Customer Reviews

Motorola SLVR L7 Unlocked Phone with Camera, MP3/Video Player, and MicroSD Slot--International Version with No Warranty (Black)

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

This is a very nice phone. Call reception and battery life are excellent on the Cingular network. The iTunes features work fine but it won't replace my iPod nano any time soon. This phone has a very solid feel to it. The SLVR is not without flaws but show me a phone that isn't.

PROS:

Very solid, slim and sexy.
iTunes
Quad band
Expandable memory
Excellent reception
Excellent battery life
Bluetooth

CONS:

Camera (0.3 megapixel is pathetic in this day and age)
No high speed data (EDGE)
100 song cap on iTunes (not shocking, Apple still wants to sell iPods)
No dedicated headphone jack ( form over function compromise)
USB 1.1 transfer is VERY slow
Same old Moto OS ( Contacts list Stinks)

Conclusion:

If you're looking for a very sexy looking phone that has excellent reception and battery life I can think of no better choice than the SLVR. If you need a smart phone or all the latest bells and whistles there are better choices.

Update - Cingular sent me a replacement for my SLVR. It has the same problems. That's three phones out of three - two for me and one for my daughter - with the same problem. Lockups and intermittent operation. I finally figured out part of the problem. Whenever an attempted voice dial fails, whether it was an intentional dial or an accident of pressing the button by mistake or pressing the headset button too long, then the phone will not make or receive any calls until you power it off and on again. At least now, if I am really careful how I handle it, my phone works most of the time. My suggestion is not to buy this phone for another 6 months or a year!

Original review follows:
This is a great phone when it works. There was a report this week on CNN about the RAZR phones that were sold late February 2006 and early March 2006 being recalled for a software bug. It is my guess that the SLVR, which is a close relative of the RAZR, has the same bug because my SLVR only works about half the time. Most of the time, when I try to make a call, the display will say "Calling xxxxxxx" but it just hangs there until I click End, even up to 20 minutes with nothing happening.

Any time I don't use my bluetooth headset for a few hours and then try to use it, the bluetooth on the phone will have quit working and to get it working again, I have to power the phone off and on again.

My daughter has the same phone and has the same problems.

When it works, though, it is a great phone. The iTunes holds only 100 songs, like the other reviews said, but that's an iTunes issue - it treats this like an iPod Nano.

Cingular is sending me a replacement for my SLVR and, hopefully, it will work better and have these issues resolved. In the mean time, I suggest giving more time for the bugs to be worked out. Once it becomes more reliable, I would highly recommend the phone.

I must say I was a bit shocked when I read some of the negative reviews. I buy a new cell phone every couple of months. I got this SLVR thru Cingular. But I like new gadgets. So, sometimes I buy an unlocked phone and change the sim. I have tried countless phones from Nokia, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson and Panasonic. This is my favorite so far. It is thin, sleek and easy to operate. I always laugh when I hear people complain of the Motorola menu or interface. These are people that most-likely started out on a different brand and expect every cell phone manufacturer to use that same menu. Every brand has their quirks. And, most cell phone users have their quirks.
On my SLVR I have 50 songs loaded with room for that many more. It accepts the super-small Transflash card, included. I love the fact that there is also an included connection from the USB port that allows you to use your own headphones. In addition, no one makes better bluetooth headsets than Motorola and this phone connects to it easily, with a crisp clear sound.
The only thing I would change is the color. It is a deep, almost black, brown color. I would prefer silver or matte black. I have not encountered any software problems and I have had the phone since the first week it came out.

This phone is great! I love everything about it; size, function, quality, battery life, iTunes. The ONLY negative thing I can say about it is that it has USB 1 and not the faster USB 2. But the phone charges itself while it's connected to the computer updating iTunes so the slow download doesn't bother me.

Apple has limited the phone to 100 songs. The 512MB micro card is sufficient for about 75 songs at a time (saved at 192kb) - not a 60GB iPod, but plenty for on-the-go music enjoyment. The iTunes integration with the phone is very nice; sleek and easy, but you cannot use iTunes for ringtones (those MP3's are stored in on the internal 5MB memory - like on other phones that utilize MP3 ringtones).

Honestly, I really do like my SLVR. It's sleek and it does everything it's supposed to do. But there is one major problem: the iTunes volume control. iTunes has volume settings 0-7, with "0" being silent. The problem is that setting "1" is as loud as my regular ipod turned up to 2/3 of its maximum volume! this is just too loud a lot of the time. I couldn't use it in the office or when I wanted to listen quietly. It's even a little too loud for walking around outside.

I contacted Motorola about this, but they denied that it was a widespread problem and said they had no plans to fix it, even though it has been mentioned in reviews of the phone. I was forced to do a sloppy fix by buying some new headphones with an in-line volume control. This works for listening to iTunes, but creates another problem. With the included heaphones, if the phone rings while you are listening to music, you can just press a button on the cord to answer. With any other headphones, you must fish the phone out of your pocket and disconnect the cord before you can answer. It's not a major thing, but it is an annoyance.

I got an unlocked SLVR a couple weeks ago and am really pretty happy with it. As a prior user of three Sony Ericsson phones, I became used to their intuitive user interface and how seamlessly they synched up with my Mac and PC. There's also a lot of software available for the SE's. It's possible that the SLVR is still too new, and that's the reason for the limited the level of intependent software available for it. The phone reception is a bit better than the SE (T610) and tends to work in places my T610 didn't. The music interface on the SLVR works just like iTunes (songs, genres, albums artists, etc.), but it doesn't sync up via iTunes on your computer like your iPod does. Rather you must drag+drop the music onto the phone's SIM card (there are a couple different ways to do this, which aren't too difficult) It's just too bad this isn't seamless via iTunes like the Cingular versions. As for new software/firmware updates, I spoke with R&D at Moto, and they said there aren't any plans to make the non-Cingular versions compatible with iTunes, nor are they working on a Mac version of their synching software. The phone does sync nicely if you use iSync to sync it with your Mac Address Book or Entourage, however. In all I recommend this phone for many of its useful features and stunning good looks... and I'm just getting used to keying and scrolling through the somewhat antiquated and cumbersome address book.

After reviewing dozens of quad-band multi function phones, I decided on Cingular's Motorola SLVR7 and am not disappointed in it at all. It is very easy to set up and use--and I'm an over 50 grandmother who is a musician. It's perfect for my orchestral work because I can load it with the music I'm getting ready to perform and listen while I'm on a plane, etc. I'm glad I didn't buy an MP3 player because this is like a twofer! It has great reception as a phone and the signal is strong and clear. I can actually hear it when it rings inside my purse. Excellent! And, I bought the hot pink one--of course!

This review is for the Cingular version of SLVR 7, not the unlocked version. It's not clear why the vastly more popular RAZR isn't available in the US with iTunes rather than the less spectacular SLVR model. I've always had flip phones. I like them for compactness and their screen/keyboard protection.

Basically SLVR is RAZR in a candy bar form factor. It's a little too tall to fit in a pants pocket for sitting down. As this is a new phone, accessories are hard to come by, including custom holsters.

iTunes works as advertised. The interface is adequate if not a peppy as an iPod. The 100-song limit is a mystery except maybe they wanted to disguise the slow upload speed. It has a very PC-like interface so it's pretty clunky to navigate. (Rumors of Apple designing a phone make me hope that finally a firm with some user interface expertise will enter the cell phone market!)

Motorola's radio electronics are the best in the business, but the rest of the hardware is poorly designed. The keyboard is difficult to use. I have to press the keys with my fingernails to not double press keys -- and I have small hands! The bizarre EMU Port isn't compatible with anything, so can only use Motorola's awful headset with the phone AND iTunes. There are no quality stereo headsets with microphones (wired or unwired) that will allow you to use both as of this writing. I suspect this is true for RAZR as well. My phone did come with a 3.5mm adapter to plug in good headphones, but when the phone rings you have to unplug the EMU adapter to answer a call. I tried using an adapter with my 2.5mm headset but I could only hear sound for system tones and iTunes. When it switched to phone mode, the sound was muted and apparently the microphone didn't work either. The phone needs an ESC(ape) key to help dig yourself out of dead-end menus for which none of the 3 choices is what you want. It could also use a HOME key to quickly take you back to the top menu, rather than having to go backward 15 levels.

I could live without the camera, which takes only fair pictures. Many places now confiscate your phone if it has a camera. The Cingular version wastes a lot of valuable storage real estate with silly "protected" images and movies that you can't delete.

The web browser is too slow, clunky (and expensive on Cingular) to be useful. I downloaded a few games. This was easier to do on my computer then have them sent to the phone. Their performance is acceptable but the screen is really too small -- if you want games, I'd suggest something the size of a Blackberry. Also, the phone keypad is pretty useless if you want to do any kind of text messaging.

Although the manual says you can't use iTunes for ringtones (which is true) you can use standard mp3s. You just have to connect the USB cable and drag them to the mounted RAM card, then move them to the phone RAM and assign the tone. You could also email them to yourself. Any music or sound effect could be used as a ring tone but you will need some kind of editing software (or use Trim in Apple Quicktime) to keep the length under 20 seconds. Copy protected material will have to be burned to CD first then re-imported. It seems silly to pay $2 for a 20 second ringtone when you could buy the whole song on iTunes (or perhaps you already paid for it), but you will have to go through a few steps to prep it for ringtones. Just to be clear though, you can't use ringtones directly from iTunes, you can only use sounds stored in the multimedia folder.

SLVR syncs (using iSync) with my Macintosh calendar and address book very well. Each phone number on someone's "card" in your address book becomes a separate "card" in the phone, so this can be a bit of a hassle to scroll through. You'd get even more cards if you turn on the mail and fax number feature (defaults off). The calendar sync has a bug duplicating repeating events with each sync. Otherwise the functionality of the phone calendar and phone book are acceptable.

The voice recognition feature works fine but unlike phone network-based systems, you will have to teach the phone each name (twice). A daunting task for several hundred names.

Voicemail integration with Cingular is non-existent. It dials the voicemail number but then you're on your own with a generic DTMF interface. They on-screen commands do nothing.

The phone has fax capabilities but apparently no scripts to interface with computers. And I couldn't find any for RAZR either. This seems to me to be part of basic business functionality. Sure you could fax a note from the text interface on the phone...you might have this sentence typed in 2 hours.

This is the first new phone I've bought in 5 years and I have to say I'm pretty disappointed with the overall lack of integration to the phone network and standard computer peripherals. Manufacturers waste too much R&D on coming up with new designs and geeky gimmicks like ring tones while you still can't send a fax from your PC.

The SLVR is the latest in Motorola's jazzy line of phones including the PEBL and the RAZR(apparently spelled that way because vowels are no longer hip.) The SLVR is a phone that is designed to attract Nokia fans with the candybar format, but with the sleekness and design edge of the new Moto line.

Quality wise this is a step above the RAZR and the PEBL. Features are much better than the PEBL, and reliability is improved over the RAZR. And this is defintely a conversation starter. Currently available unlocked or through Cingular GSM providers. The music player capability with the removable memory card the SLVR has is by far the best feature besides the design. Beats the pants out of the ITunes phone. Very much a conversation piece as a phone. It just looks sleek. But don't expect anything revolutionary. You are paying for the look and feel of this phone. Bear that in mind when you purchase.

The SLVR L7 (in my opinion) is one of the sleekest, feature-packed cell phones out there. Unfortunately, my provider (T-Mobile) doesn't offer this phone, so I went with this unlocked phone from Amazon.com. The plus is that I had absolutely no problem using this phone with T-Mobile.
The down side is that this is a hobbled phone. ALL menu options for connecting a Bluetooth device are not only disabled, but are completely missing from this phone. To add injury to insult, the features that would allow you to connect the phone to a PC via USB are also missing/disabled.
I confirmed this through a lengthy call to Motorola's tech support, who informed me that it would be impossible to enable the Bluetooth on the unlocked phone - even IF they did support it. Which they do not.
The bottom line is that the phone's firmware cannot be updated to enable Bluetooth. For me, this is a dealbreaker ... especially living in California, where it will be illegal to drive and talk on a cell phone without a headset beginning in January, 2008. Sadly, I have returned this phone to Amazon due to the fact that it does not meet the description for the item. I wanted to write this review to alert potential buyers of this ... if I had known about the phone's limitations, I would have not purchased it.