It's the bit you've all been waiting for. Rafe goes into detail in putting every aspect of the multimedia capability of the UIQ 3-powered Motorola RIZR Z8 to the test: camera, gallery, music, video - and finds plenty that's worthy and a few aspects which were disappointing. And then Rafe discovers two 'extras' which raise the Z8's game another notch.

In parts 1 and 2 of this review we covered the design and hardware and the first half of the application suite. Here, in part 3, we look at the multimedia features of the phone.

Multimedia

At its launch, the Z8 was held up as a powerful multimedia phone with a particular emphasis on video. Indeed the whole message around the Z8 is not about its smartphone software platform and abilities, but the rather the multimedia experience it can offer. The Z8 isn’t aimed at the typical smartphone user (indeed I think many of them would find it lacking), but rather at a consumer who is style conscious and interested in consuming multimedia on the go. The advertising campaign underlines this with the message: ‘experience crystal-clear vision and sound on the go’. So, with this in mind, how does the Z8 measure up in the multimedia stakes?

Camera

The Z8 has a 2 megapixel camera on the rear of the device with an accompanying LED flash. However, the image capture results are generally very average. This is partly due to the relatively moderate (for a high end device) number of megapixels, but also the absence of auto focus in the camera module. As a result pictures are less sharp and show less detail than higher specified camera phones.

Compared with other 2 megapixel cameras, it's reasonable though. Captured images do not make for good printed images, but they are good enough, especially when resized, for recording odd moments, for use on blogs or social networking sites, or sending via email. In common with other camera phones, the best results can be produced in good lighting conditions and by tweaking the settings. In some cases, post-capture adjustment in an image editing program can also improve results.

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