The KRZR K1m is spiritually linked to the popular RAZR phone. It comes with a dark shiny plastic shell that will leave fingerprints easily accented with a chrome base. However because it's gray, it's less noticeable than an all black cell phone. It weighs a little more and is thicker (4.05” x 1.73” x 0.67”) than the RAZR (3.9” x 2.1” x 0.6”) in dimension. However, it’s narrower.

Battery life did not dip significantly because of the MP3 player. Even when it's turned on for a few hours, plus standby for a working day, the battery is still full. The four hour talk time proscribed seems very doable. The front panel has some touch sensitive blue LED keys that lets you switch songs. But if you keep a cell phone in a pocket, it's very easy after starting music to inadvertently touch them with your pants or purse or coat and change the track.

When you receive a call, the MP3 player pauses and switches out to the phone. You get the call on your headphone but if you take out the headset and flip open the phone to talk, the call will finish and direct your Marky Mark playlist out to the phone's fairly competent speaker. Maybe it should have gone back to the MP3 player under pause.

As far as multimedia goes, the KRZR comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera, which is not spectacular but not handicapped like the lower end SLVR phones. The camcorder records video at 176x144 resolutions, although any extensive use of that will demand a microSD card.

Like other Motorola phones, the KRZR uses Motorola Tools software to let you synchronize contacts from your address book, such as Outlook. Unfortunately, the drivers are not x64 compatible and are made for Windows XP, rather than Windows Vista. The software on the phone still carries quirky Motorola software from the early days like only having one phone number for each contact forcing you to make John Home, John Cell, John 3, John 4. This is only overcome by changing the grouping/display settings of the contact away from the default. Games support is not as great either, although that is steadily improving.

Number keys are comfortable. They feature the special keypad that made the RAZR and SLVR famous. However we found it easy to slip and type in an extra number from time to time. Text messaging works as advertised with support for premade messages and multimedia ones. The vibrate option needs serious work as the phone could vibrate in your pant pocket and you wouldn't notice. The ring tones come with classic Motorola sounds which you will definitely want to change as it seems 1 in 2 people have a Motorola phone set on one of the default rings. The classic Hello Moto is there too.

As a phone, the KRZR is not bad. We tested the phone with Telus Mobility in the Toronto area and voice clarity is good. The cell reception is reasonable. Even in low signal areas, we either heard the ringing cut in and out or we got clear signal all the way. This isn't one of those phones that trick you by sounding good for the ringing but then cuts in and out throughout the conversation. So it either works or it doesn't, which is what we wanted.

We had use of the KRZR for quite a bit of time. It is a good enough device to replace a simple 1GB or 2GB MP3 player as the cell phone doubles up as a display and most MP3 players don’t have one. However, those expecting iPhone or iPod like capabilities will be disappointed. This is a phone where you need a quick pinch of music for a subway ride not for anything extended or terribly sophisticated. As a cell phone, it is decent all around but lacks any outstanding video or camera functions to truly bring it to the next level.

Rating •••••70%•••••