Display & Audio
4.3Text and images on the internal LCD were viewable, but kind of jagged and pixel-y. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by looking at so many QVGA displays as of late, but Muziq’s main screen was something of an unwelcomed contrast to its hip, sleek body. While it’s the way the thing looks that matters, the spec sheet backed up my findings: Muziq’s internal display has a resolution of of 176 x 220 pixels, which is quite a few dots less than the 240 x 320 that’s become the standard for “media phones.” While the display is rated at a respectable 262,000 colors, in many cases those colors failed to pop or otherwise impress - Web pages and the music player’s album art display particularly suffered.
A fair amount of customization is available to Muziq users, including a handful of preinstalled themes and a bunch more available for purchase online. While the phone’s default home screen is uniquely themed to Muziq (it actually reminds me of an iPod ad), the Main Menu is the basic Sprint grid. A semi-customizable favorites list lets you set up shortcuts to a handful of apps, and another feature I really liked was the pop-up On Demand status display on the handset’s home screen. Placing the cursor on the On Demand icon brought up a mini-window that displayed the weather along with a ticker-like scroll of News, Sports, and other headlines. While it’s a small thing, I liked being able to access this information without having to click or otherwise an application.
The external display performed similarly to its big brother, but the effect was less negative given its smaller size. While it’s lower-res at 128 x 160 over 64,000 colors, it’s also half the size of the internal screen so text looked a bit smoother overall. A fair amount of functionality is programmed into the external screen, from wallpapers/screensavers and status information to music player and camera applications. Unfortunately, accessing and switching between these functions was a bit confusing. While the display directed me to press and hold the camera button to unlock the phone’s keyguard, it left me on my own to figure out how to move between the camera and music apps and the home screen. Best I could tell, you can get from “anywhere” to the camera with Muziq’s flip closed but switching out of camera mode required opening the phone.
I tested the dual-band CDMA Muziq on Sprint’s network in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Reception and voice quality was solid throughout my testing, with nothing noteworthy to report. Muziq’s internal speaker was plenty loud and clear, and voice-activated dialing also worked well.
The handset comes with a wired mono earpiece, and while it worked well for hands-free calling, I was kind of surprised to see a music phone - let alone one named “Muziq” - not come with a stereo headset in the box. The inclusion of an adapter allowing standard stereo ‘phones to connect to Muziq’s accessory port is a nice touch, but actual earphones would have been better. Better yet, turn that built-in 2.5mm headphone jack into a standard 3.5mm port ...
The device also supports Bluetooth earpieces, including stereo Bluetooth. Sprint sent along a set of Motorola S9 ‘phones for the review, and while I had a bit of trouble initially pairing them, once the connection was made it stayed strong for both music and calling applications.
