Motorola Krave ZN4

One thing no one disputes: The Motorola Krave ZN4 looks cool. Experts and owners alike rave about its unique form factor: a transparent, interactive front panel that acts as a touch screen when the flip is closed and, when opened, gives the illusion of a floating earpiece in the shape of the Motorola symbol. Motorola packed the Krave with a virtual buffet of features: V Cast Mobile TV, V Cast Music with Rhapsody, two touch screens with haptic (vibration) feedback, VZ Navigator (GPS), HTML browser, visual voice mail and a spacious virtual QWERTY keyboard.

Experts seem genuinely puzzled by the Krave, indicating that they would expect a phone that was the recipient of such detailed design attention to have been more thoughtfully engineered. In the end, it seems that the Motorola Krave ZN4's best features are also its downfalls. When the flip is closed, the clear cover acts as a second touch screen, but that means that applications can be accidentally triggered when the phone is not in use. Motorola includes a switch to disable the touch screen, but as PhoneScoop.com's Stewart Wolpin and Eric Zeman point out, it's easier to simply flip open the phone than it is to constantly toggle the lock switch, especially because most of the controls can only be operated on the internal display anyway.

The 2.8-inch internal display is crisp and bright, but critics are unhappy with the inconvenient menu layout, which requires clicking through several screens to uncover the full range of options. A frequent owner complaint is that the phone often freezes while navigating through menus, something that also happened during PhoneScoop's evaluation. The virtual QWERTY keyboard is described as a nice touch, but the Krave's flip top blocks the left hand when holding the phone horizontally (as is necessary to use the QWERTY keyboard) and makes it really awkward to text. Call quality is described as excellent, as is battery life, which tests at a whopping six hours of talk time. On the other hand, the web browser is universally scorned -- reviewers say its bizarre pointer is difficult to maneuver and makes it nearly impossible to select and click links.