As usual, we gave the review phone to a dealer, a distributor and a hard-nosed real-world user to get the all-round view. Here’s the retailer’s opinion ...Dealer's VerdictHow do you rate the appearance?At first sight the PEBL looks a bit odd, like a pregnant stone, but the tall external screen with its characteristic skyscraper like digital clock and the general look and feel of the matt black case won me over. (I have seen this phone in other colours too, a metallic grey and dark red, and they look equally good.) Once your customer has one of these in their hands – it feels heavy, but pleasantly so – you have virtually made the sale. Opening the clamshell is another impressive aspect, because you don’t have to physically flip up the lid – movie it down a little and the hinge takes over to pop it up. Inside is the etched RAZR-type keyboard and a reasonable screen (262K colour, 176x220 pixels as used in the majority of Motorola’s clamshells).What was the best feature?It looks and feels great, but it also has some technical pluses. The voice dialling is very good, even on a busy street, though we were not so successful at using voice commands to navigate around the menus. Also good is the predictive text, which is better than the T9 on many handsets. I liked the main menu, which could be the usual nine icons or a list. You can customise the menu to a great extent, for example to change order of the icons or the list items, and to specify your own choice of functions for two of the soft keys. What was the least impressive feature?The camera is no better than average, even for a VGA 0.3mp camera. Battery life is poor too.How good is the display?Pretty good – rich colours, 176x220, well up to the standard of say Sharp and nearly as good as Samsung. As with many Motorolas, though, the image is quite hard to see in sunlight How about the camera?Not great: see above. It’s ok for snaps and for taking pics of people to associate with addressbook entries. You can also use it for videos, but they aren’t anything special either. What is your overall opinion?It is very obviously a fashion phone rather than a mould-breaking technology pace-setter. The specification is quite modest and probably harks back a couple of years to the V600. But as a fashion phone it is a real star. SPECIFICATIONSize Length 87mmWidth 49mmDepth 20mmWeight 110 gMain display176x220 pixels256K coloursCamera 0.3mp, VGA, video Messaging SMS, MMS, EmailConnectivity Bluetooth, USB Battery Standby 180 hoursTalk time 4 hoursMarks out of 10….Appearance 9/10Functionality 7/10Saleability 10/10Hit or Miss? Hit
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