by Liz Brewster

Created on: January 16, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

L6i

I bought this phone second hand (in next to new condition, hardly used [now I know why]) from Ebay, paying a fraction of the RRP, and I am still severely disappointed. (It also isn't the phone I thought I was buying as the auction just listed it as the L6 model) I had next to no expectations going into it, all I wanted a quick, cheap replacement Motorola after my Razr suddenly went out of action. It does have a handful of good points, but you'll quickly see how the negatives outweigh the positive.

Size:
The L6i is a very sleek and slim phone. At just 12mm thick its possible to pat your pocket and not realise its there. On the other hand, it is about 10cm long. In my opinion this is too long. I like to carry my phone in my back pocket. If you lay it horizontally, you get a square ass! And if you stand it vertically, it risks falling out because it's that long. Likewise in front pockets, it just digs into you, no matter what angle you put it at, as soon as you sit down.

The screen is quite large, but again because of the overall size of the phone it looks relatively small. The screen is 128 by 160 pixels and 3cm by 3.5cm

Once you have got the hang of the stupidly organised menus, it's easy to change the backlight brightness and contrast of the screen. When I first got this phone (as I mentioned, second hand) it was slightly faulty, in that the backlight never went out. Obviously this ate horribly at the battery life and I had to charge it at least twice everyday. One day it just decided to work again!

Battery:
The battery in this phone is the same as in several other Motorola's (the BC50). This is quite convenient in that it'd be easy to find a replacement battery

The phone seems to have several battery level issues. The indicator is supposed to go 3bars-green, 2bars-green, 1bar-orange, no bars-red, then flashing red for critical. This phone jumps from 2bars to critical, with nothing in between! Also, if I turn it off with 2bars, and then on again it goes down to critically low instantly.

The charger is the mini-usb kind that comes with a number of Motorola phones. This is also the same connection that is used to charge the phone

Charging:
This phone will not charge from a computer. While it is plugged into the computer, for synchronising and transfer of pictures etc, it claims to be full battery, but as soon as you unplug it, the battery indicator changes back to whatever it was before. Phones before this one (ie supposedly less technologically up-to-date) were all

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