- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 46 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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9 out of 9 people found this review helpful
2.5 stars
"Thorough Review"
Pros: Styling, size, screen, bling factor
Cons: Sluggish, poor software design, text messaging difficult
Summary: I purchased the MOTOKRZR K1m from Sprint over the phone on November 18, 2006. I received the phone on 11/28/06. I have used it now for more than 1 month. I am extremely familiar with Sprint as I have been a Sprint customer for 3 years. I use about 1500 minutes per month, PowerVision, have taken over 2,000 pictures with my previous phone (a Sanyo 8200). There are things I like and things I don't like about the K1m phone which I have categorized below as Good, Bad and Ugly. I sent all of these issues to Sprint with the intention that they would produce a software update. So far to date, there have been no software updates for this phone.
Let me say this too before anyone tries accusing me of bashing. I am a Sprint shareholder. I used to own Nextel stock, but now own Sprint as a result of their purchase of Nextel. So, I would love to see the stock do well and maybe this review will get to a Sprint executive who can fix these issues. Also, since I have been a Sprint customer for 3 years, I would have thought that
The Good:
1. Styling - sleek, modern, bling.
2. Rubber/metal/glass provides great feel. Rubber backing provides a non-slip surface (unlike the RAZR).
3. Width - perfect width for holding and dialing with one hand. Does not cause as much strain on your hand and fingers as the RAZR.
4. Length - perfect length because the microphone is actually at your mouth.
5. Weight - feels just heavy enough, like there is some actual meat to the phone making it feel solid, but light enough
6. No external antenna. Great for putting in your pocket.
7. External media buttons - cool factor is nice the first time your try it.
8. Improved placement of volume, camera and utility button on the base of the phone rather than on the flip like the RAZR which prevents you from accidentally turning down the volume on the phone when opening it (like with the RAZR).
9. Blue backlight is nicer than on the RAZR. The RAZR backlight is a blinding blue compared to the more subdued KRZR.
10. NFL mobile is a cool application. I am a football fan and love it.
11. On-Demand is fast. You can get stock quotes, scores, news extremely fast. It is customizable. Scrolling through the On-Demand menus is super fast (unlike most other menus in the phone as you'll read below).
12. Bluetooth is straightforward and works well. I paired it with an H670 headset (looks like a KRZR) and it worked well, but with some static.
13. I have had great luck with battery life. I recommend setting your backlight to turn off after 10 seconds to conserve it. If you are just using the phone to make calls (without bluetooth), you will get great battery life). When you start using applications (web, camera, camcorder, bluetooth), battery life suffers.
14. The battery cover is secure, yet easily opened to access the battery and memory card.
15. Screen clarity is great, much better than the RAZR.
16. PowerVision is much faster than Vision.
The Bad:
1. There is no way to adjust the screen brightness (Verizon's K1m has this feature. Also, my previous phone, the Sanyo 8200 had this capability).
2. There is no way to set the backlight control to ALWAYS OFF to conserve battery power ((Verizon's MOTOKRZR K1m has this feature. Also, my previous phone, the Sanyo 8200 had this capability).
3. There is no way to set the keypad backlight to ALWAYS OFF to conserve battery. (My previous phone, the Sanyo 8200 had this capability).
4. There is no way to set a different screensaver on the external display vs. the internal screen. (Verizon's MOTOKRZR K1m does this. Also, my previous phone, the Sanyo 8200 had this capability).
5. The camera does not take pictures of EXACTLY what is showing up on the screen prior to the picture being taken. The actual picture ends up with more area around the image than what should be there. (This was not the case with the Sanyo 8200 - what you saw was what would show up).
6. No To-Do list or notepad.
7. When songs are playing, media buttons on front of phone are too easily touched causing songs to be paused. There should be a lock setting on the phone to prevent this.
8. Memory card is in a poor location and is difficult to remove.
9. The speakerphone, while sufficient for listening to calls is not great for people on the other end of the conversation.
10. Screen size is very small and some applications are hard to see the print.
The Ugly:
1. Sprint's customer service (by phone - I bought over the phone, not in store). This definitely makes #1 on my Ugly list for 2 reasons: 1. I would have never imagined that the whole experience (from buying this phone as an upgrade to dealing with their customer service department when I started experiencing issues with the KRZR K1m would be so unbelievably terrible. Honestly, there is no other word to describe it, but as terrible. Multiple promises were made by them when I purchased the phone. They offered me PowerVision Ultimate for $15/month vs. the standard $25/month, and on my wife's phone (she got the Red RAZR), they offered her $7.50/month for the PowerVision Ultimate. In addition, they offered me UNLIMITED text messaging for $8/month and my wife 500 free text messages per month. After I received the phones and checked my account and talked with customer service, they WOULD NOT HONOR what they promised me with the PowerVision. They are charging me $10 for the standard PowerVision and my wife $10. They did at least honor the Text messaging promise. 2. When I began experiencing the problems mentioned below with the phone, SPRINT PROMISED MULTIPLE TIMES to send me a replacement phone. I am STILL WAITING FOR IT and I have STILL NOT RECEIVED any replacement.
2. Extremely sluggish. The phone pauses and hesitates when moving through menus, scrolling down through CONTACTS that have been entered in the phone, viewing pictures taken with the phone. It can't keep up with simple requests. It freezes up for no reason as well. (My previous phone, the Sanyo 8200 had no problems with this). THIS IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE FOR A MODERN CELL PHONE.
3. When listening to Sprint TV music (e.g. Sirius Hits), if the phone is closed (to conserve battery by alllowing the display to turn off), either when using a headset or just listening with the speakerphone, it takes about 30 seconds before the music will play through the headset. Sometime it never plays through it, yet the phone still says SPRINT TV IS ON. Sometimes the external and internal displays stay on instead of turning off.
4. The user has to click far too many times to get to an often used function. e.g. in order to view my Text Messaging Inbox, I have to click 5 times to get to the first message, plus one more to open the first message in the inbox. Give me the option to have a direct link to open the inbox right up.
5. In Text Messaging, they don't allow the capability to set Insert Contact as the DEFAULT function when entering in the To: field. People rarely enter a phone number in this field, yet that's what the default is. Most people just enter a name from their contact list. This could be done by creating another option under Settings/Others/Text Input called Default Entry.
6. When emailing pictures taken with my old Sanyo 8200 from the Sprint Pictures website to my MOTOKRZR K1m, the image gets cropped a lot. It should not do this. The entire image should remain.
7. When taking a picture with the phone, if you don't let the phone process the picture, you could find that the picture was not saved in the phone. e.g. try taking a picture, then hit the back button. Then go to My Pictures / In Camera and you'll see that the picture you just took will not be there.
8. No way to add my own MP3's or AAC files to play with the music player. Sprint makes you buy their music or download their free songs (they offer about 10 per month from no-name bands).
9. Calls drop frequently. Hard to tell if this is because of the hardware or the Sprint service. I didn't have this problem with the Sanyo 8200, but then again, it was operating on the older Sprint network.
- 3 replies to this review
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You can buy a micro sd memory card and put songs on it from your computer - I bought a 1GB card and it holds around 65 songs plus pictures and videos - I only paid 16 dollars for it from a website - i think sprint wanted 50 or more.
Also, there is a way to lock the front music buttons. While the music player is on and the phone is shut, hold down the botton button on the left side of the phone - it will say "touch pad keys locked" or something like that.
I've had this phone for a couple months now and I hate it! I will never waste $400 on a phone again. Anyways, hope this helped a little bit. -
You can either
- put music directly on the SD card via a card reader attached to your PC (the fastest)
- transfer music to the phone via USB cable (requires Moto Phone Tools) by syncing with Windows Media Player or direct via MPT
- Transfer music using the web browser -
"8. No way to add my own MP3's or AAC files to play with the music player. Sprint makes you buy their music or download their free songs (they offer about 10 per month from no-name bands)."
Not true. I would suggest looking for applications (I believe there is one by Motorola but the name slips me now) because there are ones out there that allow you add MP3s to your phone.
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