around the bottom row for better typing

Coming in a silver and black version, the overall look of the Z10 is definitely more industrial and tough than your average slider phone. It's a good weight too -- not too light or too heavy. It wouldn't look out of place in a Transformers movie if arms and legs suddenly popped out and it started shooting at Decepticons.

Although the Z10's screen is large and sharp enough to comfortably view content, it's disappointingly much smaller than the Nokia N95's screen or LG Viewty's. Since one of the Z10's biggest selling points is being able to watch films on it, we wish its screen was larger.

Another issue we have with the Z10's design is its keypad. While it's better than the Z8's because its keys are more spaced out and slightly raised, typing is still difficult. The keys don't have a lot of travel and the bottom row is too close to the mic/speaker lip to press comfortably unless you use the very tip of your thumb.

Features
Unlike most Motorola handsets, the Z10 runs on UIQ, meaning that the interface is more similar to one you'd find on a Nokia or Sony Ericsson phone. While we'd like to say that it's much better than the Z8's, we're not sure Motorola has cracked UIQ just yet because there were a few glitches with the interface that bugged us.

When navigating parts of the menu and accessing certain features, the interface seems sluggish. We also noticed that when accessing a few apps at the same time, the Z10 popped up a message saying that it had run out of memory. It's not the easiest interface to decipher either -- changing the display settings, for example, is awkward to do.

As a nice touch, the Z10 comes with all the Bourne movies on a microSD. You can download more movies from an online Motorola portal. At the moment, you can only download certain Paramount films via a PC but bizarrely, you can't watch them on your PC. You can only view them on a compatible Motorola phone.

If watching films on the Z10's relatively small screen doesn't float your boat, then you can always shoot and edit your own films using the Z10's camera. We weren't particularly blown away by the quality of the video but the editing software is pretty easy to use and lets you add effects, such as fading transitions, and add music from your library.