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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 4 reviews
- See all user reviews
Product summary
The good: The Motorola Slvr L7e is slim, sexy, and very lightweight. It offers a 1.3-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, a music player, a microSD card slot, quad-band EDGE support, and exceptional sound quality.
The bad: The Motorola Slvr L7e has a flat hard-to-press keypad and a generic Motorola music player.
The bottom line: The attractive Motorola Slvr L7e has a few notable upgrades from the L7, such as a megapixel camera and EDGE support, but it still suffers from stiff keys that are a bittoo close to the surface of the phone.
Specifications: Band / mode: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband) ; Combined with: With digital camera / digital player ; Weight: 0.2 lbs See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 11/20/2006
- Released on: 09/08/2006
We must say that the design of the Motorola Slvr L7e is quite improved over that of the Slvr L7. While both phones are skinny and lightweight (the L7e measures 1.9x4.5x0.45 inches and weighs 3.4 ounces), the Slvr L7e has a couple of aesthetic refinements that make it just a tad prettier. First is its beautiful all-blue coating that gives it the appearance of sapphire, and second is its all-new keypad design. The keys are now arranged in curved rows as opposed to the previous offset arrangement, giving it a much more streamlined design. Aside from that, it is pretty much the same in terms of portability and feel--quite solid--and can be easily slipped into a pocket.
The display is carried over from the Slvr L7 as well. It measures 1.8-inches diagonally, and is a beautiful screen that displays 262,000 colors with a 176x122-pixel resolution. You can adjust the display and keypad backlight time, the brightness, and the font size. On the left spine are the volume controls and voice command button; while on the right spine are the charger jack, a "smart" key that can be mapped to any shortcut you like, and a microSD card slot. The camera lens is located on the back of the phone along the top, but the phone does not have a flash or a self-portrait mirror.
Underneath the screen is the aforementioned redesigned keypad. Even though it has a sleeker and more streamlined design, we still found the keypad a bit too crowded, resulting in us pressing more than one button accidentally a few times. The navigation array consists of two soft keys, a four-way toggle that can be mapped to four shortcuts by the user, a middle OK key, a dedicated Web browser key, a back/clear key, and the talk and end/power buttons. The addition of the Back/Clear key is a nice touch, seeing as it was noticeably absent on the Slvr L7. As for the alphanumeric keypad, even though the numbers are raised slightly, the lack of delineation in between each number made it difficult to dial by feel. We also found the slippery keys unpleasant to text message with, seeing as they take a bit more effort to press.
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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