Continuing his extended test (this is part 3) of the Motorola MOTO Z10, Ewan tries out its Internet applications. In summary, Messaging and Opera are adequate, but there's little else to shout about and the lack of RAM is crippling. Here are parts 1 and 2 of the Z10 review.
Read on in the full article.
Spot on Ewan, although I think you were possibly a tad harsh on the messaging client. I still think the UIQ implementation is nicer than the S60 equivalent - the only two things which let it down in the Z10 are the lack of *proper* IMAP Push and the fact that the Z10 uses iTap as it's predictive text input system.
I think Opera is really only just capable these days. But until Opera 9.5 is released for UIQ then unfortunately Z10 owners are going to have to put up with it's lack of rendering skill and features, as the only alternative, Digia's @Web, doesn't work on non-touch screen UIQ devices.
The lack of integrated applications is probably where Motorola have let the ball drop most with the Z10 - what is included is a rehash of what's on the Z8; and with Dataviz and Quick Office now both having released UIQ3 file readers for office, and of course with the excellent PDF+, Motorola really should have made a better stab at bundling some office apps on the Z10.
Even though the phone is blatently not aimed at the corporate market, the Z10 (or Z8) coupled with Dataviz's RoadSync application, makes a very credible Blackberry alternative. It's a pity that once again poor marketing and execution by Moto have missed this point.
"With the web browser open, and then in background, you get the fun situation of realizing that your 13MB of free RAM has gone - and you can't force an exit of an application beyond switching off the Z10 and rebooting. Ouch."
There are ways to handle this on the z8 (there might be similar solutions for the z10 out there).
In my case,
a) I flashed my phone and installed firmware version 2388 (don't want to post a link here since I don't know how legal these things are, but it is there, Matthew 7:7 )
2388 does not start shozu automatically, 3 MB saved straightaway.
b) I installed a speed hack that I found in the forums - it involves installing the PIPS libraries and STDIO server. This is supposed to be a hack for speeding up the phone, but somehow it is saving ram for me as well.
c) Installed the lightest theme I could find , something called "Default M600". I have never seen a M600, but it looks almost the same as the default P1i theme.
When I start my phone, it shows 23.2 MB free (this is with Swiss Manager Manager running, so that I can see the memory consumption) . Before doing all this , the startup RAM available used to be around 16-18 MB.
Now even with the commonly used applications like Contacts/Messaging/Web running together, free memory stays above 15 MB.
The only app that still causes my phone to run out of memory is Mobiclip player. But I don't use it - First thing I did after getting the phone was to format the memory card. (I do like Matt Damon, but I already have the DVD)