Customer Reviews

Motorola KRZR K1 Phone (AT&T)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I bought this phone because the design and the sound quality. Before purchasing this phone, I used to have Motorola L7 SLVR which I was very dissapointed with the sound quality. SLVR looked good but KRZR is much better. And obviously KRZR is superior than RAZR.

Pros:
- Excellent Voice quality for incoming and outgoing calls.
- Excellent battery life.
- Excellent mp3 stereo sound.
- Excellent pictures.
- Excellent design. It's an eye candy.
- Easily obtained from amazon.com or walmart retail store for only $99 with new or upgrade service plan.
- You can check email from Yahoo or Hotmail for free.
- Works with any bluetooth headset.

Cons:
- Only for people who have smaller fingers.
- Finger magnet. It's almost impossible not to have your fingerprints on the phone.

This phone is incredible, and I'm so happy I bought it through Amazon...very good deal and smooth transaction! I definitely recommend getting this phone. Here's my run-down of it:

Pros:
Excellent voice quality
Excellent sound quality
Great reception...even in places that were "dead zones" with my other phones.
Very compact and oh so sexy sleek
Decent battery life (MUCH better than RAZR)
Easy to follow menu

Cons:
Front side is a fingerprint magnet from hell
Small screen
No warranty available with Cingular
Only a few backgrounds & ringtones to choose from without downloading your own

I also bought the data cable package through Amazon, and it worked beautifully from the first try.

After reading the numerous positive reviews for this phone, I purchased. Here are the main issues I have found with this phone: 1) The buttons are too small, particularly the main control button. You have to used the side of your fingers to ensure that you do not hit too buttons at the same time. And, believe me, I do not have very large hands. 2) If you have quite a few contacts in your phone, you will be irritated by the delay when you scroll down quickly to select a contact. You will notice that if you are not careful, you will dial the wrong contact due to the delay when scrolling and selecting quickly, so if this is you, be aware. 3) You must open the cover and look inside to see if you have missed a call or have a message. VERY INCONVENIENT!! There is no indication to show this on the top screen, only the inside screen. 4) On occasion, the display on the outside of the phone stops working entirely. What you just need to do is power the phone down and they back up again. Not optimal, and I probably just got a bad phone, but I am just waiting for the situation to get more frequent, so I can then deal with the likely nightmare of having to get a replacement phone from Motorola. NOTE: I have no personal vendetta against Motorola, but wanted to provide some real feedback rather than all just rosey stuff I bought into before purchasing.

I've only had the phone for a week but I am extremely pleased with the performance and funcitonality so far. I was hesitant to get the KRZR K1 because of the some of the negative reviews but my experience has been nothing short of excellent. I purchased this phone because it is smaller than the wider frame of the RZRs but it is still well built and contains all the same capabilities. I paired this phone with the Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset with Multipoint Technology [Retail Packaged]and the combination has worked very well. The voice recognition through the bluetooth headset is outstanding even when I am driving in a car. I also purchased the Sandisk Micro SD 2 GBto store MP3 songs in the phone so that I have alternative to my iPod. If you want to listen to music with decent audio quality then you will need to purchase a bluetooth stereo headphones or an adapter for a standard headphone jack. I've played with all of the functions including the video and still camera, calendar, alarm, calculator and they all work pretty much the same as other phones.

The downsides to the phone are:

-Button access - as many people mention, if you have large fingers then pressing buttons especially around the direction keys can be a challenge.

-Many accessories such as car adapter, mini-USB, headphone adapter need to be purchased seperately. While this is standard for many phones, it does increase your investment.

-No customization to create quick access to your most common functions. This was a useful feature on my old Nokia 6800.

-Fingerprint magnet

-No decent case available as of this review

Finally, I was an existing Cingular customer and upgraded the phone (keeping the same number) through Amazon. The transition went flawlessly. FYI, you can take your old and new phone to a Cingular store and they can tansfer your address book over via the SIM card.

I have always purchased Motorola products because of the quality of their handsets. The KRZR is no exception. The phone has a great "feel" of quality in the case, flip hinge, keys and buttons.
The reception and speakerphone are excellent. The phonebook entries permit multilple numbers and "types" (mobile,home,work...etc) for each entry. Then you can use the voicedial feature to say "call jim mobile" or "call jim home" to auto dial the number. Additionally, this phone can dial a number by speaking "call 123 4567".
User created ring tones are a snap. There are 2 features (create tone) and (voice record) that allow you to save audio. With create tones, you enter a sequence with your keypad, save this as a ringtone, and apply it as a distinctive ring for all or any number of people. The voice record is similar. I have recorded "Jim Calling" and saved as a distinctive ring for Jim. In the car, I dont have to look at the phone to see who is ringing me. I suppose you could use the voice record feature to record music also, but I have not done this.
My personal cell phone requirements exclude the more advanced features. So, I cannot comment on the music player or web browser capabilities of this phone.

I switched to this phone from Verizon e815. Some of the details I find different:

Pros:
Sleek design
Good battery life
Compact
2MP camera

Cons:
Choppy voice sometimes hard to listen
Screen and buttons little small

Works for me as I don't use the phone for internet/email or use lot other features.

Pluses:
1. Very impressive battery life (I charge it every second or third day).
2. Excellent camera (mine is just the 1.3 Meg version), but using the auto-enhance editing feature produces very good results. When my wife forgets her digital camera, I just pull out the phone, use the zoom to get in close, and the results are very good. I bought a micro SD card on eBay, and can store as many photos as I could ever want.
3. It works well as an MP3 player. But getting it to sync with my PC was a challenge. I bought the A/V package from Verizon, which included headphones and a CD, but my Dell PC running Windows XP Professional didn't recognize the phone. I had to do a Google search to find a patch for the software. Even with that patch installed, all I could do was charge the phone thru the PC; it still wouldn't let me sync the phone to Windows Media Player version 10. I tried connecting the phone to my daughter's PC which runs XP Home Edition and an older version of Media Player, ran the patch, and finally everything worked. So all I've been able to load on the phone is my daughter's music, but that's been OK so far (I've had the phone since January). Good sound quality, and nothing beats having music with you all the time! The Motorola headphones are only so-so for sound reproduction, so I bought an adapter which lets me connect my regular iPod-style headphones to the KRZR, and they sound great. I've even used my big Bose noice cancelling headphones with it, with good results, though the sound quality is not as good as with a full-sized iPod.
3. The calendar and alarm features work very well.
Minuses:
1. The software problem (noted above) which kept me from syncing my music to the latest version of Windows Media Player
2. The size of text when browsing the Internet suddenly got bigger in about March. It must have been something Motorola did, because I took the phone into a Verizon store, and all their Motorola handsets had the same problem. I was getting only 1 or 2 words per line, which made reading an article very laborious. The text size was definitely smaller in January and February. Anyway, it spoiled the Internet experience for me, and I finally turned off the Internet service - no point wasting $5 per month for something I wouldn't be using.
2. My fingers are long, and I find it hard to hold the phone firmly without accidently pressing the buttons on the side which turn on the speakerphone and the voice activation. I would prefer it if these buttons were on side of the upper part of the flip, out of the way.

I have been using my KRZR for a few weeks now and it has exceeded expectations. I will try to touch on some things not commented about so much in other reviews...

Music portability, awesome. With the cable that came with my girlfriend's V3i I have had very little trouble transferring music from my laptop to the phone. There is a disclaimer in the manual saying some copyrighted songs may not transfer, blah blah blah, but there have been only very few songs with any problem. I have transferred 60 songs so far onto a 2GB mico card I bought and it has been great. The KRZR has powerful little speakers that put out a great sound volume and quality for the size. Playlists will also continue to play when the phone is closed, which I found a very nice and convenient touch.

I re-upped on an existing Cingular contract and I have also noticed increased signal reception, which is nothing to sneeze at considering I went from a Nokia 7610 to the KRZR, so I didn't have some POS crap phone prior to the KRZR. As with RAZRs, you have to be careful not to hit the internet button (i wish you could lock keys like on Nokia), but I found getting the Motorola horizontal pouch pretty much took care of that. Overall a great phone. I wish Motorola provided you with a disk full of programs INCLUDED with the phone like I was able to get with my Nokia 7610, but that is really neither here nor there in a review of the phone itself. Some have commented on having trouble with the buttons on RAZRs and KRZRS, but for an average size guy with average sized hands, this has not been a problem at all. SO FAR, SO VERY GOOD!

I got my phone 3 days ago (fyi) and have played with it, put my contacts & preferences. I even tried downloading & uploading pictures & music. I was surprised that it let me use a whole song as a ringtone. Initially, after I charged the battery the first time, it stalled and I was a bit worried. But everything is fine now.. although it does start up slower than my old sony ericsson. Speaking of which, I was going to get sony ericsson w810i but hesitated because I didn't want a candy bar phone. Then the free phone deal for the SE w810i was withdrawn and I ended up w/ the krzr. I like the voice command too.. it picks up exactly what I say and I can call anybody using it (whereas my old phone only lets me call select people in my phonebook using the voice command). Also, I can use the speakerphone while dialing a number and not only after contact has been made. So far so good.. it reacts a little slow sometimes but it doesn't seem to be the norm and the features (2 mp photos, mp3 music and ringtones, comprehensive voice command) are great.

So I've had the phone for over a month. It's still slow when you turn it on.. but it has not frozen on me or malfunctioned (unlike what the other reviews said). I did buy a phone case to protect it from cracking (again I'm basing this on other reviews) and so I don't have to deal w/ fingerprints. The best news is I've developed the pictures I took w/ this phone and they came out great!

I traded in a Nokia phone for the KRZR a few weeks ago. The KRZR doesn't drop as many calls as the Nokia, but in the areas where the Nokia typically dropped calls, the sound quality on the KRZR is terrible. At least it's better than having the call dropped.

The KRZR synchronized over bluetooth using iSync on my Macintosh without any trouble at all, so I was happy about that. I also bought a 2Gb SD card for it which I was able to load songs onto over bluetooth so I didn't need to buy a USB cable or SD reader.

The Nokia had a nice feature where I could set the phone to beep once when it rang. This was good in meetings. Haven't figured out how to make this work on the KRZR yet.

This phone is advertised as an MP3 player, but the adapter to connect regular headphones to it is not included. I see that I can order it from Amazon for abou $5, but none of the cingular stores I've gone to have it.

A slightly annoying thing about the phone is that no games come with it. Or I should say, all the games are just trial versions which let you play for a minute and then ask you to buy the upgrade. I don't have a data plan with Cingular, so I have no idea how much it would actually cost to download games or music from Cingular since I believe you pay buy the byte when you don't have a plan.