Review: Motorola krave ZN4
Motorola has some experience, good and bad, with music phones, and has learned from its few mistakes with the Krave.
Loading songs in the Krave is relatively painless. You'll have to drag-and-drop AAC and MP3 tracks onto an 8 GB microSD card since there is no included USB cable (yes, you can use Bluetooth, but the wireless transfer is far more time consuming than using Windows' drag-and-drop Explore function).
Once your music is loaded, pressing the V Music icon brings up the V CAST Music main menu with varying track list delineation options β artist, album, playlists, etc. Shuffle play is the last item on the list. Unfortunately, the Krave takes 10-to-15 seconds or so to "read the music database" before these music menus appears, then annother 10-to-15 seconds before the music actually starts to play.
All the relevant info you'd want is on screen as a track plays β track name and artist name on a single non-scrolling line (if the song title is too long, you lose the end of the title and artist name), how many tracks have played and how many total tracks there are, track time elapsed and total track time, volume level, a progress slide bar below the album cover art, and pause/play/skip forward/skip backward touch controls. With the screen open, you also get loop, queue, play option and shuffle touch icons which inexplicably disappear when you close the clear cover. When you tap on the album art, you get a scrollable queue of tracks.
Sound is excellent with plenty of volume, but don't forget to buy earphones β Verizon has stopped including free ones. You'll have to buy earphones speficially designed for the Krave; iPhone earphones will work if all you want to do is listen to music, but you'll lose call answer/call end and music pause/skip controls.
Unfortunately, music won't play while you're using other applications. As soon as you navigate away from the music page, the music ends. However, after answering the phone or responding to alerts, the music restarts.