Motorola RIZR Z3 review: Sliding Moto

A RAZR keypad

The keypad of RIZR is very much the same as in previous models of Motorola, and the first model with such keypad design is the famous RAZR V3. It is very nicely elaborated and one can have perfect control. The numeric part of the keypad is visible only when the slider is fully slid as it is on the bottom panel. The control part of it is on the upper, top panel and thus can be operated without the phone even being slid out. The two soft keys on top can be configured according to the user's will. Regrettably in every Motorola model, the Browser key is not configurable. A new thing here is the C back button which is similar to the Sony-Ericsson models, which have such back button. Here it serves as a correction button too. The backlighting of the keypad is in deep blue and is evenly illuminated.

Keypad • Backlighting

256K perfectly visible colors

Motorola's engineers truly deserve compliments here as their new display remains perfectly visible in direct sunlight and can be readable in almost any situation. This is admirable as most modern phone suffer this drawback. The backlighting of the display is great too. Now as for the visualization features of the display, it is capable of 176 x 220 pixels resolution with 256K colors which seems quite enough for the functions this mobile is packed with.

RIZR display

As we used the RIZR as a work phone, we could test the quality of sound and calls and it did great. There were no noises and the signal reception was flawless.

The saga continues

The graphic user interface implemented in Z3 RIZR model sure looks a lot like RAZR V3's interface and the previous KRZR and SLVR L7 models. Motorola have not made many changes so we won't spend too much time on this section. We are only going to accent on the differences. One such is the ability to switch between categories with the "•" and "#" keys in the Calls log. This option was only available in other menus but not for the Calls log in previous models. Now, you can switch between Received, Dialed and Missed calls with the help of the hash and asterisk keys.

Stand-by look of Motorola RIZR Z3 with different styles

Other minor changes in the interface are the different themes and animations in the menu. Our team is fully confident that the new themes preinstalled in Motorola Z3 RIZR are much better than those in previous Moto models. The menu is fast enough for the most wanting users. Motorola have really done their job well with this phone.

The main menu in different themes

Motorola RIZR Z3 has an option to ask you whether you want it to be switched on in Airplane mode right away or use its GSM phone features. This comes quite handy and it is a must-have in the nowadays phone models.

Switching Airplane mode on Power up • Phone in airplane mode

1000 standard entries

The phonebook of Motorola RIZR is a standard Motorola one and it can fit up to 1000 entries. Every contact can be assigned multiple phone numbers, email addresses, home and work addresses, a ringtone and a picture to show when he or she's calling you. The search method used in this model is the one in their latest phones, meaning - writing the first letters of the desired contact. In the RAZR model this operation was performed by selecting the first letter only and there was no option in the first software versions to search with more than one letters.

Phonebook views: with picture and list view • View of the phonebook according to the storage

The log - use * and #

As we already said, the main addition in Motorola RIZR is the ability to use the hash and asterisk keys to browse through sub-categories. These categories all contain up to 10 latest calls, doesn't matter if we speak of dialed, missed or received calls. The log can show you the time and date when this event has taken place but cannot show you the amount of times you've for example dialed the same person.

Dexter is calling • we are calling him right back • dialing a number