Motorola Rizr Z8 review

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Motorola Rizr Z8 user reviews

November 3, 2008

Posted by: stu16486

"All style, no substance"

What I like:

Camera takes fairly decent photos, and the handset looks snappy

What I don't like:

The operating system has a tendecy to crash

Review:

What attracted me to this phone was the curve when it opens - yes I was that naive! On paper this is a pretty good phone; the camera takes pretty decent photos, even when you take them while moving, the calls are normally fairly clear, and the screen has a fairly nice resolution.

However! The operating system of the z8 has a tendency to crash or stall, seemingly at random, and completely freeze the screen, or just turn the phone off. It also occasionally restarts itself, also seemingly at random. When it does freeze, the only way to sort it out is to remove and replace the battery, which isn't the easiest task as it's jammed in fairly tightly. Another design problem is the SIM card cover - if you have the Z8 in trousers or jeans pockets that are anything other than baggy, the cover has a tendency to slide off and drop to the ground. The curved slide design may look good at a distance, but if you look close up, you can see it scratches parts of the keypad.

Speaking of the keypad, the individual buttons can be difficult to press accurately, especially when texting. Also, if you're left handed as I am, you will probably find that more often than not when composing texts, you accidentally hit the media short key on the right hand side, as it is where your middle finger naturally rests to support the phone while texting. The on/off button also has a tendeny not to work when you're trying to turn the phone on; it can take several attempts to get the phone to realise that you're trying to wake it up!

The Z8 suffers from slowdown if you have too many stored photos, especially when trying to access the media files. The addition of mobiclip player was nice, but I never got around to playing the entirety of the film that came with the phone, much less downloading any more onto an SD card. But, from what I did see of this feature, it plays films with high clarity. There is a slight problem with the software's ability to detect the SD card, as if you eject it then re-insert it, it sometimes doesn't recognise that it's there at all.

One of the most significant let downs for this phone is the battery life - not in its length but the inconsistency of length. For any given time I charge the Z8, it will last either a week or more, a day, or any amount of time in between, regardless of how often I call text or take photos.

Overall, this phone was a nice concept; an ergonomically designed phone, with a nice large high-res screen, that can play films. But software difficulties combined with some design errors make the Z8 not impossible to use, but impossible to keep.