Motorola Z10 'kick slider' media phone

Media monster mobile Mk II

Movie watching isn’t quite the big screen experience. The Z10 has a 2.2in, 320 x 240, 16m-colour display that could be larger - it’s smaller than those on recent Nokia smartphones and a host of touchscreen mobiles. Yet the Z10 is no tiny-proportioned phone, measuring a stocky 109.7 x 50.7 x 15.8mm and weighing 119g.

Watching videos is fine on the full screen, and smoothly rendered at 30 frames per second by the MobiClip software, but with video playback high on Motorola’s pitch list, you might have expected more screen space.

Video is high on the agenda with this handset

Beneath the display are the Z10’s main control button array: a typical circular navpad that has been improved from the Z8’s, and a batch of keys surrounding it. These – main menu, soft-menu, call and end, and a back button – are on a single plastic panel, with grooves separating them efficiently enough. They do feel a touch unresponsive, though, and need to be pressed firmly.

The numberpad has been reworked slightly too, giving more room for key pressing than the Z8 provided. The rectangular keys are ever so slightly raised too, so your fingers can differentiate between them. Quick pressing is again undermined by a slightly heaviness of touch.

The slick kick-slider mechanism has been well executed, and you may well find yourself thumbing the phone’s spring-loaded screen more often than strictly necessary. Its hinge mechanism feels as sturdy as the metal-cased phone itself, which is reassuring. The back panel has a camera-style look, with an LED photo light above the lens. A secondary low-res camera for video calling and self portraits perches above the front display.