Motorola RAZR Z8
Henrietta Wendt of Motorola also presented at MoMo last Monday. Up until then, I had wondered about Motorola’s motivation for creating the Symbian/UIQ based Z8 and how it would differentiate itself from the current crop of Sony Ericsson and Nokia Symbian-based devices.
The Z8 will…
- Allow Motorola to receive greater margins than for lower end devices
- Be the first UIQ phone with HSDPA
- Be the first UIQ phone configured to NOT use a pen. Design for single handed use.
- Provide high definition video at up to 30fps
- Provide an online store where users can download additional media content
- Encourage side loading/syncing of media via a PC-based application
I used a pre-production version of this device briefly two months ago and these features didn’t necessarily stand out. Let’s hope Motorola markets these differences in a way the user understands.
Encouraging side-loading is a brave thing to do when some network operators still insist on disabling some phone features to cause users to use the more expensive/inconvenient route to obtain/share media.
Incidentally, previously at MEX I briefly spoke to Matthew Menz, Head of Interaction Design at Motorola, about the challenges of adapting the UIQ UI to create something different. He indicated that there was only so much they could do without breaking the UI for 3rd party developers.
Unintentionally or erroneously, when talking about application support, Henrietta Wendt also mentioned a ‘family of phones’. So, we may even see a series of Motorola UIQ phones.
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