Motorola MotoSmart review

The Motorola MotoSmart's single-core 800MHz processor is bumping along the bottom end of what you'd expect to find in an Android smartphone these days, although it doesn't completely embarrass itself when it comes to internet use.

The browser is the rather ageing option we've been seeing in Android models for some years now. This means drab grey menus and simple list-based presentation of your History, open tabs and Bookmarks.

Plus there's none of the fancy desktop bookmark sync found in the more advanced browser found in today's Android 4.0 powered models.

But it gets the job done. Pages load and draw quite well, text reflows with a double-tap on a dense area of words, while multi-touch pinch-zooming enables you to manually resize pages in a slow, but bearable manner.

What's missing here is support for Adobe's Flash Player, plus the BBC's new standalone Media Player won't work on the Motorola MotoSmart either, so it's rather left out in the cold when it comes to BBC video support and other Flash applications, of which there are still many.

Text isn't great on the low-res display, either. It's readable, but the 3.5-inch screen and 320 x 480 output combine to make words appear less than sharp.

It will do, but if you're seriously into mobile web use, the Motorola MotoSmart won't be the phone for you.

In terms of general web options, though, Google's got most things covered.

URLs can be shared to Facebook via email and SMS or via Twitter and Bluetooth using the Android sharing menu.

Plus a long-press on the page pops up the text copying tool, complete with start and end tabs for easily nicking someone else's well thought out opinions, and copying them to the clipboard, or directly sharing the highlighted words.