Motorola L6

Available now
18th August 2005

Motorola have been on a bit of a renaming exercise lately - the V1150 became the RAZR V3x, the E790 became the ROKR and now the Motorola SLVRcam V280 looks like it has turned into the Motorola L6.

Clearly inspired by the Motorola SLVR, the tersely named L6 looks similar, but close inspection shows that this is merely cosmetic. The keypad looks to be much more traditional close-up than the SLVR, and it appears to be a much thicker handset. There's no MP3 player, nor is their any removable memory. On the back the the Motorola L6 is a VGA resolution camera, and the L6 can play back MP3 ringtones, capture and playback short video clips and it comes with Bluetooth, instant messaging support, Push-To-Talk and a WAP browser.

Perhaps the best way to think of the Motorola L6 is as a bar version of the Motorola PEBL V6 - something that's reinforced by the similar model designations. As with the PEBL, the L6 is a very good looking phone, and it will appeal to many people because of those looks rather than the L6's specifications. Motorola have also very carefully designed a lot of the details on the L6 to look like the SLVR, giving it a very consistent visual identity.

One technical feature is unclear though - we don't yet know the screen resolution of the Motorola L6, however our close analysis of the publicity shots indicate that it probably has a 176x220 pixel display, probably the same 262,000 colour TFT unit in the PEBL V6.

We're glad that Motorola appear to have dropped the dreadful "Motorola SLVRcam V280" name and go with the "L6" instead. It's a much less muddled name for the product and it retains the "SLVR" branding for other premium handsets. And although the Motorola L6's technical specifications won't blow you away, we think that this is likely to be an attractive and popular handset if sold at the right price.

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