Motorola Slvr L7 (black, AT&T)

Pros: Great Form factor, ease of use, expandable memory slot

Cons: Poor documentation and missing functionality

Summary: I have owned my SLVR L7 for over 2 weeks now and have had some good times and bad times. I put a lot of thought into this review so I hope everyone finds it helpful. I purchased the phone unlocked because I am a frequent traveller and switch SIM cards alot.

The phone has an excellent group of features. The picture and video recording quality are not great, but you get what you pay for. The expandable memory slot lets you install micro-SD flash cards which can be bought today for bargain prices. Connecting it to a computer is very easy as XP will automatically detect it and mount it as a drive. From there, moving files between your cell phone and computer has never been easier. Furthermore, it will charge through the computer's USB port so you do not have to carry the charger around everywhere you go! The speakerphone in the phone is excellent and a real asset. Playback of MP3s and videos over the speakerphone also delivers good sound quality.

That said, there are some very serious drawbacks to the phone and I feel that Motorola simply dropped the ball. Its a shame because this phone has so much potential:

1) Poor documentation. The manual that comes with the phone and Motorola's own website provide very basic documentation and is not informative when you run into problems. More of this will become clearer in the other points.

2) Video files (MPEG) moved to the correct directory on the memory card are not detected or playable by the phone. I assume only specific formats/codecs are supported, but the manual and online documentation do not tell which formats and codecs you should stick to.

3) Unlocked phones will not come with iTunes. Only those bundled with a carrier will support iTunes. Again this is not mentioned in their documentation and it took hours of trial & error and forum surfing to find this out. The reason that Motorola went this way is unlcear. You can still load and play normal MP3s from your memory card.

4) Audio playback: the phone comes with no 3.5mm audio jack. I bought a mini-usb to 3.5mm audio adapter and hooked up my headset, but music still plays back through the speaker phone. It makes no sense that this would be marketed as a MP3/iTunes capable phone and then provide no support for headsets. Bluetooth headsets will not play sound as the phone does not support music/MP3 streaming over bluetooth.

5) MP3s stored on the memory card cannot be used as ring tones. You must move the MP3 to the local phone memory to use it as a ring tone. This proves problematic because the phone only comes with 6MB of memory.

I'm no expert but it seems like a lot of these problems and missing functionality can be fixed by Motorola with a software update.