Gadgets and Gizmos

The Motorola V150 is a sort of antidote to the feature packed handsets that are coming out at the moment, in that it’s a simple, elegant phone that still has enough features to go around. The V150 is competing in a difficult part of the market, up against other phones that are typically given away free with even the most basic contracts.

The first thing to notice is that it’s a continuation of the classic clamshell design, and common styling cues can be seen that date all the way back to the original small clamshell, the Motorola StarTac.

At 83.5 x 42 x 26.5mm and 75 grams, the V150 is very compact and lightweight - smaller than most other clamshell phones. The internal display is just 96x65 pixels in 4,000 colours which makes it smaller than most colour phones, typically now 128x128 pixels in 65,000 colours.

It’s only a dual-band GSM 900/1800 phone, and not tri- or quad-band. However, it does come with WAP, GPRS, and USB connectivity, plus polyphonic ringtones, three games, predictive text and vibrating alert, so in our view it keeps the most useful features in a phone and gets rid of those things that are less used.

On most networks, talktime should be over four hours with about 12 days standby time, which is pretty good for a phone this small.