MOTO2006

by Eric Lin
August 4, 2006

We traveled a long way - literally half way around the world - to bring you a hands on with Mototola's newest phone designs. The American manufacturer held the global launch for its new designer phones in Cape Town, South Africa.


Click a thumbnail above for a larger view.

Motorola's chief designer, Jim Wicks unveiled the phones formerly code named Canary and Capri. Though filings with the FCC called them the K1 and Z3, they are now officially called the KRZR and RIZR. Although not much has changed since we got our hands on the RIZR a month ago, there were a few interesting surprises.

Both phones run the same software except for a minor change in the camera viewfinder - as we showed you, the RIZR runs a full-screen viewfinder in landscape mode, while the KRZR has a near full screen viewfinder, with all the same features, but in portrait mode. We will refrain from discussing the software much since we covered that pretty thoroughly earlier.


Click a thumbnail above for a larger view.

However it is worth noting that Motorola has switched its navigation system to match almost all other manufacturers'. Enter/Forward type functions are now on the left soft key while No/Back operations are done by the right. Not only does this match what other manufacturers do, but it now matches the send/end buttons, where green is on the left and red is on the right. This will be a small hassle for long time Motorola users, but it will be a big improvement for users new to the brand.

This change had not been implemented on the RIZR prototype we previewed before. It has been fully implemented everywhere in the OS except in the music player, where we suspect it was missed since that is a Java add-on and not part of the core OS.

Next Page: KRZR >