As you might have guessed from its name, Muziq is meant to be a music phone. The handset is compatible with Sprint’s Groove Mobile Music store, from which tracks can be purchased and downloaded for 99 cents each. Your dollar gets you two versions of the selected song: a low-quality mp3 that comes straight to the Muziq and a higher-quality version available for download to a PC. While the phone didn’t come with stereo earbuds (a 3.5mm headphone adapter is included instead), it does feature an internal transmitter for broadcasting your tunes to an empty space a nearby FM dial. The transmitter performed better than the one on the
Fusic I tested awhile back, but I’d still recommend placing the phone as close as possible to your radio/antenna for good results.
My feelings on the Sprint Music store are mixed: On the one hand, they’re doing what iTunes does - selling music for a buck a track - but going one better by enabling instant purchase and download from a mobile phone. It’s perfect (and addictive) for when some song or another pops into your head while you’re out and about. The system is also now compatible with the excellent Pandora online radio system, which lets you create and subscribe to custom radio stations based on your musical tastes. In this regard, Sprint’s really pushing the mobile music industry forward - at least in America.
On the other hand, the Music Store/Player application needs a serious makeover. It works, but it just doesn’t look very good, and the UI is a little funny. You can sort by Song, Artist, and Genre, create playlists, and even view album art for your tracks, but it’s not nearly as attractive and flexible a solution as those found on music phones from Apple, Nokia, or Sony Ericsson. This isn’t an issue with Muziq or even LG, as the Music app is the same on all compatible Sprint handsets. Also, a phone named for music should come with more than a 64mb memory card; that’s barely enough to store a full album’s worth of mp3s. And purchased tracks cannot be used as ringtones, which is par for Sprint’s course. Still, the combination of Sprint’s per track pricing and wonderfully fast data network makes using the Music Store worthwhile -- it just could be so much better with a UI overhaul.
Beyond its Music player, Muziq offers a host of other features including access to the world of online goodies known as Sprint’s Power Vision Network. If you’re willing to pay for it all, you can watch TV clips, browse the “mobile Web,” get On Demand information updates, and manage your Email from Muziq. Sprint TV is novel - and actually boasts a much better UI than the Music Store - though whether or not it’s worth the monthly subscription fee (and your time) to watch streaming video on a 2” screen is another story. Surprisingly, while I had some major qualms with the quality of text and images on Fuziq’s menu screens, the bits of Cartoon Network I watched on the phone looked pretty good. Weird. A landscape-orientation full screen mode is also available when watching Sprint TV, though it stretches the image and results in noticeably poor quality.
An integrated A-GPS receiver allows for location-based services. While “GPS” isn’t an entry in any menus I could find on Muziq, choosing the “Get New” option under Applications took me to the Sprint website. There I was presented with a GPS category filled out with a handful of subcategories of apps available to me for around six bucks each - including GPS-enabled fitness programs. GPS-assisted fitness trackers on your cell phone. What will they think of next?
Fuziq offers a solid contacts manager with good search functionality, Calendar and Alarm Clock apps, and access to a selection of free and for-fee ringtones, wallpapers, games and other Java applications via Sprint’s portal. My review sample came with a few demo games pre-installed, and it’d didn’t take me long at all to purchase, download, and start playing a pretty good version of Texas Hold ‘Em poker. A melody composer app allows for the creation of custom MIDI ringtones, and the phone also offers Voice Command and a scaled-back version of multitasking that allows you to listen to music while using certain (but not all) applications.
Muziq’s front-mounted 1.3 megapixel camera features an LED assist light and a video recording mode with audio. The camera performed pretty well for a mid-range cameraphone, yielding pictures that tended to be just a little muted in indoor lighting and just a little overexposed in bright sunlight. Adjusting software settings helped compensate for both situations, though as with almost all cameraphones, photos taken in natural light came out better overall. Either of the phone’s two displays can be used as viewfinders for the camera, and the combination of a front-mounted sensor and front-mounted external display made it all too tempting to take self-portrait after self-portrait.
A variety of adjustments and settings are available, though it should be noted that digital zoom doesn’t work when capturing photos at full 1.3mp resolution. Photos can be used as wallpapers and caller ideas, sent off in MMS and Email messages, printed via USB on a PictBridge-compatible printer, and saved to onboard and online albums. With a Sprint Picture Mail account, you may also order color prints of your snapshots directly from the phone, as well.
The camcorder is best used with a very, very steady hand. Relative to the low expectations that should come with a mainstream phone’s camcorder function, Muziq actually yielded some pretty good video clips when the handset was kept as still as possible during shooting. Moving the phone around even a little bit resulted in a lot of grainy, blocky footage. A nifty bit of UI magic happens when you browse through a gallery with video clips in it: select a clip’s thumbnail and it expands to play back a second or so preview of the movie.
Next: Display & Audio »
4.3
