The original Motorola RAZR was a real mobile phone design icon, and one of the best selling handsets ever. But now, over four years down the line from its first appearance, can the next generation ultra-slim MOTORAZR2 still turn heads in the same way?

After all, its sales success means that the RAZR has long since lost any sense of exclusivity. So what can the latest version of the phone possibly offer to recapture that wow factor?

The MOTORAZR2 V8 claims to push the envelope of the design. It is thinner than ever before, being just 11.9mm thick - although its footprint does not really make it a small package. And it also gets a new all-glossy coating rather than the full-metal jacket of before.

Like its predecessors, the V8 does not set out to be the most technologically up-to-date handset around. It's falls way short of this, in fact. It's not a 3G model, for instance, making do with GSM and GPRS for mobile downloads. Its camera is a rather standard 2-megapixel shooter, and as it's not a smartphone you are pretty much stuck with its limited range of onboard applications.

But despite this unpromising start, the MOTORAZR2 V8 still has more than a spark of originality. It's likely that the MP3 player is going to give this phone its greatest appeal. Having an onboard digital music machine, of course, is nothing to write home about - practially all new phones have one - but Motorola has done two things that make this feature more appealing than on the average mobile.

As usual with a clamshell phone, the main display is hidden away when the phone is folded. But when the primary 2.2in internal LCD is out of view, you get the use of a whopping 2-inch external LCD.

This isn't just there to display pretty wallpapers - this outer screen is touch sensitive, so will not just show you the names of the tracks that you have stored away, it will also allow you to use the finger-sensitive buttons to control the player.

Unlike some other touch-controlled phones we have tried, the system of the V8 really works. There is no difficulty in getting the player to pause or to move on to the next track.

What's more, an ingenious bit of programming means that the touch-sensitive controls actually let you know when you have hit the spot; when you press one of these virtual buttons, a small vibration is provided by the phone to acknowledge your command. That eliminates the infuriating double-pressing mistakes that afflict other touch sensitive models.

The external touchscreen is also put into useful service with SMS, allowing you to read incoming messages without having to flip the handset open.

The other feature that makes this digital music player different is that it does not rely on memory cards to get a suitable library capacity. The lack of a smartcard slot would normally be a really turn-off for such a device, but the V8 provides a full 420MB of onboard storage for the user to fill up with music (and other files).

It's a long way short a full-blown iPod's capacity - but it is undoubtedly more than sufficient for many users. And the fact that you do not have to take the cost of a card into consideration when weighing the phone's value for money, also works in the V8's favour.