New Motorola phone expensive, unnecessary but pure class

The thinnest phone of its kind in the world at just 1.4cm thick may lure users back to clamshells.

I've owned a lot of mobile phones over the years but never a Motorola. Maybe it's because I'm not a big fan of clamshell phones, which Motorola has traditionally been strong on.

Having said that, the V3, a high-end phone that's the thinnest of its kind in the world, is finally making me rethink my phone preferences.

The single most striking thing about the V3 is its design.

It's just 1.4cm thick and wrapped in a sleek metallic case of aircraft-grade aluminium. You would think that would weigh the phone down, but it's surprisingly light. You won't notice it in your pocket. The metal makes the phone cool to the touch - at least when you're not speaking into it, anyway.

Rather than raised keys, the keyboard consists of a floaty metallic number pad.

The numbers and symbols have apparently been chemically etched onto the metal. It's a nice look and the keyboard is easy to navigate.

An external screen will tell you the time, who is calling and display a nice wee picture. Inside, a crisp 2.2-inch LCD screen delivers 176 x 220 pixel resolution. It's a pleasure to look at.

There's no antenna sticking up, which is a common feature of clamshell phones.

On the V3, the antenna is instead built into the bottom of the phone, below the microphone you speak into. This also acts to redistribute some of the weight of the phone to the palm of your hand. The result - it feels pretty good to hold.

An SD (secure digital) or mini SD removable storage slot would have been nice for storing photos and using the phone as an mp3 player. If you're designing a device that stylish, you may as well take a poke at Apple's iPod market share as well.

Interestingly enough, Apple is teaming with Motorola to put its iTunes software on Motorola phones. Eventually you will be able to download songs to your mobile phone.

The partnership may be the reason why Motorola isn't aggressively pursuing plans to put a high-capacity music player into its phones just yet.

Maybe an Apple-Motorola designed phone is on the cards.

The V3's VGA camera is nothing special. There are much better camera phones on the market for much less; multimedia messaging is not a main intended use of this device.

The camera doesn't record video clips but, strangely enough, the V3 does have a video player built in, presumably for video clips downloaded from the internet.

With just 5MB (megabytes) of onboard memory, you won't really have room for video clips anyway.

In fact, the V3 is pretty basic in functionality.

Sure, it is a quad-band phone so can be used virtually wherever there is a GSM network.

And it has Bluetooth for wireless connection to a head-set, computer or other phone.

But as far as the software features are concerned, there's not too much to get excited about.

Motorola's standard calendar and voice memo features are thrown in, as is Motomixer, a fairly basic ringtone editor.

Web access is via a WAP browser. The V3 isn't set up with the Vodafone Live interface but you can access Vodafone's news and entertainment services through the WAP browser if you wish.

Battery life and signal reception were impressive and the V3 has a nice polyphonic speaker that will play mp3 music files as ring tones.

It's expensive and unnecessary but the V3 is pure class and knows its target market - the elite of mobile phone buyers.

At the end of the day, the movers and shakers have their Blackberries and Pocket PCs to do the number crunching and website surfing. The V3 phone might be just the stylish accessory with which they can impress clients.

Motorola Razr V3

* Pros: Stylish, lightweight, big, clear screen

* Cons: Fairly basic functionality, no Bluetooth headset included

* Price: $999

* Herald Rating: 7/10