Customer Reviews

Motorola KRZR K1 Unlocked Phone with 2 MP Camera, MP3/Video Player, and MicroSD Slot--International Version with No Warranty (Cosmic Blue)

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

I just upgraded from a RAZR phone, and this new KRAZR is exceptionally nice. The phone has great reception, the sound quality & volumn are very good, the menus are very easy to get around,it fits your face well (not too short as many phones now are) and operating the phone is simple. This phone is clearly evident of Motorola's evolution in the cell-phone industry. By the way, you can customize the "soft-keys" to be whatever you want them to be. Likewise, you can customize the menus to appear as you would like. They have really thought of the user and have made this phone very User Friendly as well. It seems that the majority of the people I talk to aren't as interested in "whistles & bells" as much as they just want a plain old GOOD phone. This is it! However, if you want more, you can load your MP3 music on to it, you can use the calendar, you can take a picture, and if you are really adventurous, you can access the internet, and also retreive your email! By the way, this phone is capable of taking advantage of the Cingular/AT&T EDGE network which gives you 'faster than usual' internet. I highly recommend this Good Looking, Well Working phone.

Pros:

- Exclusivity. Nobody has this phone/color combo.
- Killer looks. The glass front is mind-blowing. Photo doesn't do it justice.
- Killer size. Left to right it's thinner than the RAZR but slightly longer and slightly thicker front to back.
- Sturdy. This is where it shines. When you close it, it feels like a luxury car door. Very solid; lightyears ahead of the RAZR.
- Sound quality is top-notch. Excellent reception.
- Camera is actually very, very good. I was very, very surprised.
- Works with all my old RAZR accessories.

Cons: (barely justifiable to even call them that)

- A couple of the included games/java apps were in Chinese.
- The phone language. "Centre" instead of "Center", Personalise instead of "Personalize" - Not really a big deal. Must be a UK English vs. a US English thing.

I hung on to my old v60i in the hope that Motorola would fix their user interface, this one is substantially different, but the bad features of the v60i remain. The side buttons.

As of 5/22/08 I'm about ready to hurl this from the roof. The UI is just too inconvenient. I've also had to replace the battery once.

6/13/08 Enough already! I replaced it with a Nokia E51. On the E51 the side buttons are not too sensitive, they require deliberate use, and all buttons are automatically locked after a timeout period anyway. The E51 is nearly twice the price now but 10 times the phone (GSM quad band, WCDMA dual band, 802.11g an FM radio and god knows what else that I haven't found yet). I have temporarily given the KRZR to my significant other, but I'll be replacing that and the daughter's phones with Nokia phones when we change the plan to use the E51's data capabilities; why would I inflict on her what I wasn't happy with myself?

Let's do the good first: The voice quality in both directions is good, the talk time is good and the standby time is good enough that I am surprised when it needs recharging. I use it quite a lot and that still only seems to be twice a week. The ring tones are the usual selection but the maximum volume is considerably higher than in my old phone. Signal handling is much better, it holds on to calls that AT&T could previously be relied on to drop, but there are still issues where it fails to roam to the next cell, though I strongly suspect that is due to lame network software rather than the phone (symptoms are that after a dropped call with no signal the signal strength immediately maxes out). For someone who travels to Europe the quad band GSM is indispensable, I keep a spare SIM for UK visits because it gives me calls to the US for about 1/10th of the cost of allowing AT&T to roam to Europe. The music player is fine, but you are going to have to either buy bluetooth headphones, which you can't use on a plane, or buy the USB adapter which should have been included for the trivial cost in such an expensive phone. It makes an excellent alarm clock and is loud as hell.

The not so good: The iTap text entry is slow and not as good as the old version, whatever that was called. I guess I'll eventually get used to iTap, but the old predictive text had some advantages.

The Ugly: the joker who came up with these side buttons that can't be disabled should be fired. It's the easiest thing in the world to brush against the phone and fire up the crummy voice entry (below) or, with a bit more of a rubbing motion, switch the ringer from one more to another. So you can silence the phone and drop it in your pocket only to find it ringing in the middle of a movie. Or you eventually notice nobody is talking to you and check the phone only to find you have a couple of missed calls and the phone has been set to silent. Somehow. Then there's the voice entry, the best you could say is that it's not good. If you brush against the voice button it thinks about it for a good while and then some awful woman say "say a command". Now you have to try and convince it to call someone based on the phone's attempt at pronouncing the name you used in the phone book. Since I work with a load of Indians and Chinese that's about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. It was much more useful to be able to program the nicknames.

But would I buy it again? Yes. There aren't many neat phones like this and if there's another one with quad band GSM too I didn't find it.

But if someone comes out with a quad band GSM phone with good signal handling and no side buttons you'll see my KRZR on Ebay the next day.

This is a great phone. What impressed me most about it was several things. One was its sleek design and feel. If you liked the RAZR, this phone will really knock your socks off. It's not quite as wide as the RAZR, which makes it easier on the hands, and it's solid construction makes you feel like you're holding a quality product. I love how it snaps shut after you finish a call. It's satisfying. Two, it has better reception than the RAZR, or at least it seems that way to me. I don't have any data to support this claim, but I have fewer dropped calls on this phone, and the volume is much better. I don't find myself pressing the phone against my ear like I used to do with the RAZR, which is really nice. Three, I dig the MP3 and multimedia features. I popped a 2GB card in the phone and loaded about 50 of my favorite songs and about 75 family photos in it. It's great because now I can set the phone alarm to wake up to my favorite songs, or set ring tones to whatever tune I have loaded on it. Also, I setup a playlist and listed to it while jogging the other day. I was most impressed. I also created a family album on the phone and showed it to friends in a slideshow format. It was funny. Rather than complimenting me on my beautiful family, they focused their comments on the photo quality of my phone. I was like, dude. Anyway, if you like cool phones, I totally recommend this one. Yeah it's pricey, but from my perspective, it's worth it. One last comment. I'm a Cingular customer and they, if you haven't noticed, haven't offered the KRZR K1 phone to their customers yet. Well, that's okay. You can still use this phone on thier network. All you have to do is take the phone out of the box, pop in your old SIM card from your previous phone, then call Cingular and ask them to activate it. They will ask you for the IMEI number located on the box and within minutes, you will be connected. It was a snap. Enjoy!

This particular unlocked version seems thinner than the ones being sold by cell phone carriers. My initial impression was this phone was very tiny. It is smaller than the RAZR V3 in overall dimensions. I use this unlocked phone with Cingular in the Los Angeles area.


The good:

1)Small and cool looking. Most people who have seen it seems to be enamored with its design and form factor. It is definitely an eye catcher.

2)Call quality is great. The volume can be turned on VERY loud. So if you are hard of hearing or just like to hear loud voices over the phone, then this phone will probably fit the bill.

3)Speaker phone. Motorola managed to incorporate a great pair of speaker phones. It is loud and clear enough to have a conference call in a small room full of people.

4)Comes with more than basic ring tones. It comes with several (around 12) musical ring tones. Better yet, the ring tones comes out in a full stereo mode (or at least sounds like it).

5)Camera is good (2MP). Although it will not replace your digicam, it will be more than adequate for emergency uses.

6)Battery life. My informal test on this is that it can handle upto 4-5 hours of talk time.

The Bad (mostly due to it is unlocked):

1)You need to configure EVERYTHING on the phone. Nothing comes preconfigured. This includes the default language, time, date, voicemail, email, IM etc. This can get rather tedious since Cingular does not support unlocked phones.

2)You may lose some functionalities. For example, I have noticed my web browser functionalities do not work with my cingular SIM card. This is no biggie for me since I never browse the web using my phone

Just as a phone, the KRZR K1 works great. It has clear sound even in low signal situations and the speakerphone is excellent.

The camera is adequate but not stellar. The games are in Chinese and so unplayable unless you know that language.

It won't work with Phone Tools 4.35 and isn't supported by the US Motorola support. I could get the software to recognize the phone but it
refused to sync until I updated the phone firmware.

Motorola support (the KRZR specific support number) told me that there was new firmware but that the only way I could get to it was to navigate through Motorola's Chinese language web site. The support people could not email me or send me a direct link to the firmware because it is "an international phone".

Update: I thought I would add an update to mention that the latest Macintosh OS (OSX 1.4.9) has added support for this phone to their iSync software and it works flawlessly. So that makes this, in my opinion, a pretty good phone for Mac users or those who don't want to synchronize it with anything.

Everything about this phone is fantastic. It feels great. Has terrific features. I had no prolems with the micro sd card the other reviewer had. I too was able to just insert the card and go.
The voice recorder is very good, the camera is outstanding, and the video recorder was also very good.
Wish it came with Spanish, French, and German languages as well as English.
Don't be fooled by the Verizon version of this phone. Get the unlocked phone. The Verizon has a lessor camera (1.3 instead of 2), can only handle a 1GB sd card instead of the 2GB, and only has 4X zoom instead of 8X. There may be other differences as well but, to me, these are significant.

I have owned a number of phones over the course of the last couple of years. Recently (within the last 3 months) I have tried the Samsung, Chocolate and LG VX8600.

Phone
Call quality is much better than what I experienced with the LG. The LG sounded muffled to people on the other end when I was talking with them. Those same people now say that this phone is great. Much crisper. Reception is also better than the LG, which does surprise me.

Camera
Hey it is a camera phone! It does what it is designed to do.

Music
The phone uses a mini-SD card. Works great. No bogging down of the processor as I experienced with the Samsung.

Texting
I like the iTap better than LG's version. There seem to be more words loaded into the dictionary.

Bluetooth
I am currently using a plantronics 655 Bluetooth headset. Call quality is excellent and much better than the 8600.

So far it is a keeper!

The Motorola RAZR got an extreme makeover in order to reveal this must have mobile phone/fashion gadget.

This phone is perefected in such a way that all the little things that I didn't like about RAZR where taken care of.

PROS:
1. Of course it is the most stylistic phone that I have seen so far.
2. Call quality is very good.
3. Broswer is very practical and usable.
4. Playing music using the touch controls on the flip is very practical and serves like an mp3 player.
5. What I like very much is that I accidentally dropped this phone two times and to my surprise it with stood the fall both the times. I actually was very surprised that it only made very minor scratches which are barely visible. This actually proved that the material is of very good quality.

CONS:
1. The games provided (demo version) times out almost immediately. This defeats the whole purpose of experiencing the game before actually purchasing the full version.
2. The front plate requires cleaning on daily basis as it catches finger prints very easily.

Received the phone from the Cingular folks. Had a RAZR V3 before this, and like the slimmer body and upgraded styling. As a non-tech type, operating the thing wasn't as intuitive as I would have liked, I had to refer to the manual many times to set it up and surf the web to figure out how to get it to work with Mobile Phone Tools. The best thing about it is the style and provision of basic phone functions (calling, camera, e-mail and music) without being a big behemoth treo-like organizer. I still cannot figure out how to save pictures and videos to the micro SD, the phone says there isn't enough space, but there is. A few other bugs too, hopefully there will be more support and info on the web in the months to come.