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Similar to its predecessor, though the Slvr L7e is very much a design-first phone, it offers a few notable improvements in terms of features. The Slvr L7e comes with a 1,000-entry address book, and each contact can accommodate up to five numbers, two e-mail addresses, a site URL, a postal address, a birthday, and can be assigned a group, one of 33 polyphonic ring tones, and a photo for picture caller ID. Other features of the L7e include text and multimedia messaging, instant messaging, e-mail, a vibrate mode, voice commands, a calculator, a datebook, an alarm clock, a wireless Web browser, PC syncing, stereo Bluetooth support, and quad-band 3G world phone support. There's also a speakerphone function but you can only activate it during a call. The Slvr L7e also supports push-to-talk and push-to-view, but since those features are carrier-dependent we weren't able to use them on our review unit.
Even though the Slvr L7e doesn't come with iTunes, it does have a built-in music player. The music formats supported are MP3, AAC, AAC+, and AAC+ Enhanced. The interface is pretty bare-bones, and you'll have to control the music via the navigation toggle on the phone. In order to transfer tunes to the device, you can either upload the songs to the microSD card slot, or to the phone's 20MB internal memory.
The Slvr L7e's 1.3-megapixel camera is a marked improvement over the Slvr L7's VGA shooter. There's 8x digital zoom and you can take pictures with four resolutions (1280x960, 640x480, and 320x240, 160x120), three quality settings, six lighting conditions, five exposure settings, the choice of four shutter sounds as well as a silent option, and a self-timer. As for the MPEG-4 video recorder, you can only record with two resolutions (128x96 and 176x144), three quality settings, two recording lengths (one for multimedia messaging and another for a full-length recording), and the ability to toggle the sound recording on or off. Photo quality was actually pretty good, though as with most camera phones, pictures tended to suffer in low-light situations. Videos were quite fuzzy and pixelated, though not unexpected for a camera phone.
You can personalize the Slvr L7e with a slew of customization options as long as you have the browser set up with your choice of carrier. We synced up ours with Cingular's service, and from there you can download wallpaper, screensavers, graphics, and ring tones. You can also upload your own via USB.
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS) world phone in San Francisco using Cingular's service, and it had great reception. Call quality was fairly good, and we like that we heard each other loud and clear without much static. Speakerphone quality wasn't as good, but the calls still came through clearly. We downloaded files and loaded Web pages with ease, thanks to the high-speed EDGE support. As for music, it sounds a lot better when heard through earphones, though the audio quality can't compare to that of a dedicated digital audio player. We managed to pair the Motorola Slvr L7e with the Cardo Scala 700 Bluetooth headset successfully.
The Motorola Slvr L7e has a rated talk time of 6.66 hours and a promised standby time of 17 days. It has an impressive tested talk time of 6 hours. According to FCC radiation tests, the Slvr L7e has a digital SAR rating of 1.48 watts per kilogram.
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"Great Design. Sleek and impressive looks. Keyboard leaves a lot to be desired."
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