Motorola SLVR L7e / L7i / L71
Average Ratings
Good Phone
Signal Strength- 4
Screen- 5
Battery- 4.5
User Friendly- 4.5
Features- 4
Camera- 2
Clear talk and listen, almost loud enough with background noise. Sturdy, small size,good data transfer, and bluetooth quality. Small keypad, I have medium sized fingers, and don't have problems, people with large fingers would be better served with a Razr.
Great form factor, but not prefect
i bought this phone for its form factor and for that, it gets five stars. Yet, even as a minimal cell phone user, i had some high expectations when ordering this phone.
Background:
- SF Bay Area
- Tmobile 2 Go (prepaid)
Pros:
- great form factor. thinner than a razr, but slightly taller and narrower.
- better feature set than a comparably priced Razr (V3i) including: stereo bluetooth, higher capacity memory card support, EDGE
- very clean, bright screen
- plays mp4 videos very nicely off of the micro SD card. [i bought a 1gb one]
Cons:
- signal reception is mediocre: granted, i'm using tmobile prepaid which doesn't have fabulous coverage, but this phone's reception is definitely a stepdown from my cheap, but very good signal strength Nokia 6010.
- built in music player is really lame: can't run in the background; doesn't retain ID info for AAC to include artist/album info nor show album art.
- OS seems slow compared to some other phones i've used.
Neutrals:
- keypad is only ok...better layout than the original SLVR, but still, the tactical feedback is nothing that spectacular.
- camera is good for what it is, but it's unclear that the 1.3 mp buys anything over the VGA resolution except a bigger so-so picture. (ie, no real gain in image quality in the end even if it is higher res)
Ruminations:
- in hindsight, i realized that being on the bleeding edge and buying a new model like this, i don't have advantage of months of wisdom from the modders nor as much support as i'd like to work with Mac OS X. hopefully both of these issues will be rectified in the months ahead...
Overall: a decent enough phone. my only real complaint is it's receptivity, but i'm living in a bad zone for tmobile and used to a phone that could pick up a signal almost anywhere.
