Motorola RAZR2 V8

Iconic mobile's facelift takes years off it.

A good sequel is hard to pull off, as anyone who endured The Matrix Reloaded will testify. But after years of producing disappointing sequels to its own work of genius, the RAZR V3, Motorola has finally come good with this, the V8.

It's essentially the shape familiar to millions of users worldwide, although marginally thinner and with a bigger screen, but that familiar shell is now stuffed with spanking new technology.

This is the first phone to use a touchscreen with physical feedback. Tap the lush, two-inch pad on the front and it vibrates, giving you a real feeling that the key you've touched is actually being responded to. You use it to read and reply to texts and to control the music player, which happily pals up with Windows Media Player at one end and A2DP earphones at the other.

The overall look of the RAZR2 V8, as you'd expect from a Motorola mobile, is triple-sexy with an extra dose of sultry sauce. You'll struggle to find a seam anywhere on the phone's surface, and being wrought from steel and toughened glass it's reassuringly solid, too. The inside display has been polished too, with twice the resolution of the original.

The interface is also far better than the original's menu-heavy cack fest. There's still no card slot, but there's a choice of 512MB or 2GB internal memory and the two-meg camera's improved, although we doubt Nikon are panicking just yet.

Some of Moto's attempts to update the RAZR have been more number two than Superman II, but this is the real deal.