Motorola RAZR V3

Motorola's Razr V3 mobile phone is a stunning piece of industrial design. The slim clamshell model is sleek and elegant, boasting an anodised aluminium cover, VGA camera, quad-band compatibility and Bluetooth support. A colour screen occupies most of the top half of the clamshell when open, while buttons shaped from a single piece of metal fill the bottom. The 2.2", 262,000-colour TFT display looks extremely bright in just about all lighting conditions, even managing to overcome direct sunlight. The device also has the ability to make the most of the screen and play back MPEG-4 files.

The Motorola unit weighs in at 95g and measures 10 x 5 x 1.4cm, making it one of the slimmest mobile phones on the market. It is quite wide, however, and the keys are large enough so that even those with big fingers won't have a problem entering numbers or punching out SMS messages. But the keys themselves are flat and at times difficult to press. The phone feels solid in the hand and was comfortable to use for long periods of time. The antenna is positioned at the bottom of the hand rest, not in the top cover of the clamshell, allowing Motorola to avoid the top-heavy feel common to many similarly designed mobiles.

The V3 three includes a predictive text system called iTAP, which works in a similar way to the T9 system employed by Nokia. The main difference is that it predicts the word that you are trying to type and outlines it on screen; you simply have to press the up button, and the word is filled in--but it is a little tricky to add punctuation.

The V3 is bundled with a substantial list of accessories including a Bluetooth wireless headset, wired handsfree kit, leather pouch, USB cable and chargers for both the phone and headset; just about all you need. During informal testing, we found the battery lasted four days of average use, including occasionally employing the handsfree kits.

The software CD ships with Mobile Phone Tools, which provides access to basic functions like establishing an Internet connection through your mobile phone, as well as synchronising calendar and contact details to the 5MB of internal memory. It is a simple application that works effectively.

In fact, it mirrored our experience with the phone; the V3 is a simple piece of equipment that looks great and works well. We had one glitch during testing, when it hung up once, but simply turning it on and off fixed the problem, and we couldn't repeat it.