Designer mobile phones are usually reserved for the elitist yuppie crowd or those on the hunt for something that won't look out of place inside their (often imaginary) Aston Martin.

Mainstream manufacturers have also dabbled in this rather niche market; some of you may remember Nokia's 7280 'lipstick phone', aimed at those who wanted a secondary mobile for times when portability was at a premium.

Onyx has come up with something in between, with its tri-band Liscio phone, which offers many of the features of more traditional mobiles along with a classy and compact design.

It certainly looks impressive at first glance, is pretty light at 60g and feels quite solid in the hand. Initially you might notice the lack of an obvious screen. Aside from the vertically-oriented keypad the rest of the body is covered by a reflective chrome/gumnetal finish.

When you start the thing up, though, you'll see the main screen illuminate through an area above the keypad, which is certainly a nice touch. Unfortunately we were a little disappointed by both the size (1.1 inches) and relatively low 96 x 96-pixel resolution. Although just about big enough to allow for a reasonable degree of control, it certainly doesn't seem in keeping with the rest of the aesthetics.

You'll find a range of features built in that, while not nearly as comprehensive as your typical phone, are pretty reasonable for a device of this size. There's no digital camera but you will find an MP3 player and FM radio, and impressively there's a 3.5mm jack on top to help you utilise the pretty decent supplied headphones, if you don't have a better pair yourself.

The controls consist of 15 numeric and call keys on the front, and for scrolling through menus a depressable flick-wheel on the side. The main buttons do feel relatively responsive, but in practice we noticed that if, for example, you're a speedy texter and are attempting to hit them in quick succession, not every keypress is recognised. Similarly with the flick-wheel, actually depressing the thing to activate the current function can be a bit awkward unless it's in exactly the right position.

Regardless, the Liscio is capable of replacing your regular mobile if you so wish. You'll find call logs, a contacts list, range of profiles, calendar and alarm and even Bluetooth 1.2 and a couple of games, and the 128MB of internal memory can be boosted by a microSD card (a 1GB card is supplied) to provide more space for your MP3 files.

Despite these features, though, the Liscio does suffer from minor usability issues due to the controls, and regular operation can become quite frustrating because of the small screen; the four-line display doesn't do much for text messaging or browsing your media.

So despite being relatively well priced for a style phone, there are a few too many disadvantages here to recommend it over some of the more compact models from rivals such as Nokia and Samsung.

The Liscio looks nice and has a reasonable array of features on offer. Unfortunately the small, low resolution screen and some often awkward-to-operate controls mean that you're going to have to really, really like the look of the thing to choose it over capable, if slightly larger, rivals.