Motorola MOTO U9 mobile phone

With little to raise the pulse rate here, the standout feature of the U9 is clearly the glossy shell with its now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t screen and touch-stroked music controls.

In standby mode, when closed the external screen – a 1.45in, 128 x 160 65,000-colour OLED – is generally dormant. When activated (by button presses, playing with the flip or when the music player is on) it glows through the casing in a pleasingly ethereal way. Similarly, incoming calls and messages spark it into life. One screensaver, with roaring flames, adds a stylish touch, but you can change it to a selection of effects.

Aimed at mass-market pick-up, it faces stiff competition at this price

When you’ve switched on the music player and are listening to tracks, details of tunes appear through the shell on the outside. With the flip closed, you can change tracks by lightly fingering the small touch controls at the bottom of the display. You can skip tracks forward or back, play or pause without bothering your fingers with opening the lid.

There’s no haptic feedback vibrating confirmation that a control’s been pressed so it’s possible to hit forward, back, or pause/play without realising it. You can, however, lock or unlock the controls by pressing a key on the side of the phone. The external screen fades after a few seconds of inactivity to save your battery life.

The music performance from the U9 is perfectly fine; it has a typical music player interface with tracks arranged in regular categories. Tunes can be synchronised via the supplied USB cable with Windows Media Player 11 on a PC, or simply dragged and dropped on to the phone or its memory card storage.