Motorola KRZR K1m User Reviews

Ownership period: more than 1 year.

I have owned a K1M for over 3 years. Keep in mind i own the Fire version, an exclusive released by verizon for a short time in 2007.

When i first got it, i was thinking, "Man this phone looks so slick, with a glass cover and silver accents, it looks like it just came out of a forge".
I also had the hope of doing some minor hacks to the device, such as making it play movies or music i put on it.

of course it seemed great for a time. Until i got use to the phone UI, which is to say, i realized more and more that it was terrible. You see, back in '07, verizon had a bad habit of using what is referred to "crippleware" on their phones. This is when they take the standard software from the manufacturer, and install a myriad of modifications to add red verizon banners and "VERIZON WIRELESS" tags all over the place. except these modifications are very poorly coded, and slowed the device down noticeably. My attempts at hacks didn't go very well either. Verizon placed many rodeblocks such that users couldn't enjoy content of their own, and need to buy songs and videos from the "Vcast" service.

luckily verizon has shaped up in recent years, and instead of using cripplewear, they focused their attention on their Vcast service as a separate competitive content provider, making it a kind of cell phone "all in one", and the results seem somewhat promising. However that still leaves the poor K1M.

as for phone hardware itself, the phone has been unexpectedly durable. i have dropped it dozens of times, sometimes on marble or concrete, it never missed a beat. On the downside of the hardware, the stock battery lost most of its charge capacity within a year. it now can barely hold a charge for 24 hours on standby, and talk time is down to, quite literally, 5 minutes.