NEC L1 mobile phone

Posted by T3 Online on Thu 25 Oct 2007

NEC takes on Motorola's iconic RAZR.

NEC has joined Motorola in the battle of the disappearing waistlines. This is officially the slimmest handset in the world, beating Motorola's RAZR V3 by 2mm, though it seems much thinner.

Despite its flatness, it feels like a premium-priced phone should. When closed, this is a cool-looking customer - a smart OLED outer screen display gives info about battery life, signal strength and caller ID, albeit under a clear panel that smears too easily.

Alas, it's more stylish closed than it is open, as the keypad and the surround for the LCD are the usual bland, plastic Far Eastern fare - a far cry from the RAZR's flat metal keys and mix of angles and curves. If it wasn't so slim, you wouldn't think it was anything special.

The interface is a bit disappointing, too, with illogical navigation - there are just too many different buttons to press and there are more options on screen at any one time than is strictly necessary. The ugly menu icons aren't helped by a screen which, although bright, isn't very sharp or colourful by today's standards.

Other niggles include the lack of a card slot, so you're stuck with just 26MB of internal memory for storing MP3s or snaps from the 1.3-megapixel camera. At least the quality of camera is better than Motorola's lo-res effort. We got just over two hours' talk time out of the battery, which is a bit shocking, although that's probably down to the tiny battery which has been used to keep the handset's dimensions so small. Still, it's much worse than you'd expect for the price.

Perhaps in trying too hard to emulate Moto's iconic handset, NEC has carried over some of its user-unfriendliness. This is little more than an overpriced RAZR with a better camera - and that isn't enough to make it cutting-edge.