So…

I was the lucky bastard that received a Motorola K1 KRZR today.

I’ve been playing with it for the last few hours, and have come to the following conclusions.

1. It’s a far better, as a phone than the Nokia 6682 that it is replacing. The sound quality is far better, not as staticy.
2. Motorola’s OS on the phone, still sucks. Options are buried, and difficult to find at times.
3. The 2MP Camera is….ok. Nothing special in any way.
4. The sound quality of the MP3 player is adequate at best. The Nokia is better. It seems to have a broader range of sound. The KRZR sounds flat in comparison. Yes, I used the same headphones.
5. The placing of the headphone / power jack is retarded. I’m used to Nokia and Samsung, when the charger plugs into the bottom of the phone, not the side. This position makes it difficult to talk while charging the phone. It’s also difficult if not impossible to have the phone in a case while using the mp3 player, because the headphone adaptor sticks out nearly half an inch. I almost wonder if this was a deliberate design decision that was made as early as the original V3, with the intention of selling more A2DP Stereo Bluetooth Headsets, at $150 a pop.
6. Ubuntu/Gnome makes some interesting assumptions. It assumes that the phone is an iPod, and mounts the memory card at /media/ipod
7. The USB transfer is fucked. Every file that I attempted to transfer over USB, to the phone, in Linux, was corrupted. Plugging the memory card into a USB Card reader/writer solved the problem, but is a pain in the ass. I’m blaming Ubuntu, for thinking it is an iPod for this. Will research more thoroughly.
8. I’m glad I already carry a cloth for cleaning my glasses. This thing is a god damn finger print magnet. Whoever decided to put a high gloss glass front on this thing, needs to be shot.
9. Motorola Mobile Phone Tools, is a pain in the ass. Just like Windows Update, it had update, on top of update before it worked with this phone. All told, almost 200 megs were downloaded, just to transfer my address book from the Nokia.
10. Linux phone management software, so far has proven to be pretty shoddy. I will google this a bit more over the next few days to see if I can get a way to synch this thing with Evolution. I’ll try Bluetooth tools, as well as USB.

All in all, I am happy with the phone, even though it seems like the tone of this post has been pretty negative so far. Being that I work in the industry, I tend to have a pretty jaded view of things, and nothing really tends to get me all that excited anymore.

I also have what seems to be a rare point of view within the industry as well, in that I ultimately judge my hardware based on it’s primary function, which is making, and taking phone calls. All other features are secondary for me. In this area, so far I am exceptionally happy with the device.