Moto Smartphones Forums

I'm quite satisfied by this phone, but I think that here are some thing that Motorola has to change to make this phone even better. Since it can be considered a new kind of phone, it's normal that it has some room for improvements.
Software compatibility apart (new software platform always suffers from this), let's try to suggest some improvements.

I've been playing with it from 3 days and i can say:

1-The interface of the camera is really bad, it was really more nice on the Z3. Unintuitive and ugly.

2-Mp3s have to be put in the music folder, it doesn't read them if they are in sub-folders, like it does with photos The Z3 does it, so this phone must do it ;-)

3-Browsing photos from the multimedia gallery is really really slow. And i find strange that it starts to load the thumbnails from the bottom of the list...

4-I think that such an expensive phone must have a taskmanager that looks and works like a tastkmanager.

Please write what you feel must be addressed for this very cool phone. I think Motorola is really going to listen to users opinion with this phone.

A good thread started Niel...

If all the viewers start listing thier grievences, maybe the list will get big enough to throw at Moto.

Phone Design:
The keypad:
It is far to easy to press the wrong key.....the construction of the keypad, especially the outside one, does not have enough destinction between the actual keys. The flatness of the front panel especially, allows an overlap from one key to another.

Operating System:
1. The back/delete key does not have enough functions.....
It should be used more as a back key for returning to previous areas etc.
Also as a delete key for say texts, emails, pictures, contacts etc.

2. The absolutely frustrating short period before the backlight goes out and the keylock comes on.
There should be a setting to...
One: The option to turn this off
Two: The option to set the time for backlight/keylock function.

3. The time it takes to show the screen when opening needs to be a lot quicker.

4. System crashes...
I have experienced to many of these for various reasons....The battery has been in and out
The most recent being on the internet. Just trawling around and selected to look at .jpg file....the phone started to download, opened the picture viewer, it stayed blank and the phone froze.

Maybe we should start a thread on system crashes and just put the reason your phone crashed/froze.

 :)

I agree that the phone crashes too much, expecially when a remote connection is active. A thread with the crashes it's a good idea, but personally i think it can be relly useful after the first firmware update because usually when a product gets to stores they already know what the problems are and already have their bugfixes to do.

Some other things I would like to see:

1-An option to activate/deactivate USB charging when connected to the computer.

2-When listening a song (at least using the S9 headphones), when backlight goes on/off the song skips, and this isn't good.

3-Battery life seems to low for me. Ok, i'm playing a lot with the new toy, but i'm using it like i would like to use it, and a complete charge per day seems to much for me.

Don't want to flood my own thread...please post your "wish list" for motorola.

The MP3 playback from the included media player is rubbish. I get corrupt file errors on lots of my mp3s. I downloaded a trial of Lonely Cat Jukebox which has absolutely no problems playing back anything I've thrown at it. However, the benefits of using the S9 headphones are negated because I can't use the back and forward buttons etc. then

Also noticed the screen turning off causes music to cut out briefly. Even on wired headphones!

Web browser needs an exit option so I can close it. It also needs to remember that I want fit to screen turned on by default.

An option to close any program would be really useful, but when swiss manager that supports the z8 comes out you can close the running programs.

Good idea for a thread.  It has to be said that I do really like the phone overall.  It gives such a good combination of fucntionality and design.  There are however things that could be improved, hopefully with a firmware upgrade.

1. It would be nice to have some way of having shortcuts for applications/functions.  At the moment it can take quite a few key presses to access applications or change a setting.  On my old RAZR, each number key could be assigned a function that would be activated by pressing the menu button and then pressing the required number.  One example where this was useful was powering bluetooth on and off - I had one number key set to power it on and another to power it off.

2. I definitely agree about the media player.  For a start it should be able to play all MP3s.  I can't see how they could possibly think that it is acceptable to only have it work reliably with bitrates of 128kbps and less.  I've got an 8 year old MP3 player that could cope with high bitrate files with no problem (and it used a software decoder as opposed to decoding in hardware.)
I'm also not all the impressed with the UI of the media player.  It just doesn't seem all that intuitive and feels like it's not really a finished product.  It's something that would be acceptable if it was just a little bonus added to a less media-orientated phone but I'd really expect something better for a so called 'media monster'.

I'm sure there's other things but that's all I can think of at the moment

Since I can finally use the phone, even if there are some issues, i can continue to suggest some changes tha should be made.

1-Backligh should not turn off after some time when a call arrives, because otherwise it is impossible to see who is calling if you don't have the phone at reach in that moment.

2-Already said in this topic, but image and music management is too slow. the "media" part of the phone is just bad. too slow for the potential of this phone. It takes ages to load photos in folders.

3-Multitasking is sometimes more on the paper that in reality. It is impossible to listen to music and surf in internet without getting crazy, music jumps and skips a lot. This really is a bad bad thing.**I have tried with wired hearphones and it works fine, so it is an issue when using the bluetooth S9, but since they are bundled with the phone and not just an option i think that this needs to be fixed, or at least improved.**

4-Mybe there is a way but I havent found it, but it would be nice to be able to change the position of icons in the Applications page (and even subfolders as well).

Major one for me!

Security, why oh why does a phone have no security? Eg switch phone on, asks for sim pin, i cancel, i can get access to anything on phone apart from content on sim!
To me this is a big no no.

Also no option to delete past call historys eg names sms etc unless you do a reset.

Also the PC sync software, i got vista, but tried it on XP it serves no use compared to the likes of nokia suite.
For example i liked to use the nokia suite to create a text message while phone is connected to pc.
Maybe its be been picky but i think its some small things that make or break a phone.

The PIN security issue is a problem, yes. Motorola need to do something about this. Hopefully it will be addressed in a firmware update.

You can delete call history etc. by going to the relevent entry then pressing options and delete.

PC Suite for Windows Vista will be released (hopefully soon). It is not as capable as Nokia's PC Suite because UIQ doesn't offer the same PC connectivity options as S60 does. This is the major difference. It's not Motorola's fault directly.

I mean deleting the contact list which appears when you create a message, i originally posted this issue ages ago.

I too brought this subject up some time ago and I think the whole security system of the phone is poor, including the logging on pin number issue.

UIQ should address these problems and get them fixed...surely not a hard piece of software writing to fix such problems.  Then issue a software update, not to be confused with firmware update.

my 2p:

Crashes/Resets - recently it seems to be turning itself off. This is much more annoying when you dont actually notice for hours, but still not ideal when it does it front of you

PROGRAM CLOSED! assume this is something to do with multitasking - i thought this phone had one of the most powerful hardware/memory setups out there! maybe it should act like it, nothing more annoying that recieving a text then being told you cant read it unless you reboot

BATTERY LIFE - this does seem to improve over time, but still isnt what i think it should be, especially when my phone spends up to 95% of the day untouched and then runs out in two days. I have backlight set to instant off, dont run bluetooth, or anything else that i can is using up battery

PC Sync - i think its piss poor that it didnt work on vista from day one - there is absolutely NO excuse for this whatsover, vista testing has been out a year and was out plenty of time before this phone. IT should  have been address from day one, yet ive had this phone 2-3 months now and still nothing!

it does feel like a beta, there seems to be too many problems for a mass marketed phone - i dont want to take it back but i dont want it if they dont pull their fingers out soon and update it. Like other people have said, its not a cheap phone, yet it has next to no support or info out for it

I've made a discovery today about the screen-on delay when opening the slider.

If you set the open/close slider sound Silent in the profile you are using it takes very less time to the screen to turn on. With default sound it is about 2.5 seconds (more or less), and without sound it takes at least half the time.

Just wanted to share.

That's a very interesting find... however I can't reproduce that delay on my phone.

I've made 2 videos, taken from my pocket pc, and they are really ugly, but show the difference between no-sound and sounded opening.
The difference is not enormous, but it exists.

 It seems to me that the more time it stays closed, the more time it takes to turn on, and the difference in this case without sound is close to 0, but with sound it gets bigger. But even stranger it isn't always like this. Some times is more than others. Maybe that more background programs running casuses a longer time to turn on?

When i find the time to upload the files somewhere i will post the links.

Somebody wrote somewhere that it takes too much time to turn on, I mean from power-off state to power-on, but i think that it is not so slow, and it definetly is faster than a N73 for example.

The new that Motorola has bought half of UIQ is a good one, because it means that Motorola has decided that UIQ is the way to go for their next smartphones, and they want to partecipate in the development of this platform more then before, and i think that 2 (SE+Moto) can fight better the 1 (nokia) in the smartphone battle.

If this means that the Z8 will not become a "forgotten" phone, but in the truth becomes the base phone (being the cheaper in the Z line in the future so probably the more selled) let's really hope that they decide to fix all the issues NOW and, in my opinion more important, release a faster-better-complete mediagallery/mediaplayer application, that is the real bad part of this phone.
I't normal that smartphones have issues and can be improved, but it seems to me that Motorola is going a little too slow in fixing this, at least looking at the pace of Nokia.

I have to say that with SwissManager Pro and Linkboy (both from Cellphone soft) i have found the best equilibrium and stability in everything i do with the phone. I know that spending money is 3rd party software is part of the smartphone business, but it should be to ADD functions, not get back BASICS functionality.