Digital Trends

Motorola MOTOZINE ZN5 November 10th, 2008 | by Stewart Wolpin

Features and Design

There's more to the candy bar-like ZN5 than a great, amateur shutterbug-friendly camera, however. First of all, you can easily upload photos to a blog or to the Kodak Gallery photo sharing site. Likewise, while the ZN5 is only an EDGE phone, Web connections can be sped up via WiFi connection, a rare option on such an inexpensive handset. Rather impressively, also included is a music player (you can even use one of your stored songs as a ringtone); a 3.5mm headphone-A/V out jack; an FM radio; a game player; text/instant messaging; and POP3 and IMAP email with preconfigured settings for the most popular email domains. 

Form Factor

The ZN5 follows the general industrial design outlook of some other recent Motorola candy bar models such as the MotoROKR E8, which is to say that it’s rectangular with a wedge-shaped top and bottom. The phone’s face is divided into a top section and its 2.4-inch LCD display, and the bottom devoted to a dialpad input.

Mind you, the ZN5's first minor drawback is (go figure) its menu navigation control array and dialpad. Instead of keys, you get pimples on a membrane – small raised dots to mark where each number or symbol is located. Pressing a number depresses the membrane, and while you do enjoy some tactile response when prodding the device, it's not as much as you'd get from a physical, distinct button. Each key is brightly backlit in white and highly visible in any ambient light, however.

Above the dialpad is the familiar, if small, circular menu navigation array. Flanking this circular control are double-decked dash keys; the top two are soft menu keys, while the bottom row includes direct access to your photo gallery on the left and a "back" key on the right. On either side of these dash keys are the Send and End keys. Note that these keys are all tightly-packed, and may be difficult for folks with thick fingers to manipulate accurately.

On the ZN5's right side are the up/down volume-cum-camera-zoom toggle, a lock switch and, toward the bottom, a bright purple camera shutter release button. On the top left side is a 3.5mm jack suitable for use with stereo headphones and A/V output, while on the bottom left lies a microUSB jack.

Kodak's 5MP camera and Xenon flash are mounted on the rear, of course, with the lens assembly enclosed in a raised hump at the top end of the phone.

Ports & Connectors

As noted, the phone has two jacks: A 3.5mm headphone jack and a microUSB jack. You have to annoyingly remove the battery panel, including the camera, to access the microSD card slot.

Image Courtesy of Motorola