Based on the same platform as the recently released V600 the Motorola V500 is trying to bring Motorola back into the fold when it comes to functionality, no longer can they rely on the army of "I always buy Motorola flip" customers who are equally tempted by Sony Ericsson and Sharp.

The Motorola V500 is a Quad band phone supporting GSM 850/900/1800/1900 allowing truly global connectivity and measuring just 87 x 47 x 23mm and adding a little over 120 grams to your shirt pocket it won't cost you much in excess baggage either. But the true change to the Motorola range is the move to provide more than just a device for calls and text messages, the V500 packs a 65k colour TFT screen with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels through this you can drive the OS of the phone which is a vast improvement on the earlier and somewhat shambolic Motorola menu system.

On top of a vastly improved user experience the gadgets have arrived finally the new platform has integrated Bluetooth 1.1 and a CE bus USB / Serial port add the support for GPRS and a version 2.0 wap browser and you start to see that this phone can do more and is ready for a toe to toe fight with Sony Ericsson and would probably see of Nokia who see to be losing their way.

The nuts and blots are taken care of too, the battery will give a standby of between 120 - 200 hours and a talk time of about 150 - 390 minutes although both are subject to signal strength, there's SMS with the Motorola Predictive system iTap (a bit like T9), MMS and an instant messaging client (wireless village 1,1). Memory is limited to 5mb with no opportunity to add more which is a shame but there is room enough for 1000 entries in the phone book which can be synchronised with your desktop PC.

There are a range of 21 polyphonic ringtones and the V500 supports MP3 ringtones too which is pretty cool, with voice dialling and the ability to set profiles to incoming numbers you can make your V500 sound like a mini disco if you feel that way inclined. And if your getting funny looks then there is always the 640 x 480 camera to take some snaps which can then be sent via GPRS or MMS, the V500 is also bundled with 5 games and a currency converter.

Overall this is a neat package and certainly feels good to use, the active flip is always a good feature on a phone and the addition of Bluetooth certainly wins the V500 some friends, the smart phone like features do go someway to offering a passable calendar and contacts system but don't expect to run your office for it, it is missing IrDA so beware if you need infa red and the video replay function can only be found on its bigger V600 brother.

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