Motorola KRZR K1

It’s upto you how you pronounce it—'crazer', 'K-RAZR' or 'kerzer'—but Motorola’s KRZR K1 doesn’t jump out at you like the RAZR did once upon a time. Perhaps it’s because slim and shiny phones are no longer a novelty. Or perhaps it’s because the KRZR is just not different enough from the RAZR to warrant it’s own series.

Design
Most simply, the KRZR is a narrow and thick version of the RAZR. My first experience (which still holds true) was that the RAZR was a little too wide. That has been solved with the KRZR, but while the phone is narrow, it’s also a bit longer. This combination of narrowness and length made me—and a lot of other people in the office—cringe the first time we looked at it. But after having used it for more than a week, I’ve begun to like it. A lot.

The KRZR has a shiny, glossy, mirror-finish on the top, unlike the brushed metal finish on the RAZR. The rear of the phone feels velvety or at least rubber-coated. On the inside, the keypad is also in the same indigo-purple color that the rest of the phone is in, and it has the same spiral design that the RAZR had, only its finer. The keys offer the same kind of tactile feedback as the RAZR. The KRZR doesn’t have the middle soft key like the V3i does—the center click of the navigation pad doubles up for it’s absence, but also causes a few problems (see UI section).

Even the display on the KRZR is a 176x220 resolution, 256k color TFT, which is the same as the RAZR. But since the phone is smaller, the display looks a little better, higher resolution, since the pixels are smaller and closer together. The secondary display is also 96x80, which shines out from under the mirror finish of the top.