Motorola Slvr L6 (silver, AT&T)

3.5 stars

"Very Functional Phone, but...." on May 17, 2006 by mspc

Pros: Very good reception, nice design and light weight

Cons: Documentation, limited Voice Dial capability, Camera, and button size

Summary: I have only had this phone for about three weeks, but have decided that it is a good functional, but basic, phone for my needs. This phone replaced a Motorola T720 clam shell design. Over the years I learned to hate the T720 for a variety of reasons, mostly the top closing too easily when trying to operate it with one hand and cutting off the call. It also had some reception problems and a poor ear piece. I considered the L7, but the features it had beyond those of the L6 were not of consequence to me, so I couldn't justify the $100+ difference just to get black.

I am a pretty basic cell phone user, my requirements were, better reception than with the T720, no clam shell, voice dial capability and a good speaker phone.

The L6 has much better reception and overall is very functional than my old phone so that was addressed


As a candy bar design it met the second criteria. It is slim and light weight. I find it easy to handle, although it is a susceptible to the screen getting dirty. I am a bit concerned about the facia being damaged easily, but so far it doesn't show much damage.

Before I bought it I asked how many voice dial names you could set up, the salesman said "about 30-35, but don't quote me on that". There is nothing in the documentation about it, but as it turns out it will support a grand total of 5, yes 5, phone stored (you can't do any on the SIM) voice dial numbers. After you set up five, you don't get a message telling you anything about voice dial being full, you just don't get the menu option on any other stored numbers to set up voice dialing. Rather Cheesy, but the voice dial does work well.

The buttons are a bit small, and I don't have big fingers and the layout is not obvious at times. The turn-on and turn-off buttons are too much alike, but that is just me. It still requires two hands to dial (which is what I wanted Voice Dial to avoid).

The camera and screen are pretty marginal for picture use, but that is not a big priority with me.

The speaker phone is pretty decent. I have used it and found that for the most part the speaker does fine and the other party doesn't have problems understanding me. I haven't used it much in the car as I try to avoid that distraction so I don't know how well the speaker phone deals with a noisy enviornment. The voice dial and speaker phone features were two that I wanted for that purpose.

The documentation that accompanies the phone is pretty difficult to follow at time. It doesn't do a very good job of taking the user step by step through set up of some features, such as voice dial. It certainly doesn't tell you about any such limitations. It took my daughter to figure out the voice dial setup for me.

Since I have a thirty day return capability, I could return it if I wanted, but overall I am satisfied enough to keep it. Not thrilled, but the only real annoyance is the limitation of the number of names for voice dialing. I decided 5 was going to have to be enough, but there should be some documentation about that limitation. As I have looked at the various reviews of this phone on the net, no one mentions this either which I find odd.