Motorola has reinvented the slider phone with the Z8, a multimedia-focussed handset that runs a tweaked Smartphone operating system.

The marketing for this handset is all about its fancy design and multimedia features, but before we get to those let's quickly drop in the fact that the phone runs on UIQ. This is an operating system more usually associated with Sony Ericsson's P-series handsets. It is complex, well featured and runs on a touch-screen. But not here.

Here it is somewhat redesigned, its PC data synchronising features are played down and it has lost the touch-screen. You are better off thinking of the Z8 as a multimedia phone and ignoring its Smartphone OS, to be frank.

We said the Z8 reinvents the slider phone. It does this by introducing a hinge into the back of the casing so that when the phone is opened it bends slightly. The semi-banana shape that results means the phone fits the curve of your face when you make voice calls.

Plus it looks quirky.

The downside is that the numberpad is a little curved and this takes a little while to get used to. It is not a serious issue, but you might want to try the handset out before buying it just to see how you cope with the curvature.

The 2.2-inch screen offers 240 x 320 pixels and 16 million colours. It shows video at 30 frames a second. And Motorola provides a copy of a movie, The Bourne Identity, so you can test it for yourself. We found looking at the film on the phone's small screen to be fine for a few minutes, but doubt it is a good long term activity. Movies made for the cinema don't translate well to the very, very small screen.

The music player delivers quite well, and Motorola very kindly bundles its own S9 Bluetooth headset so you can make the most of the listening experience. There is 80MB of onboard memory for storing tunes and other data, and you can use a microSD card for storing more.

If you are a Sky subscriber, you may also be interested in the pre-installed Sky Anytime, which allows you to programme your box remotely.

There is a camera, of course, with a 2-megapixel lens. It is far from being at the cutting edge, and during testing it proved to be average rather than outstanding. The Z8 is a 3G handset with a front-facing camera for video calling. It has a version of the Opera browser for Web browsing and this proved to be very effective during testing.

The mostly black colour scheme with lime highlights is certainly eye-catching, as is the phone's unusual shape. The Bluetooth headset could prove handy too. All in all, it's an interesting package.