Review notes for an unbranded Motorola ZN5 camera phone

Differences between branded and unbranded ZN5

From other reviews online, particularly tnkgrl’s, there are a key differences with the T-mobile branded edition of the phone.

• On the unbranded phone, the phone is fully operable without a SIM card (except for calls, of course). The T-mobile software reportedly requires a SIM card to be operable access wifi. Without a SIM card, the unbranded ZN5 is comparable to an iPod Touch with a camera.

• On the unbranded phone, wifi access is unrestricted. On the T-mobile software, wifi is reportedly restricted to the web browsing and the Kodak Gallery software.

• On the unbranded phone, network access for Java programs is not crippled. On the T-mobile software, there is reportedly no network access for downloaded Java programs.

• On the unbranded phone, one or more POP or IMAP email accounts can be setup with any provider. On the branded phone, options are reportedly limited to select e-mail services, including AOL, Comcast, CompuServe, EarthLink, Gmail, HotPOP, Juno, Mac, NetZero, SBC Yahoo, Verizon, and Yahoo Mail ( reference )

• On the unbranded phone, you an use the e-mail client to send photos (and videos and voice notes). On the T-mobile software, reportedly you can’t use the e-mail program to send photos.

• On the unbranded phone, the APN settings can be easily changed. Reportedly on the T-mobile software, the APN settings cannot be changed.

• Finally, tnkgrl reported that the T-mobile software did not do multi-tasking except for music. The unbranded phone does allow some kinds of multi-tasking. Any Java program can be set to run in the background while another task is performed. Attempting to open the application will instantly restore it. You can also do things like read your e-mail, follow a link to a website, and then close the browser and return back to your e-mail.

• If you buy an unbranded ZN5 and start as a T-mobile customer, the $35 activation fee is waived, and you can get on a month to month to plan, since it’s the subsidization of the phone that they usually trade for a 1 or 2 year contract. I called T-mobile to confirm this myself. If you acquire your own phone, it’s currently required to travel to a physical T-Mobile location to have the phone activated with a SIM card.

What works on the phone

• Yes, the unbranded ZN5 works without a data plan. It’s simple to set up a networking profile called “Wifi only”, which will only try to use the wifi connection. The ZN5 prompts you every time an application connects to the network, so it would be very difficult to accidentally connect to T-Mobile’s pay-to-play network.

• The unsigned Opera Mini java application installed easily and offers a great user experience for a web browser on a small screen. However, it’s not clear how to register Opera Mini to also handle downloads and uploads, as I explain more below.

• YouTube for mobile videos play on the phone, and load quickly and stream well over wifi. There is a full screen mode and sound comes out through the speaker phone. YouTube videos are clear and stream well on the ZN5. Clicking on a YouTube video in Opera Mini will launch the built-in Symphony browser to play the video, and then return you back to Opera Mini when the video is done. In cases like this, it’s simpler to use th built-in web browser, which is also decent. Symphony is based on WebKit, the same browser technology that the iPhone and iPod Touch use on the backend. Several other mobile sites were successfully tested instead, including those for eBay, Flickr, delicious.com, Hiveminder, and Google Calendar. And thankfully, even the bicycle comics at Yehuda Moon are readily viewable in Opera Mini 4.2

• As other reviewers have said, the camera does take quite good photos. You can see some samples on Flickr and other ZN5 reviews.

• Google Maps for Mobile installs. Despite the lack of GPS in the phone, Google Maps automatically centered the map on the town I was in. Streetview works. Once you search for and find a business, it offers a link to start a call to the business.

• the Mobile Gmail client installs and runs OK.

• the Nimbuzz chat client installs and runs OK. It connects with Yahoo, Facebooke, Google Talk, AIM, MySpace, ICQ, Gadu-Gadu, Jabber, Skype and more.

• For geeks, the MidpSSH client installs fine, and was successfully tested.

• Uploading to Flickr can done by e-mailing photos to Flickr.

• Contacts can be directly imported from another bluetooth phone, using Bluetooth.

• The phones memory and USB card are both recognized as USB hard drives with Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 (after standard maintenance updates are applied)

What doesn’t work yet

• scanr did not install, but can be used by e-mail. It may have the same “root certificate” issue that the signed version of Opera Mini does.

• gcalsync and primoSync, both tools for Google Calendar sync’ing, failed to install. In theory, http://www.kontact.org/kitchensync/index.php can be used to sync the phone with Google Calendar, using a Ubuntu computer in the middle. All the pieces are there for it to work, but I was not able to make it work successfully on my initial tries.

Annoyances

• panning and zooming photos is not available in the media browser integrated with the camera features, you have to go through the “File Manager”

• Text templates are not offered for use with e-mails, but they are available for MMS messages, which can be sent to e-mail addresses.

• Sometimes I have had difficulty connecting to open wifi networks with strong signal strength, while other time this works automatically.

• Once the phone actually crashed, while I was deleting a photo. The screen froze in a garbled state, and the phone needed to be rebooted to recover.

Conclusion

It’s too soon to tell if the new distractions the phone provides will outweigh potential productivity benefits it could bring. Overall I’m satisfied with the quality and features it provides. It’s still a relatively new phone at this point, and I expect solutions will appear to address the few weaknesses and annoyances I’ve found with the software so far.

Updated March 7th, 2008: The phone now works as a USB hard drive in Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10