For most Mobile Device Analysts the biggest news to come out of this years 3GSM conference wasn’t the slick line of ultra-slim Samsung devices nor was it the impressive range of new S60 Smartphones from Nokia. Instead everyone was talking about the Motorola RIZR Z8, a device that nobody saw coming.

Before the event it seemed to everyone that Motorola had given up on Symbian all together. They had sold off their shares in the company back in 2003 and it had been over 2 years since they’d announced their last Symbian-OS phone. Instead, Motorola seemed to be concentrating on developing Windows Mobile and Linux after seeing some positive results using these Operating Systems in certain Geographies (The Motorola Q in the US and the Motorola A1200 in the Far-East). So when the news of a brand new UIQ device from Motorola hit the feeds during 3GSM it caught everyone off guard.

Now the assumption was basically correct, Motorola’s Mobile Device Team, who are based in the US and design the vast majority or Motorola devices sold in all geographies, was not working on Symbian any longer. In turns out that the Z8 was the brain-child of the Sendo Design Team that Motorola took on board when they bought the remains of the British company in 2005. The old Sendo offices in the UK were turned into a Motorola R&D facility and this is where the Z8 was born.

In pre-production the device was codenamed “Espoo”, a clear indication that the team were aiming squarely at Nokia’s domination of the Smartphone industry (Espoo being the city where Nokia has it’s corporate base). And the initial signs were very promising. The Z8 had all the specifications we have come to expect from a top-of-the-line Smartphone. The UI on their demo devices at 3GSM looked slick and seemed intuitive. This was especially impressive as this was the first UIQ device that would not make use of a touch-screen, something which had been talked about for years in the industry and which most expected to see from Sony Ericsson not Motorola. Throw in the fact that the Z8 also had a cool “Kick-Slide” mechanism and it’s no surprise that everyone, including me, was eagerly looking forward to it’s release.

So 6 months on and the Z8 has hit the stores. Motorola have packaged the device extremely well bundling in their S9 Bluetooth headset and a 1GB Micro-SD card containing the movie “The Bourne Identity”. I picked one up for testing about a month ago and have been using it since then. So how does the shipped device measure up to the hype?

Hardware
The Z8 has a very distinct design starting with the colours, a Black base with yellow accents. While not to everyone’s tastes the colour scheme works well and gives the device a different look. The physical build of the device is very solid and feels good in the hand for a device of its size. The “Kick-Slide” also feels smooth and natural and is easy to slide up and down. The only complaint I’d have is the keypad. The 1,2 and 3 buttons are quite hard to hit as the bottom of the upper half of the device gets in the way when slid open and the keypad itself feels cheap and the feedback from the keys is below par.

Underneath the solid case lies some impressive equipment. The device boasts Bluetooth 2.0 with support for A2DP and EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), a Micro-USB port that can be used for everything from charging to plugging in headphones and HSDPA with support of speeds up to 3.6 Mbit/s. The device also boats DVD-Quality video playback, like some of the more recent Nokia S60 devices, and has a good quality build in speaker so you can watch without a headset. However there are also some disappointments. Unlike most top-of-the-range Smartphones the Z8 doesn’t support WiFi and it’s 2 Megapixel camera is relatively low-spec for it’s market. But the biggest disappointment would be the performance of the 300MHZ processor and this is highlighted by some of the UI problems that I’ll go through in the next section.

User Interface
Now it must be noted (again) that this is the first time the UIQ interface has been modified to be used without a touch-screen. Having said that the design team behind the Z8 have done a superb job and the UI really is intuitive and easy on the eye. In my opinion it’s a major improvement to the UI seen on recent Sony-Ericsson Smartphones which felt cluttered and busy. The task-bar can be access by using a single key (much like on S60 devices) and Motorola have made great use of a simple options menu that will allow you quick access to a variety of settings. Using the device with one hand seems very natural and it’s a nice touch that you can use the main screen when the slider is shut.

However all the hard work of the design team is undone, seemingly, by the poor processor (though it could be software related). The UI is sluggish and navigating through the menus is very choppy. Waking the device up from stand-by is particularly painful as it takes about 5 seconds for the device to activate after being slid open. Loading native applications also takes a while and all this really kills the whole user-experience of the device which seemed so promising to start off with. And speed isn’t the only issue, I’ve also managed to find a few annoying bugs. When you open up the menu you first get a flash of your previous menu position and then get re-sent to the main menu 2 seconds later, very annoying if you are trying to do something quickly.

The task manager is also pretty useless when used with the Web Browser. When you switch back to your active browser session from another application, the browser re-directs back to the Home Page. This wouldn’t be so bad if you could just press back and go to the page you were on previously but for some reason you can’t do this as it seems that the whole session has been re-set, truly very annoying especially if you were not on a page you had bookmarked. I have also managed to crash the phone a few times which started off with either a yellow or a purple screen-of-death. Another time, after watching a movie, the device somehow switched itself into landscape mode permanently with no way of returning to portrait.

But let’s cut Motorola some slack, this is a first generation device and we can’t expect miracles!

Applications
My main gripe with this device is to do with applications. For some reason the security settings on this device seems to have been set to quite a high level which, as far as I can tell, can’t be changed. Most of the UIQ3 3^rd party applications that I tried to install on the device failed security checks and wouldn’t install and a quick search on Google tells me that I’m not the only person with problems. The amount of UIQ3 applications was already pretty small compared to S60 and Window Mobile catalogues so reducing the number of apps which can work on the Z8 is not a good move.

Having said that, Motorola have done a good job of providing a good selection of pre-installed software. The built in Web-Browser is Opera 8.65 which, as you’d expect, delivers a great Mobile Web experience. Motorola seems to have made Opera 8.65 the default browser for all their HSDPA devices, a move which shows that they can sometimes get it right. The built in video player, MobiClip, is also pretty good and I was very impressed with the quality of the video playback when I tried out the bundled Bourne Identity film. There is also the SKY Anytime application which, if you subscribe, will let you watch live TV on the Z8 and will also let you control you SKY+ Box (similar to TIVO for you US folk) at home so you can choose which TV to record while on the move. There is also a Music Player pre-installed but this is pretty disappointing. It’s pretty basic feature wise and is not what I’d call user-friendly, but this is a minor gripe.

Conclusion
I really wanted to like this phone, I was ready to be blown-away. The Symbian scene could have done with a new device that would shake it up and generate more competition but sadly the Z8 isn’t it. Despite it’s early promise the finished product isn’t quite there and if I’m honest nobody should really have expected it to be.

As a first generation product the Z8 is a terrific effort with some great little UI touches provided by the old Sendo designers. In fact I can’t help thinking that if this device had been made entirely by Sendo, it might have been a winner. I get that impression because the poor processor, which as I said really kills the experience, is a common problem with Motorola devices. The good news is that Motorola seem to have a plan to make more devices based on the platform found in the Z8. If they can sort out their hardware problems, like they’ve done with the new RAZR2 range, then the potential is there for the Z8s successor to be a real contender.