Motorola RIZR Z8

The Motorola RIZR Z8, termed the ‘multimedia monster’ by Ed Zander (CEO of Motorola), is one of this year's stand out handsets. The Z8 is an intriguing mix of high style and high tech, marrying good, though not top end, specifications with a stand-out design.

Running on UIQ 3.1 on top of Symbian 9.2, it has a state of the art smartphone software platform and is the first ever non-touchscreen UIQ phone. However, this is only part of its appeal, since in its positioning and marketing the Z8 moves away from the traditional smartphone offering and instead attempts to create a compelling, consumer focused, multimedia experience, led by stellar video features.The Z8 is the first Symbian OS phone from Motorola since the A1010 (released as the M1000 in Japan), which was announced at 3GSM in 2005. This is a significant gap and during most of 2005 and 2006 the majority of people assumed Motorola had abandoned Symbian. The news of the Z8 at 3GSM in 2007 was a surprise to many. It also represented something of a shift in strategy for Motorola. Previous Motorola UIQ phones has been aimed at small market niches for specific operators (the A920, A925 and A1000 were only widely available on the 3 network). Their pen-based input and large size limited the addressable market.

The Z8, by contrast, while still a high end phone, is aimed at a much larger market. It is a style conscious, video-focussed multimedia phone (you’ll not hear the word smartphone mentioned in the marketing). With its smaller size and one-handed usage model, it is much more attractive to the general consumer. The Z8 represents a renewed effort by Motorola to enter the lucrative high end European market and it is likely the first in a family of products. As such, strategically, it is a very important product for Motorola. In this multi-part review we’ll take an in-depth look at this unique Symbian OS-based phone.

The first thing you notice about the Z8 is its distinctive design. Its kick-slider form factor (which gives the Z8 its 'banana' nick name), which sees the phone bend as you open the slide, is unique. Motorola says that this is intended to help shape the phone to your face and it is true that it does this, but, honestly, I think it is just as much about having an innovative design that stands out.

The first few times you see the opening action, it looks like the phone has broken, and it certainly attracts a lot of attention. I thought it might prove to be a bit fragile, but the mechanism seems well built and it should stand up to day to day use.

The all black casing with yellow coloured highlights is also effective. The bright yellow colour may not appeal to all, but I imagine there’ll be a number of colour variants available before too long (a white version has already been seen in various presentations). The casing is made of hard, high quality plastic based materials. There is a rubbery, black material on the sides and back with some shiny, metallic silver plastic highlights surrounding the 2 megapixel camera and accompanying LED flash. One side of the surround clips off to reveal the SIM card slot; the Z8 is unusual in that you can switch SIM cards without removing the phone's battery (although a reboot is still needed if you switch SIM cards).

On the front, there’s a glossy flat face surrounding the main screen with a small VGA camera for video calling on the upper left. As with many other style conscious phones, the Z8 will need intermittent cleaning to keep it looking at its best because both the front face and the camera surround tend to attract fingerprints.

The 2.2 inch, QVGA, 16 million colour screen is the hardware highlight of the Z8. It provides bright and vibrant pictures with much greater depth and saturation than many other mobile device screens. Outside, the available viewing angle is much reduced, but is easily viewable in all but the very brightest conditions.