Motorola's Z10 is a quirky little handset. It follows on from the groundbreaking Z8 in general design. It looks like a slider, and indeed it is a slider, but with a twist. Or rather, with a bend.

As you push the upper and lower sections of this phone apart the handset seems to bend and you finish up with a phone that sits along the curve of your face when you are on a call. This clever little manoeuvre is achieved thanks to a hinge in the back casing. Quite simple, but effective.

The phone is fairly tall when closed and around 140mm tall when opened, so don't opt for it if you are not a fan of longer handsets. You should avoid it if you dislike flat buttons, too: we found those on the front particularly fiddly to use.

The phone runs a version of UIQ. This operating system is more usually seen in touch screened smartphones from Sony Ericsson, but here it is in a small (2.2-inch) screened handset. The OS did run a bit slow for us and was a little frustrating. Really you expect a mobile phone to react like lightning when you press a button and that was not always the case here.

What really matters about this handset, though, is none of the above, but its video shooting capability. It shoots at 30 frames per second and you can upload to the Web directly from the handset. HSDPA makes this a fast process, though watch those data charges.

You can edit the video you shoot on the phone itself, choosing extracts from any sequence of footage to splice together, applying transition effects and adding audio if you aren't happy with what the phone's mic recorded. We found this process rather fiddly and wouldn't want to do it too often, but we can see how it could be fun on occasions.

Just like its predecessor the Z8, the Z10 can play video too. It comes with the three Bourne movies on a 1GB microSD card. Now, they do run, and so you could sit and watch them. But why you'd want to do this on such a tiny screen we really aren't sure.

There is a front-facing camera for video calling, music playback, and a huge amount of built-in software. Mobile e-mail is supported, there is a calendar, alarms, calculator, voice recorder and so on. And if you are a Sky+ user then you might find the copy of Sky Anytime that is pre-installed quite handy. This can be used to set the box remotely.

Verdict
The novel physical design will appeal to some, but the idea of watching movies - or editing your own - on the small screen seems like bit of a stretch to us.

Company: Motorola

Contact: 01256 790790

Tags: sony ericsson microsd sky anytime mobile phone operating system handset android xperia