RAZ it again, Moto!

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Here we go, then. No sooner are we used to HSDPA offering data speeds of 1.8Mbps than along comes a handset capable of supporting the next step on the HSDPA ladder, 3.6Mbps. Motorola’s MOTORAZR V3xx is currently available on the 3 network, and is the company’s first handset to sport this newly beefed up 3G speed-merchant flavour of HSDPA.

Don’t get too excited too quickly about this, though. Three’s marketing people tell us that the network will be offering HSDPA some time this year, and hopefully in the first half of the year, but they aren’t being any more specific than that. In the mean time, standard 3G is what you’ll get which is fast, but not super-duper, rival-your-home-broadband-speed fast.

Now, once you get over all the hoop-la hooray of the fact that this phone may be able to connect to the Internet at a speed faster than your home computer and calm down a bit, you might start to see that there is a whole lot about the MOTORAZR V3xx that is nice, and some more that is a way behind what this leading light feature might lead you to desire from a handset.

 

Before we get onto that, let’s mention the other Moto handset that is likely to get confused with the V3xx, the MOTORAZR maxx V6. It is also a 3.6Mbps supporting handset, and it has a many similarities to the V3xx, but a few differences too. Among the latter are that it has some touch sensitive music control keys on its front and a 2.0 megapixel main camera where our review handset has a 1.3 megapixel.

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Anyhow, we said earlier that the MOTORAZR V3xx is not a completely cutting edge handset. In particular that relates to the camera whose megapixel-count is not exactly setting any standards. During testing we found shots weren’t all that wonderful – you need a steady hand to avoid a dose of the old camera-shake, and the camera let in a bit too much light for our tastes.

On the other hand, the lens is positioned such that it faces you when the phone’s clam is closed, faces away from you when the clam is opened, and you can use the front screen, a 96 x 80 pixel 65 thousand CSTN display to frame pix of yourself.

Inside the clam, nestled in the hinge between upper and lower sections, is a VGA camera you’ll be using to make video calls.

Music? But of course, and the quality is pretty good though a headset. Which is just as well, actually, because the headset fitting is Motorola standard mini-USB style rather than good old 3.5mm jack, so using a pair of headphones you like a lot is probably going to present a challenge.

There is 50MB of internal memory for storing tunes, and the player can cope with AAC, MP3 and WMA file formats. If you need more storage space, fret not, because there is a microSD card slot under the battery cover.

You may want to start fretting, though, if you need a mobile that will play music back to you hour after hour, because when we tested it for this capability we got just over four hours from a full charge. Motorola suggests you’ll get 300 minutes talk-time out of it, though, and 120 mins of video talk.

When it comes to ergonomics the MOTORAZR V3xx is a mixed bag. There’s no doubting it is large. With its clam closed it sits 53mm wide, 102.9mm tall and 14.99mm thick in the hand. If your hands are on the small side it might well feel like it is a bit too much to handle.

Flick it open and both screen and keyboard take advantage of the space available to them. The screen is superb – it is clear, sharp, bright and pretty large. OK, you want the detail on that. 2.2 diagonal inches, 262 thousand colours, 240 x 320 pixels.

There is plenty of room for a huge keyboard, and Motorola has used it well. The number keys are all large, the navigation button, softmenu and other shortcut keys ditto.

We say ‘keys’ but actually the keyboard is flat. The flat keyboard is Motorola’s signature and so it is no surprise at all to see it here inside the clam.

It is decked out in silver with blue highlights, by which we mean a blue backlight to the numbers, to the raised bars that separate the numbers, and to various other useful bits and bobs such as the top, bottom left and right points on the navigation button. The backlight is most visible when ambient lighting conditions are low, and it sure makes finding the flat keys easier than the job would be without it.

Apart from the already noted music player and camera there is a range of other apps here, including a Web browser, calendar, calculator, alarm clock, voice recorder, email, MMS, SMS and IM support.

When you choose some apps a submenu pops up offering further options. For example choose the Web browser and you can cycle through such choices as viewing bookmarks or history, entering a URL, or just hopping straight into the browser. It is all graphics rich and you just use the navigation button to get around.

You can personalise the main screen so that the softmenu keys, four points on the navigation button and a side button act as shortcuts to the seven things you like to use the most. That should make getting around fairly painless.

All in all we have mixed feelings about the MOTORAZR V3xx. Once it is available, 3.6Mbps is really going to whiz along. We like the screen, and the large keyboard is about as usable as we’ve ever seen.

But the camera is old hat, the battery life lets things down, and we aren’t too happy about the mini USB headphones connector either.