Am I the only one who’s disappointed with Motorola? They release nothing but different colours of their old range of device for the last 8 months and when they finally seem to have something new on the horizon, we get the K1 (aka Canary or KRZR) and Z3 (aka Capri). What a let down! Makes you wonder what they’ve been doing all this time.

I first got an idea of what the K1 was going to be like when I came across it’s UAProfile (An xml file which contains specifications of a device) while doing some research for Volantis a few months ago. I didn’t realise what it was then and I wasn’t impressed with the specifications at all. I assumed that it must be another of the endless V3 variants as the profile was almost identical to that of the RAZR. It never occurred to me that it was the profile for what looks like Motorola’s follow-up to the hideously-popular RAZR range till I heard the news a few weeks ago.

So what can we expect from the new devices? Well first off the K1 and Z3 seem to be identical devices in different cases. Both devices improve on the V3 by adding support for SVG images, a slew of new audio and video formats, an updated version of the MIB WAP Browser and a 2 Mega-Pixel camera. They support some new J2ME Packages too such as OBEX, Bluetooth and PIM. The much-talked-about A2DP Bluetooth Profile is also in there (Stereo audio over Bluetooth), though interestingly it isn’t a Bluetooth 2.0 handset.

However it isn’t what’s new that is disappointing, it’s what is old. They both have the same 176×220 pixel, 65k colour screen that the V3 had, which is a step down from the fantastic QVGA screen the V3X sported and which should have stayed the norm for Motorola devices. They also have the same ARM7 processor (Motorola LTE-ARM7TDMI-S) that was in the V3 which could mean these devices are just as slow as the V3 was. Neither of the devices seems to have UMTS or EDGE either.

But by far the biggest let down was when i noticed that the software version in the UAProfile for both devices was down as “SUAPI_C_2.0.13_R_ADS1.2” which is the exact same version as was in the UAProfile for the V3 (Synergy UI). Even the rumoured improvements to the UI (The phonebook has been updated) doesn’t give Motorola a ‘Get Out Of Jail’ card here. Where is the new Linux based UI which was supposed to kill the “Moto UIs Suck” trend? If they’ve developed it why not use instead of sticking to a UI which is universally despised?

These shortcomings are even more apparent when you take into account the Motorola K1c, the CDMA K1 for Verizon. The device has an updated ARM9 processor in there and drops the MIB Browser in favour of Openwave. It’s also rumoured to have EVDO support similar to the V3c which has been a great seller for Verizon. So why not have the same processor and UMTS support in the GSM version? Today there have been some rumblings that Motorola are about to announce some new devices so lets hope that they have been developing something more exciting than these two light-wieghts.