Motorola K3 Review

 

Motorola launched the fashion of coping their own products,as examples we have the Motorola Z3 and the Z6 which despite having different software they have exactly the same case.

Motorola K3 makes no difference and is almost the same as Motorola K1 KRZR.The new device comes in two different colors : Dark Pearl Grey and Stone Grey.

The surface of the handset is made of chrome plated with blue steel.The bottom part is made of plastic and it's the place where the antenna sits.The phone has the dimensions of 103x42x16 mm and weights just 105 grams.

The device is pretty small and can be carried with ease in your pocket or bag.This phone has a wide audience and can be easily suited to a businessman or a teenager.

 

The retail package contains : Handset, battery, Charger, wired stereo-headset,USB data cable, cd with Mobile Phone Tools,memory card and user guide.


The external display of the Motorola K3 can show up to 65 000 colors and has a resolution of 120x160 pixels usesing TFT technology. When it's in standby mode it displays the clock.The screen has a good quality and even outdoors the screen is really good.The external display has a similar resolution to the one found in Nokia devices, but unlike them you can't read a message on the external display just see the caller id and change profiles.

The internal display has a resolution of 240x320 pixels and can show up to 262 000 colors.The quality of the display is really good it delivers a crisp picture and all details appear very sharp.The screen can show up to 6 text and 3 services lines.Thanks to the TFT technology the information displayed on the screen can be easily read in direct sun light.

On the left side we can see the volume button and just beneath it the Smart key which can be assign to the music player or camera ..etc. While browsing through the phone menu this key can be used as "OK" button.On the right side we can see the Voice Command key,and the MiniUSB slot for plugging in charger or headset.On the top of the phone near the display is housed the 2 Megapixels camera. Beneath the internal display we can see the VGA-camera used for videoconferencing.

The mechanism that opens the K3 works smoothly and it's real easy to open the phone single-handed.When it's open the K3 measures 17.5 cm.After you open the K3 you'll see a RAZR style keypad,which is an exact copy of the keypad found in the RAZR V3x.The buttons have good feedback and doesn't feel flat.The keypad is lit in blue. Large rubberized pad placed beneath the keyboard is meant for preventing the display from touching the keypad.

The K3 has a 700 mAh Li-Ion battery, the manufacturer claims the KRZR manages to provide talk and stand-by times of up to 6 and 300 hours on a single full charge. It takes the handset 2 hours to charge from empty to full

The phone has 21 MB of internal memory but this number can be expanded with the help of a memory card. An executable Java file is restricted to 1 MB in size.

 

Now let's talk a little about the menu:

To access the main menu you have to press the "Ok" button.The menu has a traditional format of 12 icons.In standby mode you can access different application with the help of the navigation key. The device supports iTap-powered predictive text input. While typing, the screen displays submitted words, but hides symbols assigned to the keys. The device memorizes the variants of the words you picked and after that offers them automatically.

The phonebook is pretty standard ,it can store 1000 names and each entry has different fields like : First Name and Last Name,Nickname, phone number..etc.A nice thing about the phonebook is that when you enter a new contact the phone offers you a field at a time and offers step by step data.For each contact you can enter up to 7 numbers. You can retrieve contacts from other phones, which is a great option,another great thing about the new K3 is the fact that when you synchronize the phone with MS Outlook everything works smoothly.
The default browser is Opera 8 which is a great browser ,it supports cookies has font settings it's easy to configure and has a lot of option to choose from.

The K3 has a new voice recognition system which doesn't require voice tags,just say the contact name and the application will call.Both the phone memory and SIM memory can be used. The phone has a POP3/IMAP4 e-mail client which allows watching the headers of the incoming mail and downloading their contents as well. You can set up scheduled mail check, so that the K3 would update the mail box at regular intervals, ranging from 15 to 24 hours , you can download attachments on you phone but only files that the phone recognizes which is a shame because received files can be transferred to PC. The phone supports Java MIDP 2.0 and all applications that are found in the phone are based on this technology.As for the games the phone has only Sudoku and Football pre-installed but you can always install you're favorite games.

Another category from the menu is "Tools" , here you can find a lot of office application like : Calculator , Alarm Clock , Voice recorder, Organizer ..etc.Here everything is standard like any other phone. so there's no point in discussing this part of the menu.The player found in the Z3 is pretty much the same as other Motorola phones ,a great thing about the player is that it can work in the background while you send a message or view a picture.You can creat your own playlist Flipping the handset closed you will see that the track list is shown on the outer display and is very manageable with the help of the side-mounted keys and the Smart-button, which is handy. The phone also supports MP3, as well as AAC and AAC+ .

In the "Settings" section you'll find all the phone settings including the color schemes.In the Security settings you can protect some functions like phonebook, messages with a password, or some other phone's sections.

 

The Bluetooth version is 1.2 and all profiles are supported including A2DP which allows pairing up a stereo headset with it.The transfer speed is around 25-30 Kb/s.
In the package you'll find a version of Mobile Phone Tools version 4.x included,with the help of this program you can synchronize the phone with your PC, synchronization with MS Outlook , copy photos, tunes, drawing up messages on the PC

Camera.

The K3 has an integrated 2 Megapixel CMOS camera.The available resolutions are : Large (1600x1200), Medium (1280x1024), Small (480x640), X-Small (240x320). The phone has settings which allow you to turn off the shutter sound, select a lighting type ..etc.The quality of the photos is great but only if the lighting condition are good if not the picture will have a lot of noise.

The resolution for the video is 176x144 pixels and the duration of the clip is unlimited the only limit is the amount of free memory available.There are 3 settings for the video quality : good, better and the best . Video quality is average and all clips are recorded at 15 frames per second.

Here you can view a photo take with the Motorola K3:

(click on a image to enlarge)

Conclusions


The K3 is a great 3G-enabled device with HSDPA support,the reception quality is good .The design is nothing spectacular but it's ok and the K3 makes use of good.If you want to use the K3 as a music device you should search for another phone because this one won't satisfy your requirements.The device will appear in late April at a price of around 450 USD.All in all we think that the K3 is worth it's money.