Motorola KRAVE ZN4

The sexy Motorola Krave ZN4 for Verizon looks like a Star Trek communicator, makes a great little portable TV, and incorporates some genuinely innovative touch-screen technology. But its lack of interesting applications leaves me wanting a lot more. Here's the problem: The bar for touch-screen phones has been raised considerably recently. With the iPhone, the LG Dare, the Samsung Instinct, the T-Mobile G1, and the BlackBerry Storm out there, just having a touch screen isn't enough anymore. A handset needs to offer fresh software, too. And the Krave's software feels old functional but stale.

Size and Weight :

The Krave is a rounded 4.6-ounce slab (4.1 by 2 by 0.8 inches, HWD) with what appears to be a clear, protective flip cover over the screen. But that "clear" cover is actually composed of a nearly invisible wire mesh that allows the cover to become a touch screen, too.

Network and connectivity:

The Krave ZN4 is a dual-band CDMA (800/1900) phone that also supports Verizon's 3G EV-DO network. But it lacks support for Wi-Fi wireless networks, so you'll have to rely on the availability of the 3G cellular network for speedy access to Web pages and e-mails.

Camera and Video:

The 2MP camera lens is located on the rubberized rear, recessed to avoid accidentally smudging the lens. There’s no flash and no self-portrait mirror. When you tap the camera screen, gray touch control icons appear. On the right is a +/- 8X continual zoom control. On the left side are a video/still switch icon, a photo gallery icon, and an exit button. When you rotate the phone to portrait mode, the icons automatically switch positions. Like video, what you’re about to shoot doesn’t fill the entire screen, just the 240×320 pixel section. With the touch cover down, the extra 80 pixels is blank. When the touch cover is up, you get three tappable thumbnails to review the last pictures you took. Shutter lag is about two seconds – the screen goes blank while the shot is processing. Pictures taken in direct sunlight are filled with popping colors and only slightly fuzzy edge detail. Images lose a bit of their color and depth of field vitality in overcast or darker conditions. Without a flash, you’ll be lucky to get a blur-free image. QVGA 12 frame per second 3GPP2 videos are barely watchable, which is par for the course.

Memory and Display:

There is an internal memory of 138MB. And it can be expanded up to 8GB. Even with its innovative touch cover though, Krave looks and acts like a standard flip cell phone. Its long 2.8-inch 240 x 400 pixel screen – most cell screens measure 240 x 320 pixels – dominates its front face. These extra 80 pixels are especially helpful when reading Web pages or scrolling through long contact or song lists. Above the bright and crystalline screen are a white backlit Home key and a red backlit Power key. Both are covered when the touch cover is down.

Entertainment Features:

The Motorola Krave ZN4 is indeed a multimedia powerhouse by feature phone standards and benefits from Verizon’s wide range of multimedia services. The Krave comes with a very good music player that has all the usual music playback options such as shuffle, repeat and playlists. It also supports album art with iPod-like album cover flip action, and accelerometer support in the album list view. The built-in music player plays music in AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR NB, MIDI, MP3, WMA v10 and WMA v9 formats. This means if you have ripped music CDs in either iTunes or Windows Media Player, your music will play fine on the Krave. If you subscribe to Verizon’s V CAST Music with Rhapsody store, the Krave allows you to buy music over the air. Music download is fast over EV-DO. The Motorola has an awesome speakerphone that’s clear, full and unusually loud for a mobile phone. Music playback through the speaker was great in our tests, and even better through the built-in 3.5mm audio jack. A good wired headset yields strong bass and clear audio. Yet the best music audio came from Bluetooth stereo headsets thanks to the Bluetooth A2DP support. We tested the phone with the Samsung SBH-500 and Motorola’s own S9-HD Bluetooth headsets, both produced excellent audio with very strong bass. Video playback performance is also very good on the Krave. V CAST on-demand streaming videos play smoothly most of the time. Videos look reasonably sharp compared to other Verizon feature phones. Audio was slightly out of sync with video at times with EVDO strength at half bars. The Motorola Krave ZN4 goes beyond on-demand streaming video. It offers the V CAST Mobile TV service powered by MediaFLO. V CAST Mobile TV has approximately 13 basic channels including Fox, CBS, NBC and MTV, and has shows currently running on these TV networks on the big screen. Even without the “rabbit ear” TV antenna found on the LG Voyager, mobile TV shows look sharper on the Motorola Krave. In fact, if you’re in a good MobileTV coverage area, it looks sharper than V Cast video (MobileTV coverage is different from Verizon’s phone coverage, so check their online maps). Verizon offers V CAST Mobile TV services in several packages and prices range from $13/month to $25/month.

Even with music playback that lasts nearly 16 hours – eight more than the iPhone – the Krave is still a disappointment. The touch cover is a great technology unto itself, but here, instead of making the Krave easier to use, it’s actually more often a hindrance, both physically and functionally. Many of the Krave’s other functions, especially the QWERTY keyboard, lack the attention to intuitive detail that makes the iPhone such a joy to use. It just doesn’t seem as if the operating system and touch technology are matched very well. I’d love to see this technology better developed and matched with Android or LiMo, the Linux mobile operating system that Verizon has committed itself to. Overall, a shame, really…