Motorola Gleam feature phone hits Carphone Warehouse

Motorola Gleam - available in 'graphite gray' and 'thistle' (white)
Motorola Gleam - available in 'graphite gray' and 'thistle' (white)

Motorola has revealed a new 'slim and stylish' flip phone in the shape of the Motorola Gleam, which is available from Carphone Warehouse now.

It may look familiar; that's because 'great design never goes out of fashion', according to Motorola, which may or may not have had a team of five rooting through the bins for rejected RAZRdesigns for months.

It's not just about looks though; the handset comes with all the mod cons: FM radio, MP3 player, 2MP camera with video capture mode and even a matrix! That's an LED matrix, which displays friendly little messages like 'hello' on the lid.

Information superhighway

As well as being able to send and receive SMS and MMS messages, the dual-band handset supports electronic mail – that's email, to the kids. There's even WAP 2.0 browser support!

Not to be sniffed at is the microSD support for up to 16GB and the 2.4-inch QVGA screen which can play videos in landscape mode – fancy.

There may not be Android or iOS or Windows Phone or apps of any kind, but there is a 3.5mm headphone jack and Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support so it's not all bad.

We mock, but the Motorola Gleam will set you back just £49.95 – that's a darn sight cheaper than an iPhone. And Motorola has managed to get a white (or, to use Moto's sobriquet, 'thistle') model out from the get go, which is more than Apple can say for the iPhone 4.

But lest we forget, this is a phone based on the RAZR - the handset that nearly sank the brand after Motorola kept re-releasing the same model over and over again before it realised it should try, you know, making new phones instead... we can't help but fear its very presence.

News Editor (UK)

Former UK News Editor for TechRadar, it was a perpetual challenge among the TechRadar staff to send Kate (Twitter, Google+) a link to something interesting on the internet that she hasn't already seen. As TechRadar's News Editor (UK), she was constantly on the hunt for top news and intriguing stories to feed your gadget lust. Kate now enjoys life as a renowned music critic – her words can be found in the i Paper, Guardian, GQ, Metro, Evening Standard and Time Out, and she's also the author of 'Amy Winehouse', a biography of the soul star.