At A Glance:

The RIZR Z3 is the first incarnation of the RAZR as a slider phone. Of course, there will be subsequent Z6 and Z8 models but first of all let us take a look at the Z3.

Exterior
The RIZR Z3 has a really impressive exterior. It is sleek, and it slides open silently at just the barest of touches. Our review unit came in magenta and felt slightly rubbery even though the casing was just matte paint as far as we could see.

There are some patterns on the rear of the screen when you slide the device open. The hotkeys for the voice commands and the camera are on the right side of the phone, whilst the volume toggle and record buttons are on the left side of the phone.

The USB charger port is on the right of the device and an eyelet for the lanyard is located on the top of the device.

Buttons/Screen
The buttons are in RAZR blue, the electric blue found in all the etched keypads similar in design to the Motorola RAZR. However, the shortcut keys on the side of the phone do not get any lighting, so you might have some trouble seeing them in the dark.

The screen seems to glare a little, and doesn¡¦t really look like the 262K TFT that it is specified at. The size of the screen is 176 x 220 pixels and it is a little small for any decent browsing, but the sleekness of the device dictates that the screen has to be small.

Software/Messaging
The RIZR uses a 3x3 grid of icons as its menu. You can bring up the menu by pressing the button in the middle of the ring- like navigation control. This has changed little over the years, other than the addition of the Google web application at the 12 o¡¦clock position on the menu grid.

The iTAP is again turned on by default, although there is a setting that permits the user to turn off the iTAP if it is not wanted. I still prefer the autotext turned off by default, something that I have felt the same about for the better part of the last five years.

PIM
The PIM in this device is rather minimal. The alarm clock and calculator will probably be the PIM components that are used the most. Some may use the datebook, but I have never been a fan of using a numberpad to input diary entries.

This is definitely not a PDA-type phone though. The sunken keypad is barely tolerable for typing in a string of numbers. It would surely wreak havoc on your fingers if you had to type in a long email message.

Camera/Video
We have a 2.0 megapixel camera on the RIZR Z3. The digital zoom goes up to 8x and here you might find the RIZR takes too long to respond to changes made by the user.

The RIZR supports four preset resolutions, namely X-Small 240 x 320, Small 480 x 640, Medium 1.3MP and Large at 2.0MP. The slow response is really annoying, especially since it takes forever to get ready to capture a picture, and if you want to capture pictures on the fly, as is what a mobile camera should be used for, then you might get rather frustrated at the length of waiting time.

Video is recorded at 15 fps. Video resolution is limited to either Small 128 x 96 or Medium 176 x 144. There is also an option limit the video to MMS length only, or you can simply record until you run out of space.

Multimedia/Voice
The RIZR supports the playback of MP3 and AAC files. The specs also claim support for MPEG-4 although the playback was choppy and prone to errors.

The point is, pound for pound, Motorola devices are not very good at video playback compared to other brands. If you want a multimedia phone, I¡¦d advise you to look at other brands with larger screens and faster processors.

However, the voice reception was pretty good, both for earpiece and for loudspeaker. The loudspeaker was pretty good and the party on the other side did not seem to notice that I had switched to loudspeaker so that I could continue to pound on the keyboard while talking.

Connectivity
This phone has Bluetooth, but not infrared. You can also sync to the computer via USB and there is an application called MotoSync that lets you keep files on both phone and computer current.

This is a quad-band device but it does not support WCDMA 2100, or in other words ¡V there is no 3G. Class 10 GPRS is there and so is EDGE connectivity.

Games
There are two games in the phone. Block Breaker Deluxe requires you to bounce a ball around and knock off blocks on the screen. The other game is Platinum Sudoku, which explains itself pretty much.

Editor's Opinion

Again, we have a really hot-looking phone from Motorola. The slider mechanism is smooth and clicks into place both on the in and out directions. It is a sleek device, nicely bevelled at the edges and apparently going for just the right price at around RM 1000. Don¡¦t expect to edit office documents with the RIZR. The keypad is suitable only for simple calling and talking. Therefore, you can flash this around both for business and for after-work, but you will need to carry around a PDA for heavier stuff. There is no 3G support but a 2MP camera should serve your purposes mostly. I¡¦m sure that most RIZR owners would not want to use a Bluetooth headset with the phone.