Motorola Krave ZN4 (Verizon Wireless)

Pros: The clear cover and lock stops accidental butt calls. Call sound quality is excellent including the speakerphone. The voice announcements for incoming calls and voice commands work well. Some names are badly mispronounced.

Cons: Vibrate mode is hardly noticeable. Goes berzerk when dialing voice mail that prompts for additional key entries. Sometimes the screen goes blank 2 seconds after dialing and does not wake up until the call is dropped.

Summary: The touch screen is tough to use with man size fingers. The dialpad disappears about 2 seconds after starting a call which is a problem for dialing numbers that have subsequent prompts, INCLUDING Verzizon's Tech Support line and Voice Mail. Pressing the Home Button sometimes wakes up the display for the dialpad but not on a consistent basis. Other times, the diapad stays awake but does not respond to allow entry.

Verizon Tech Support is competing with Comcast for the worst possible experience. You are required to listen to a maze of options then key in your phone number and last 4 digits of SSN. If you are lucky enough to find your way to live operator you have to repeat this same information. Inevitably you get transferred 3 or more times and each time have to repeat providing the same information before they finally transfer your call to purgatory where no one picks up the line.

Updated on Nov 9, 2008

Forgot to mention the battery life is an issue, especially with bluetooth activated. I forgot to turn off the feature at night and the phone was completely dead by morning, requiring the battery to be removed and reinserted before it would start charging.

If you are thinking of replacing your iPod with the music player here, think again. Transferring music is anything but automatic and resulting sound quality is AM Radio like.

The micro USB connector is also an issue. Verizon sells a "universal" connector for your Phone to PC that doesn't quite fit the phone. Motorola doesn't even list one on their site that's compatible with this phone. I found one at wirelessground.com for $10 that does the job.

Updated on Nov 20, 2008

Returned Phone... found 6 people in line doing the same thing.

There are apparently a number of bad phones released when this model came out. My 30 day window was closing so I had no choice but to return it. The ear piece stopped working recently which was the last straw.

If you haven't bought one yet, you might want to wait, especially since they just RAISED the price and eliminated rebates.