Motorola SLVR L6 review

Motorola proves that it's better at grouping than Phil "The Power" Taylor, with the latest addition to its ever growing family of slimline phones.

9 March 2006 0:28 GMT / By Shaun Marin

Motorola proves that it’s better at grouping than Phil "The Power" Taylor, with the latest addition to its ever growing family of slimline phones.

The L6 is the slimmest handset available on the market right now, and unless you want a phone that will snap every time you press a button too vigorously while texting it’s hard to see where it could shed any further micrometers. This handset is seriously thin, 10.9mm! Although it’s still quite wide and slightly taller than an iPod.

What isn’t hard to spot is the L6’s lineage, as it’s a doppelganger for the L7 we’ve looked at previously. It fits in just below it in the brand’s line up, loosing a few extra millimetres and a couple of features on the way. It’s the RAZR V3 and V3i all over again - these handsets are darn close to each other in almost every respect!

The metallic number pad looks great, and the keys are easier to press than on its RAZR relations, and if your taste is for candybars rather than clamshells there’s very little here not to get excited about. If you like Motorola menus you’ll also be happy, and the inclusion on Bluetooth is a nice touch on such an affordable phone, and a welcome nod towards safety concerns over people using the phones while driving.

Sadly, the commonality stretches to the VGA camera, which isn’t great considering the current trend towards offering megapixel snappers on even the most basic handsets. Even so, the images it produces are passable, and it has a video camera as well.

And that brings us on to what’s been taken out. Primarily that appears to be a drop from a 262k colour screen to this rather more prosaic 65K number, and there’s no MP3 player. Considering all the issues over whether the L6 and V3i would sport iTunes, we think it’s refreshing that this handset has no pretence to be a music mobile! This also means that there’s less to complain about on the missing memory front, as with no MP3 player to hog space the non-expandable 10MB should be enough for most people.

Verdict

This slimline phone is good looking enough to distract us from some of its flaws, and for the fashionista on a budget, it could be a sound investment.

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Review Recap

Made by: Motorola
Price as reviewed: £Price dependent on contract
The good: Still looks great, but on a budget
The bad: VGA camera and no MP3 player
Quick verdict: This affordable style option lets people experience the SLVR cool, but without breaking the bank
Score