Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Motorola SLVR L7 Review

Functionally, due to its thinness, an all plastic casing would have been too fragile. Therefore a hybrid glass-filled body was created for stability and rigidity; durable enough to withstand everyday wear and tear and the occasional bump or drop.

Featured on the front, a 262K-color LCD screen displayed images at up 176 x 220 px in resolution. A 5-way navigational keypad is surrounded by Menu, Send, Power / End, and Left and Right soft keys, while the numeric keypad allows for iTAP predictive text messaging.

Due to the design of the SLVR, conventional raised keys could not have been used since it would have increased the thickness significantly. To bypass this, Motorola instead covered a keypad in nickel-plated copper-alloy, chemically-etching numbers and symbols into an electro-luminescent strip and finishing it off with a metallic spun finish. The result is an innovative wafer-thin keypad that illuminates a light glow in the dark.

Turned around, the back contains the lens to the 0.3-megapixel VGA camera. Although the lens is always exposed, Motorola has used hardened glass instead of a lens cover to avoid any scratches that may occur.