Camera Phones Plaza

Krave ZN4 has a slim and compact shape, an interesting touch screen and a cover made of transparent plastic which give it a futuristic look. Its dimensions 4.13''x2''x0.75'' make it easy to slip into a pocket, and the weight of only 4.59 is a good weight for this type of mobile phone. It has a cover for the front, and some might ask why this device would need it, but the company justified it presence with the protection of the touch display and with the flip phone look this devices has. It is usable, and the design and protection purposes are reached, but some of the phone's features can be used even when the cover is closed.
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This phone offers music player, V Cast Mobile TV, photo folder and VZ Navigator as novelties in this mobile phones line. Making calls is available without opening the cover which is a huge advantage for the user. For this you have to press the control on the right side and then speak the name or the phone number of the person you want to call, and in few seconds the phone call is dialed. You can also phone the voice mail or the most recently dialed number without opening the cover.

This phone's display measures 2.8'' and it can support up to 65,000 colors, at a 240x400 pixels resolution. This display is bright, and it offers sharp graphics and photos, and the colors are clear and bright too. The text is readable and the contrast is good for reading and typing too. The backlight time, the clock format and the dialing font size can be modified, and the brightness of the display too. If you look at the phone in the standby mode, you will notice a shortcut bar with icons for main features: messaging, dialpad, main menu and contacts. This display has low visibility in direct light, but this is not an unusual thing for mobile phones. Krave doesn't use a 3rd party OS, so it cannot really be included in the smartphones category.

The touch interface is accurate and it responds without lag time. The tactile feedback is great because it shows where you are pressing on the screen. This phone doesn't come with a stylus, but there are no problems with using the fingers to navigate through menus. Like many other touch screen devices, you can browse through lists by dragging with the fingers up and down on the screen. This motion is visibly fluid, and it doesn't have lags or problems. On the keyboard you can notice that the touch keys are large, but the alphanumeric pad has quite small letters. It has three special punctuation buttons, the "@" button is also present, the space bar is well placed, there are also clear and return buttons and surprisingly it has a shift button too.

Krave has a 1,000 positions address book, with room for five phone numbers and two e-mail addresses for each contact. The other essentials are the vibrate mode, which works great, text and multimedia messaging, alarm clock, calendar, world clock, notepad and calculator. This phone has also stereo Bluetooth, and if offers access to Verizon's Visual Voicemail feature. This phone has access to Windows Live, Yahoo!, AOL, AIM and Verizon POP3 mail accounts.

The 2 camera megapixel is the biggest disappointments in this phone. All Motorola fans were expecting at least a 3.2 megapixels camera, but the disappointment is even bigger, because you cannot edit the image at all. The only option is the digital zoom, and don't think of changing the color tones, the brightness, white balance or other effects. After you take the pictures, you can transfer them to the computer, via Bluetooth or USB cable, you can also send them in a MMS or just store them in phone's memory or in an online album.

Call quality is excellent, and this might be the best point of this phone. Conversations are clear, without interference or face-outs. There are no connection lags. Not even dropped calls. The quality of calling feature is outstanding, and the only minus, a little one, would be that when the volume is at its highest levels, the voices are distorted.

Motorola Krave ZN4 catches the eye with an unique, interesting and special design, with an innovative touch interface and it also offers a lot of features which make it favorite for a lot of people. Some problems would be around the browser, the keyboard and the camera features. It also lacks WiFi and the full exchange support feature is not available yet. All in all, this phone is unique, you can use it easily and it has quite good performances in the main purpose: voice communication.

After reading some topics in various forums, and seeing that more and more people would like to get the Skype Mobile application on their Motorola Q phone, I compiled some solutions, and here it is the best way to use it on your mobile phone:
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Skype doesn't list Motorola as an option on the brand list of compatible mobile devices, and it is pretty hard to find the .cab file where these compatibilities are stored. For getting this .cab  file on your phone, there are two solutions.

For downloading this .cab file directly to your phone, you should navigate to this page , and accept a 3.86 Mb file download, called "SkypeForSmartphone_Beta.CAB". After you accept, it will be downloaded, some typical installation prompts will appear, and a Skype icon will be added to the Start menu. If the installation process fails, try it again: go to the page, and download the .cab and then go through the installation steps.

Another possibility is to download the EXE and install it from the PC, or download the .cab for later installation. For this, you will have to browse to the file's location with the File Manager. Installing Skype Mobile will change your Home Screen to the Skype's home screen, which is pretty large and ugly, with the specific color scheme. Changing it back can be done from Settings-> Home Screen. If you want to add the Skype Mobile plugin into your Home Screen XML file, there are instructions at the end of this article.

If you launch Skype, it will tell you “Please note that a WiFi connection could not be found". Ignore this message, because it is true, Motorola Q doesn't have any WiFi connection, and this means that Skype will use the EVDO connection to communicate. When you launch it for the first time, it will require the login information.

Skype for mobile phones is pretty cool, because all the contacts, phone numbers and history are automatically loaded from the servers and they can be used from your mobile phone. When you will re-login, it won't be necessary to configure it again, like you sometimes have to do on the PC. There can be run multiple copies of Skype without problems, and you can easily use the PC and mobile version. All the things you typed on the Skype PC version will appear on the mobile one, and the other way around, and it is pretty cool,because you can keep track of your conversations, even if they had been typed on the PC or on the mobile device.

Text messaging works great on mobile devices, but the voice quality is very choppy, and you actually can't use the phone calling feature, even if Skype offers the possibility of dialing out and in. I think it is better to use the phone part for voice communication, and you could use the Skype voice feature for reading the voicemail, but it is quite sketchy. In time, both Motorola and Skype will improve their features, and in short time, the call quality will improve with technology's progess.

Here is the XML sequence you should insert in the XML page of Home Screen, in order to make the Skype plugin to appear. You should add this to the bottom of the code, or wherever you want Skype Mobile to be placed.

Motorola V180 costs $119, but you can find it in various places at lower prices, with service agreements. These silver cell phones are dominating the market and I think everybody likes the stylish design brought by Motorola V180. It is colored in black, and it has a silver trim. It looks pretty good, the measurements ( 3.5'' x 1.7'' x 0.9'' ) and the weight (2.8 ounces) give the phone a real portability and comfort in usage. The rectangular external screen shows time, the battery life and the ID caller, when available. The screen in monochrome, and the only control on the exterior is the volume button. Speakerphone is located on the rear face, but the phone actually doesn't have a sturdy design. It looks pretty fragile, and you can feel it while holding it in your hand.
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The display is quite small, it is only 1.5 inches diagonal, and has very low visibility in sunlight. It supports 65,000 colors, and you can't say it renders vibrant colors, because the general aspect has an washed-out effect (only the contrast can be adjusted). The display and the frame are vulnerable to smudges, and a real disadvantage is that the text size cannot be changed (this is a problem for users with visual problems).

The menus are quite easy to navigate, and the navigation controls have a cheap plastic look. The toggle has five directions, and takes you to the phone book, the call log, the message center and to the section where you can set up the ring styles. There are two buttons for T-zone applications, which can also operate in the instant messaging application also, and they can activate the speakerphone while in a call. While most of the Motorola phones have the Talk button on the right and the End on the left, this model has the keys in the traditional places.

The keypad buttons are set flush with the phone's surface, and it's quite hard to dial by feel. The set of features is at an average level. The address book can store up to 500 contacts which can have six fields for phone numbers and an e-mail address field. If you have more than 500 contacts, you should think of the storage space on the SIM card too, which is up to 250 contacts. Contacts can be categorized in groups and they can get associated to any of the 28 monophonic or 20 polyphonic ringtones. The contacts can get also a picture, but it won't be shown on the external display. This phone doesn't have a camera, so you have to upload the pictures yourself, or ask those people to send them to you their pictures.

All in all, Motorola V180 has good call quality, the speakerphone is good, it also has USB capability and instant messaging, the battery life is satisfying but the slippery keypad and cramped controls are pretty important minuses in the final report. It also has a flimsy plastic construction and even if the design is not so impressing, this Motorola V180 is a quality, basic cell phone.

Motorola Tundra is a resistant phone, and it confers the user a sturdy and comfortable feel. It has military specifications certification for rain, shock, and other external factors which may action on it. It has an external antenna, which is quite a rarity on mobile phones these days, but it's not extendable, and this makes Motorola Tundra similar with Nextel phones.
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Its dimensions: 3.85 inches by 2.10 inches by 0.96 inch and 4.94 ounces give this phone a durable design and taking into account that the front and rear faces are plastics, but edges covered in rubber, we can say that this phone has a comfortable and resistant look.

The external display is quite small, 1 inch diagonally, but it shows the necessary information, like date, time, battery life and signal strength, and it supports photo caller ID because it is full color. The camera is right above the display and it doesn't have a flash. All the controls are covered with a rubber surface, and on the bottom there is a mini USB slot for an USB cable and a charger. The display on the inner side is 2.2 inches, and it has bright colors, sharp graphics, easy and user friendly menus. the brightness can be changed, and the backlight also, but not the font size.

This phone's keypad and the array for navigation are excellent and I like that both are spacious and that the navigation array has a OK button with a circular toggle around. The keypad has large buttons, and I think this is a cool aspect of the design, it has bright backlight and it is easy to use for dialing and texting.

The phonebook can be stored on 100 MB of the internal memory, and if you need more, you can go on those 250 contacts on the SIM card. Every contact can get five numbers, an e-mail address, mail addresses (three of them), birthday field, and other fields, which are pretty much information for each person. You can customize each person with a photo ID and one of the polyphonic ringtones you have on the phone. This mobile phone has vibrate mode, calendar, PC syncing, voice dialing, Web based POP3 e-mail and text and multimedia messages support, an alarm clock and a world clock, a voice recorder, task list and notepad.

Tundra offers the whole set of AT&T's wireless broadband multimedia services and Cellular Video and AT&T Mobile Music have simple designs and I like that they support a large palette of file formats. Motorola Tundra has a quite solid selection of music features, like Radio Mobile, Billboard Mobile channel and it offers access to fan sites, communities and music downloads.

The camera offers 2 Mp possibilities, four picture resolutions, three settings for quality and you can use the night mode also, you can modify the exposure and the lighting conditions, the color tones and the shutter sounds. Photos can be tagged and you can insert them into multimedia messages automatically. Video recording options are quite ok, but the resolution is far too small, 176x144 or 128x96 and you can record in multimedia message mode (24 seconds) or normal mode (unlimited).

Motorola Tundra's battery life is 5 hours of talk time and 14 days on standby mode. FCC radiation tests are around 1.36 W/KG. The connection is strong for downloads and browsing the Internet, and the Cellular Videos load in 10 seconds on average. Tundra's quality is much better than many other AT&T phones. Sound matches the video but sometimes, videos paused to re buffer, and the sound/image lag was noticeable.

I think that Motorola Tundra, with its sturdy design is a great phone, with an easy-to-use interface and a good call quality, but I don't like the low quality media system (and this means poor photo quality and streaming video with lag). This phone is great for the making calls function, but the multimedia field has some lacks.

The Motorola cell phones have never impressed customers with a spectacular design or with features that they couldn’t find on another handsets. However, they managed to catch the attention during the years, with a couple of devices.

A relevant example of such a handset is the new Motorola music slider that was baptized with the name of Motorola ROKR ZN50. Being a full touch sensitive cell phone, the ROKR ZN50 was launched in the Korean market only.

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The list of features include WCDMA 2100, GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps connectivity, a 3.2 inches TFT color display with a resolution of 240 x 420 pixels, a 3.2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0 (HS), an integrated GPS, SRS WOW HD sound system and built-in EQ, T-DMB2 TV tuner, 3.5mm headphone jack, a microSD card support for expandable memory of no more than 16GB and a 950 mAh battery.



The phone measures 54 x 108.9 x 14.34 millimeters and weighs 143 grams. The user interface the Motorola ROKR ZN50 comes with is called Motorola panorama and it’s a new one. In additions, it “supports three separate screens, allowing more widgets and shortcuts to be arranged according to usage patterns”.

Other details, regarding the availability and the price, are not at our disposal for the moment, but stay tuned, because we’ll keep you informed.

(Source: UnwiredView)