iTechnoBuzz!!

First off, no 3G. The phone is limited to quad-band GSM/EDGE. It does add Wi-Fi, though, for sharing pictures through hotspots. While the Wi-Fi is nice, 3G is a necessity for a phone with a camera of this caliber. You won’t be able to send large image files without finding Wi-Fi. Motorola did not say if the ZN5 can use the Wi-Fi radio for browsing the Internet, but it is probable that it can.

Camera

The camera itself is 5 megapixels. It has a full flash, which results in much better pictures taken in low-light settings. On top of that, the camera has been optimized for taking pictures in low-light settings to begin with. Kodak said that 70% of all pictures are taken indoors, so it made sure to include this low-light sensitivity. Pressing the shutter button halfway will focus the image in less than 1 second. Compared to many other camera phones that have auto-focus, this is pretty fast. You can, however, override the auto-focus and just press down all the way on the shutter button to capture an image faster. What this does is set aside the auto-focus and sets the camera to a standard 6 feet to infinity focus mode.

Hardware

The phone is very similar in shape and feel to the MOTOROKR E8. Nearly identical in footprint, what sets the ZN5 apart the most is the lack of the semi-circular navigation scroll bar and the quality of the keypad. The scroll bar has been replaced with a standard 5-way D-pad. This D-pad feels OK. It is a little on the small side for my tastes. All the buttons that run along the outer edge of the phone work well and feel good, though the camera button itself felt a little loose to us. We’ll chock this up to it being a prototype model.

The keypad is the phone’s only real failing. It loses the E8′s fantastic haptic feedback keypad and replaces it with a keypad that is similar to the recently released Motorola Z9. It feels cheap and plastic-y. The buttons all felt “clacky”. While travel and feedback was good, we couldn’t help but be underwhelmed by how cheap it felt. This could be because the unit is pre-production, but knowing what the keypad quality is of other Motorola handsets, we’re not hopeful that it will be improved on production units.

The phone does have a 3.5mm headset jack, which is nice, as well as an exterior slot for the microSD card. In all, it is slim, pocketable, and feels decent.

For Motorola, this is a much needed product in its lineup of devices.

sanjay-jha

Aug. 4 — Motorola Inc., preparing to split itself in two, hired Qualcomm Inc.’s Sanjay Jha to oversee the money-losing mobile-phone business after sales plunged for six straight quarters.

The stock rose the most in more than four years after Motorola said that Jha, Qualcomm’s former operations chief, will become co-chief executive officer with Greg Brown. Jha will run the handset unit, which accounts for 41 percent of revenue and hasn’t had a hit since the best-selling Razr, introduced in 2004.

The division has lost more than $1.9 billion since the start of last year as customers fled to competitors such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone, pushing Motorola to third place in global mobile- phone sales. Jha, who joined Qualcomm in 1994, helped that company supplant Texas Instruments Inc. last year as the world’s biggest maker of chips for mobile phones.

“They needed someone high profile with engineering talent, and certainly this guy fits the bill,” said Morgan Keegan & Co. analyst Tavis McCourt in Nashville, Tennessee. “The only downside is that he doesn’t necessarily have any consumer products expertise.” He rates Motorola “market perform” and doesn’t own any shares.

Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Illinois, climbed 88 cents to $9.69 at 11:33 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Earlier the shares rose as high as 13 percent, the most since April 2004. Qualcomm fell $1.47 to $54 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.

Brown, 47, also will be CEO of the company’s profitable and faster-growing broadband business, which makes cable-television set-top boxes and wireless-networking equipment. Brown, who took over from Ed Zander in January, announced plans to break the phone unit from the rest of the company in March and last week said the division will occur in the third quarter of 2009.

Revived by Razr

Zander had revived Motorola with the Razr, the all-metal flip phone that sold more than a 110 million units. Motorola has since failed to introduce a device to match the Razr’s success, losing customers to the iPhone and e-mail-equipped handsets from Nokia Oyj and Samsung Electronics Co.

Stu Reed, the former head of the mobile-devices unit, left the company in March after Brown assumed direct control. Jha, 45, will have to improve phones to challenge Apple, which sold a million iPhone 3G phones in their first three days out, McCourt said. Last week, Motorola said it plans to introduce 34 new devices in the second half of this year.

“In terms of actual products hitting the street, you’re not going to see his impact before 2010,” McCourt said. “Probably his biggest impact will be the level and type of engineering talent he will attract to the company over time.”

Customers Flee

Motorola’s share of phone sales has fallen by more than half in the past two years as consumers snapped up the iPhone and e- mail-equipped handsets from Espoo, Finland-based Nokia. The company trails Nokia and Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, in global handset shipments.

The split will increase costs as Motorola will have to create two management teams and two sets of overhead costs, according to Richard Windsor, a Nomura International analyst in London. Costs stemming from the split, including legal fees, cut Motorola’s profit by 1 cent a share last quarter.

“There’s a tremendous opportunity here to take this business to the next level,” Jha said in an interview today. He said he will manage costs “aggressively” and hire a team with experience in branding and distribution. He declined to say when he expects the business will make a profit or increase sales.

Len Lauer, 51, will replace Jha as operations chief, Qualcomm said today. Before his promotion, Lauer was an executive vice president at Qualcomm, overseeing the services business. He also worked at Sprint Nextel Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. before joining the chipmaker.

Jha’s Record

At San Diego-based Qualcomm, Jha won sales from Texas Instruments as customers used more of its semiconductors for new devices that surf the Web and download videos. Sales at Qualcomm’s chip division have climbed 70 percent since 2004, when Jha became executive vice president.

Jha inherits a business that may already be in recovery, McCourt said. The sales decline slowed last quarter as Motorola shipped more devices than analysts predicted. The company also has slashed more than 9,000 jobs since the start of 2007.

Jha, whose contract is initially for three years, will make at least $1.2 million in salary and get a bonus this year of $2.4 million. He’ll also get equity totaling 3 percent of the mobile- phone unit after the split, consisting mostly of stock options. If the split doesn’t happen by Oct. 31, 2010, he’ll get $30 million in cash.

Before joining Qualcomm, Jha worked in design engineering roles with Brooktree Corp. in San Diego and GEC Hirst Research Labs in London. He has a doctorate in electronic and electrical engineering from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland.