So with not much time to test we set about using the SLVR L7 or Sliver as our daily workhorse which should be the quickest way of putting through its paces.

The SLVR is the long awaited brother of the hugely successful if not hugely useable V3 Razr, just holding the new L7 reminds you of just how big all other phones are. Measuring 114 x 49 x 11.5 mm it is in fact 2.4mm thinner than the Razr and makes other phones look like they should be on celebrity fit club, but this size does not mean a shrinkage in feature in fact far from it!

The screen is a 262k colour 176 x 200 pixel resolution jobby which delivers clear and bright images if not the largest screen to view email or other text based info. Nestling below the L7's screen is a the signature moto keypad, for those who know the Razr V3 its very similar, while the keys are not raised the small rubberised ridges ensure you can locate the numbers / characters easily and it certainly feels good to the touch. However we did find ourselves with a number of frustrating double presses on keys at inopportune moments, it seems that the press repeat speed is just a little too short, combine this with the lack of positive feedback and you can easily make typos.

The battery life of the V3 Razr has come in for a lot of criticism over the last 12 months as any owner will know, use the built in Bluetooth an even with moderate use you can kill the slim line phones battery within a working day. So how will the new SLVR fare, our tests showed that the battery life is better but not close to the claimed 420 hours standby time or 6 hours talk time. Again we used Bluetooth as its most likely to be used by you and we managed to get around 2 days use with moderate calls being made and it should be good for a full days use even by the most demanding user.

Given that we can easily buy mobile phones that will out last the SLVR L7 on battery life, it only added to our worries that this is an iTunes enabled phone. The same Apple embedded player that we first saw on the Rokr E1 is also present in the L7, it works well although is limited to managing 100 tracks so as such its function is stunted by a marketing driven impediment. It's a real shame as it could be a big selling point for this phone given that its slim sleek lines will appeal to the fashion crowd who may well have liked the kudos of an iTunes player.

And you'll need some area to gain Kudos as the in built camera isn't going to score any points, the poor VGA resolution camera takes truly awful photos and is better compared to a web cam than the now buoyant range of camera phones available.

Storage is taken care of by a micro SD slot (also know as trans flash) the Moto SLVR L7 is supplied with 64mb card but the easily accessible slot can currently take up to 512mb and with the promise of larger capacity cards (up to 2gb) this all bodes well. Sadly with the 100 track limit of the iTunes software it all seems a little pointless.

Daily use of the L7 did show that one of our pet hates of the Moto range has finally been dealt with. The ability to store more than open number with a contract has been resolved (well sort of) in fact you can still only store one phone number against a name but by choosing the same display name the top level list can now show just one line item for the many numbers you may have for a contact (home, work, mobile etc). This bodge works fine until you need to delete a contact from the 1000 name memory as you have to delete each individual entry nesting under the main name.

A side note to those who are annoyed by the way screens gather finger prints, the L7's keyboard is a polished metal finish and it is soon covered in mucky paws prints which are a real sod to remove.

Overall our time with the Moto SLVR L7 proved that it is an improvement on the V3 Razr in terms of operation, the battery is better and the phonebook is more useable. However promotion of the iTunes function is misleading and those who think that the L7 can replace their iPod Nano will be sorely disappointed.

Once again Motorola have produced a fashion phone for fashion victims, if you were taken in by the ultra slim and light V3 Razr then you are likely to love the ultra slimmer SLVR L7 and it weights just 85 grams. But you need to remember how once you started to use your slim style phone everyday and when you needed to charge if before 5pm! To be fair things have improved but not enough for us to be able to recommend the Moto SLVR no matter how sexy it is.

Published - 18/03/2006

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