The Z10 goes official

[slitchfield]

Reports are sneaking out of CES (in the USA) that Motorola just officially announced the Z10, their upgrade to the original UIQ 3-powered Z8. The 'banana' form factor is still there, as we reported from the Z10 prototypes at the Smartphone Show, and the Z10 will have the video editing suite demo-ed at the show, but there's also a 3.2 megapixel stills camera, which brings the device up to date, if not exactly cutting edge. More on this later.

Read on in the full article.

[malerocks]

Good specs, but a bit late as compared to Nokia phones... What I really liked was the 'future proof' concept, where they say that the handset can support cards upto 32GB.

Also, I wish Moto would bring some change in the designs of their phones - the buttons and dpad of all their phones are pretty similar.

[krisse]

The "future proof" concept is probably just pure spin. I believe they're simply referring to the very high maximum capacity of the SDHC standard rather than anything special about the hardware itself.

The N800 internet tablet was originally only officially useable with 4 gigabyte SD cards, then Nokia upgraded the firmware and it was officially useable with 16gb SDHC cards, and now some people have managed to use 32gb SDHC cards with it. In other words, it seems SDHC has no problem going up to 32gb (or even higher), even if the original specifications had a much lower maximum capacity.

Having said all this, it's great to see another Motorola Symbian being officially confirmed, it will be very healthy for the OS and stop it being labelled as some kind of Nokia-only platform. It's also good that this is a mainstream-looking device instead of anything nerdy, it will help get ordinary people buying Symbian and UIQ phones, and provides a nice alternative for people who like Moto designs.

[stuclark]

The reason Motorola are quoting 32GB is that they have actually tested cards up to that capacity internally, even if those cards are not yet available to the public.

What's interesting about Moto's press release is that they make no mention of which version of UIQ the Z10 runs - in fact it runs UIQ 3.2, which hasn't yet been announced!

The whole Z10 launch is unfortunately 3 - 4 months behind when it was originally scheduled, which is bound to hurt Moto going forward this year, as their other phone releases will be getting pushed back as a knock on effect.

[JimH]

@Stu - Uiq.com actually mentions that it's 3.2 and considering how light on detail the UIQ site normally is, that's quite a surprise.

I'm looking forward to AAS giving it a good working over, I really hope it's a better phone than the slow Z8 was.

Interesting, they say video at 30fps but dont mention resolution. I assume its QVGA???

[stuclark]

Yes, video resolution is QVGA - same as the Z8

[langdona]

If you look at the UIQ website it says its got 90meg onboard!
What I'd like to know is is it going to be available in America? You would think so as they are showing it at CES but I cant spot anything definite.

[langdona]

I think I way confusing myself the UIQ website (currently) says

90MB internal memory expandable up to 32MB with microSD

Which must be an error I assume they mean 32GB.

[stuclark]

The 90MB internally is the same as the Z8 - in a "real" configuration it means you have roughly 78MB free to install apps. *This is NOT the amount of RAM the phone has, it's the phone's C: drive capacity*

I expect that the Z10 WILL be made available in the US, apparently Moto US were pretty impressed with how the Z8 went in Europe and now want to join the party.

[satsuma]

Originally Posted by stuclark

apparently Moto US were pretty impressed with how the Z8 went in Europe and now want to join the party.

I know the precise sales figures for the Z8 and they are NOT exactly what you might call spectacular but even anecdotal evidence will tell you that.
The reality is that the retreat from LJ has left a lotta people in the US feeling insecure and they all 'wanna piece' of the Symbian action. There's a pretty decent number of Symbian UIQ phones planned cos Moto just don'thave anything else in multimedia that will work or sell. Therefore Symbian phones will now be much better supported by the wider Motorola Mobile devices community.

Last I heard, there would be no Z10 in the US but it could change.
Follow ups are definitely going to the US.
Watch for the leaked phones to be shown in Barca

The Z10 is a worthwhile addition to the UIQ family.
It's certainly less buggier - but you'd expect that.
Camera is immensely better to use.
Media editing suite is kinda fun.
I find the new keypad better but still not comfortable for texting.

I noticed on www.uiq.com that the Z10 runs UIQ 3.2, yet another release of UIQ that seems to be used by Motorola. Wonder when SE will release a phone with newer UIQ that 3.0...

[stuclark]

UIQ 3.2 information and what it means for the Z10 can be found here: http://www.motosmartphones.com/news/...n-revealed.htm

These network exclusive launches are getting annoying - UK consumers can only currently buy the new Motorla Z10 with an O2 contract deal, which lets be honest are not the best value for money when compared with the other network offerings.

All the same, the Z10 is a vast improvement on the previous Z8.

http://www.phoneslimited.co.uk/Motorola/Z10.html

I love Motorola mobiles and couldn't wait for the Z10 to come out. I now have one and it's great apart from a couple of annoying features. I can't set my text messages to 'vibrate only' it doesn't have this feature. My previous moto was Z3 and its picture folder was annoying, you have to scroll down through each individual picture to find the one you want so I was hoping that this new phone would have thumbnails for quick location of a picture but alas it's exactly the same as the Z3 it also has no lock facility to lock away pictures. Another annoyance is that iy doesn't return automatically to the home screen when finished with a text or call you have to press the 'Back' button, sometimes three times to return home. That said the phone looks great and I am enjoying playing with it. If anyone can help with any of the above that would be great.