Time has failed to blunt the edge of the Motorola Razr. Even though it has been three years since its debut as the 2004 fashionista must-have, it remains the American firm's most iconic design and continues the chic precedence set by the StarTAC in 1996.

Motorola has continued to push the envelope (and girth) of the Razr with successive renditions packing more features, though such efforts have lagged behind similar phones in terms of tech specs. Now the V3xx is Motorola's new standard bearer for trendy 3G phones, though the same question remains: Is it a case of style over substance?

Design
The Razr V3xx is Motorola's thinnest 3G phone. While no one will accuse it of possessing everything but the kitchen sink, it slyly retains the distinctive slickness that makes critics reluctant to fault it.

	So sleek.

Unlike the bulky V3x, the V3xx's 102.9 x 53 x 14.9mm dimensions put it just slightly thicker and longer than the original V3. But the extra length is meant to accommodate the dual camera lenses on the hinge and we like the new sturdy heft of the V3xx.

Design-wise, the V3xx adds a glossy veneer to the faceplate, which, while admittedly classy, is also an effective lure for fingerprints and stains. If you are reading this, dear Motorola phone designer, we would rather like to see an external memory card slot for once, thank you very much.

As a long-time user of the Razr V3, experience says it's rather pointless to have a dust cover for the mini-USB jack--it really makes no difference.

Fortunately our favorite shortcut buttons on the clamshell lid have not gone under the knife, but new users to the Razr experience will find themselves on a learning curve with its paper-thin single-piece keypad. In terms of shortcut softkeys, the V3xx has two more dedicated to the browser and video calls, though we could not retag them to other features.

Internet browsing on the 2.2-inch QVGA screen is a bit of a mixed bag. Though it's plenty bright, the scroll function on the built-in browser is too slow and the vertical orientation of the screen means it's good only for blogs and not standard horizontal sites.

Features
Like we mentioned earlier, the V3xx is no Swiss Army Knife when it comes to features. But for what it's worth, it has enough to cater to the general user. Let's start with the camera. Compared with the V3x's 2-megapixel sensor, the V3xx's 1.3-megapixel lens is an obvious downgrade. The camera itself has the same features we would expect from a bottom-of-the-line digicam, with mundane effects like white balance, digital zoom and tacky color themes.

Motorola probably did not include an LED white light since it wouldn't help the tiny sensor by much anyway. But the omission means the V3xx would be next to useless in low-light conditions.

While we admit that snapping pictures of too-tiny insects does not rate high on our list of life's pleasures, we miss having the V3x's macro mode switch on the V3xx.

There's memory expandability on the phone, but it's battered down as securely as the Alcatraz. Long narrow fingernails are required to remove the stubborn microSD card from its slot, but those with manicured nails might prefer the pointed nib of a pen instead. Dear aforementioned Motorola designer, take note.

The bundled earphones are fugly, and the worst part is we are stuck with it since the V3xx uses a mini-USB slot instead of an audio jack. It's a very good thing the V3xx supports A2DP Bluetooth profile, so we can connect to a pair of snazzy Bluetooth stereo headphones. But we don't appreciate having to go to that expense on top of the accompanying prodigious battery life drain.

There are audio tweaks on the built-in player, but as far as features goes, it's not impressive, other than a spatial audio function which is a dressed-up name for digital sound processing. We also found it distasteful that there's no audio feedback when we were tweaking the bass settings.

Performance
Video calls on the V3xx were pixelated and it's no better than most 3G handsets. When we connected it to a Sony Ericsson Z610i, we found the latter offering slightly clearer definition. We found the auto white balance on the V3xx to be rarely accurate and detected some banding as well.

The HSPDA connection was a joy. We could browse and download music in jiffy and the experience certainly beats anything that the Microsoft Zune could offer.

In our general usage test, the V3xx yielded a talktime of 2 hours 54 minutes over the course of two days with Bluetooth constantly on. The V3xx also clocked a talktime of 4 hours 30 minutes in our endurance test with Bluetooth switched off.

In terms of audio performance, the V3xx is certainly no screamer. Bass was fuzzy on the edges but that could be due to the earphones themselves. We could not benchmark the V3xx with our usual test tracks since the phone was quite unable to handle the 320kbps file.