Moto Smartphones Forums

I have just taken delivery of a shiny new Z8 on O2. My 1st impression is a very stylish phone. Having played with it for a couple of days now, I just can't make my mind up whether to keep it or return it to O2. I have owned Motorola's in the past and been very happy with them. It seems with this model they are going backwards in terms of usability. What has happened to short cuts single or double key presses? Having to troll through menu's is a pain. The manual supplied is next to useless. Putting music on the phone is odd to say the least. Place everything in the Audio/Music folder and let the phone sort it out? What's going on with the battery? I've turned off the screen-saver, 3G, and usually use one program at a time. Yet still the phone's battery drops within a day. Is there a battery meter like other Moto's? Are there any "Tips & Tricks" to using this phone available yet?  I love the large screen and the look & feel of the phone. But.....What to do?

To keep or not to keep.
This is a tough one....only you can solve.

Undoubtedly this phone is of superior quality, both in build and design.  The weight feels just perfect in your hand and the curved slider, well, isn't that how sliders should always have been?

The thing that lets the phone down, and it is echoed in all the forums all over the web, is the UI.  It's cluncky and prone to freezing and crashes at totally random times.

What I can't understand is how Motorola spent so much time larging this phone up in the advertising campaigns and then releasing it with a UI that has so many user bugs.

Surely they shouldn't release a phone just to have to update the firmware almost immediately just to get it to operate correctly. 

In fact there are huge amounts of people out there that buy these phones and don't ever come onto forum sites to search for firmware etc.  They just think thats how the phone works, get p*ssed off with it, tell everyone it's not a good phone and change it for something else.
Just like you are thinking of doing.

Motorola have let themselves down here and if they don't act quickly the word will spread around and the Z8 will turn into a no no phone.

As a foot note....mine is in being repaired at the moment!!!!!!!

Just some thoughts... ::)

It's not so much the UI that's to blame. I like the UIQ interface. The problem lies with some of the fundamental programs that run on top of it. Media player etc.

Yes the battery life does seem completely hit and miss too. I don't think it will ever be the longest lasting phone, but sometimes with the same charge doing the same thing seems to take completely different amounts of life out of it.

Well that's it. Decision made. The Z8 is on its way back to o2. Loved the look and the kick slider design but I'm afraid ease of use, for me anyway, was just to difficult to live with.

I am now on my 2nd Z8 and this one freezes up at the most innopportune moments. So, out comes the battery and the SIM card and then it works again. It would seem it needs to go for repair now but I think I shall revert to my old Motorola RAZR V3im which never gave me any trouble. Great phone but needed more research for sending to the general market. It would also be nice to find a case that fits it. I do have a glove but Motorola recommend not using it because of the slider.

On the edge of returning mine. 
You take for granted voice dialling, when you are not allowed to use a phone directly while driving, voice dialling is essential.
FULL SCREEN VIDEO, the phone is promoted as being the bees knees for video, ONLY when using MOBICLIP. Actimagine have withdrawn the Mobiclip Creator programme apart from commercial use. SO it looks like there is nothing else than The Borne Identity to view full screen on the Z8. Cant copy the Bourne Identity to another larger card, so if you want the Film dont fill up the card. DRM, copyright and all that C**P.
I think mine will go back.

I don't understand what you mean about the full screen video. you just need to put a video with the right resolution (320*240). I use the DIVX player as main video player, converting videoclips with the divx converter, that is in the main divx package. You can find the mobile divx player if you look a bit on the divx site or stage 6.
If the video is a a lower resolution with  the default media player seems tha it is not possible to watch it fullscreen, that is bad. I think that using a tool to "upscale" it may do the trick, but an option to fullscreen a "normal" clip would be good.

About the voice dialling, never ever used it in any phone, so not a problem for me. I mean that i never looked for it so tha fact that it was supposed to be there and it's not doesn't bother me.

I'm slowly inching towards getting rid of it too...

- No word from Moto about firmware updates (only unofficial posts from Stuart here)

- my phone crashed twice today, the 2nd time before it crashed I really thought it was broken as it wouldn't charge and the Power/endcall key didn't work. Then it froze, only removing the battery and placing it back in would do anything

- media player + S9 errors as I reported already (doesn't just happen when making phonecalls, though I haven't noticed any other pattern yet that triggers this.)  I find myself rebooting my phone maybe once a day when I listen to music a lot, because apparently my memory card isn't inserted when I want to use the S9

- iTap not learning words

- interface requiring a lot of navigating through menus to accomplish common tasks (marking, deleting, replying, calling someone who sent you an SMS - what happened to the ol' pressing the Call key when viewing an SMS to call that person right away? etc)


I'm starting to think I shoulda got a Z6, kept my v3x, or done more research! I was willing to stick with the Z8 until the firmware update, but.. WHEN??? I'm getting annoyed at the bugs, and I don't know if I can stand them much longer.

On the plus side, as a phone it does VERY well. Thanks to CrystalTalk I find myself never needing a headset for making phonecalls, unlike every other phone I've owned before in London.

Oh yeah it looks good too.


Patrixl

I think that the Z8 wasn't ready when it was released, and since it is the first symbian phone from them after a lot of time it was predicatble that some problem could be in the software.

Surely they should had this firmware ready at least a couple of months ago, or at least before the symbian show in london.
I think that it is taking a lot of time since all of this is a Sendo project, so a Motorola UK project, and maybe thay have less resources than the mother Motorola.
They are working on the firmware and it is near to be released, but as always its a "when it's ready" situation.

Here in Italy this phone isn't very famous, i never saw it in any shop (i got it from a online store), the only moto phone that you hear talking about is the V8, and a lot of people asks me if it woth the money and if i suggest it, and I alwasy say that it is a good phone, just needs an update.
So I would keep suggesting to anybody around here to wait for the new software, try it out a bit, and then if your problem are gone good, you have a "new" phone, otherwise you have one more reason to give it back.

Just a little bit of patience.

Well, I've given up. Three months and three different Z8s. I'm now swapping it for the Nokia N95 8GB.
I'll miss it, in a way.  Those reboots as the phone starts to ring. That slightly quirky UI. That RING RING when you've set it to another alarm tone.
I really wanted it to work well, but I can only wait so long  :-\
Actually, it's been away at the Vodafone repair shop so long now, I've kind of forgotten what it looks like.