Motorola SLVR L7 Review

Just at the last moment the company of Motorola renamed its fashion line phones and assigned an L index to them (see details on this point in the review of L2/L6). For now, the top model is the L7 aka SLVR (coming from "sliver"). The device is interesting for its size being thinner than Motorola RAZR V3 and slightly larger (113.5x49x11.5 mm against 98x5313.9 for the RAZR). During the development of the Blade family, this device got a poetical name of Royal Blade, which was to stress the role of the phone and position in the line. But do not think the company decided on making it expensive from the very beginning, a traditional candy bar form-factor and the same feature set as in Motorola RAZR V3 (except for memory card support) couldn't form an extremely expensive product. The company representatives think the SLVR is the device for people who didn't have time to buy RAZR for some reason. As a bonus besides low price additional functionality as memory cards is provided


Messages. The default memory capacity for 100 SMS is provided; it may also vary depending on the software version. As a rule, operator versions are limited by 40 messages. The device works with EMS. Automatic cleaning of the whole message list should be mentioned as an extra possibility; there is a list of templates. Delivery report may be on permanently or switched on/off for a message


Office applications. This menu features a whole bunch of office applications such as the Calculator. It's convenient, the full digital keyboard is present on the screen, it reproduces the real keyboard perfectly. The menu features memory options and the unit converter.


Games and applications. The phone supports Java MIDP 2.0, all applications that are located in this menu item are based on this technology. The number of games and their title depends on where the phone was bought. The most often to find are Rebels (a space shooter) and Crazy (plain Worms, not very interesting



Multimedia. The phone supports themes. It's a set of wallpapers, color schemes for the menu, sounds and ring tone types. You can change the outlook of your phone almost instantly and this is really fun. New themes can be downloaded from Motorola's website.

The themes haven't changed; there are three of them - a standard, Techno, Scarlet. They not only change a colour menu representation but interface windows, the whole interface of the phone changes.


Camera. The device is equipped with a VGA-camera, which is a typical solution well known by all the triplets, no flash as well as any peculiarities. The camera is quite enough to take photos of people and use the photos in the phone book.

The camera allows not only taking photos but also recording video (3GP). The record may be called from the multimedia menu and then video. The duration of a record may be limited for a MMS or maximum (about 30 seconds). Two resolutions are supported 128x96 pixels and 176x144 pixels. Voice recording may be turned off. The quality of the video is average and the artifacts are seen on the screen. That was hard to expect the device will show any eminent features in recording video and it is typical and doesn't differ from other models. The time that saving the video takes almost equals that necessary for recording and that is a disadvantage.

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General Network GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900
Announced 2005, 1Q
Status Coming Soon
Size Dimensions 113 x 49 x 11.5 mm
Weight 85 g
Display Type TFT, 256K colors
Size 176 x 220 pixels, 9 lines
- Downloadable wallpapers, screensavers
Ringtones Type Polyphonic (24 channels), MP3
Customization Download
Vibration Yes
Memory Phonebook 1000 entries, Photo call
Call records 10 dialed, 10 received, 10 missed calls
Card slot microSD (TransFlash)
- 11 MB total memory
- 6 MB free user memory
Features GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots)
Data speed 32 - 48 kbps
Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Email
Clock Yes
Alarm Yes
Infrared port No
Games Yes + downloadable
Colors
Camera VGA, 640x480 pixels, video
- Bluetooth
- Push to talk
- Java MIDP 2.0
- MP3/MPEG4 player
- WAP 2.0
- T9
- Calendar
- Built-in handsfree
- Voice memo
Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion 820 mAh
Stand-by Up to 140 h
Talk time Up to 4 h