The Motorola VE538 is a compact and relatively inexpensive 3G mobile phone that has pretty good features for a phone of this price. Shaped like a chocolate bar, this is a really compact, lightweight handset. Its small size and rounded shape make it fit well in the palm of your hand.

However, although its size is noticeably small, the VE538 still feels strong and durable. It also won’t slip out of your hands, as an etched circular pattern on the rear battery cover makes it easy to grip.

The Motorola VE538’s layout is nothing too flash, but still more than you’d expect. The phone comes with quite a large display, especially considering the total size of the handset, and has a raised keypad plus five-way navigational pad. The outside of the phone doesn’t have any buttons, excluding the usual volume control keys usually found there.

The VE538’s keypad stretches across the entire front face of the handset, which helps to provide good tactility. This results in long messages being fairly easy to type out. The five-way navigational pad does the job, but the directional keys could be bigger.

With a well-constructed and quick interface, the Motorola VE538 is a pleasure to use. Although the main menu isn’t as visually appealing as some of its competitors’, there’s never any waiting time, and the simple design makes it easy to navigate. Lag time for keystroke typing is also non-existent when writing text messages, and the newer T9 predictive text input system is much better than the older iTap system.

Even though it’s cheap, Motorola have added quite a lot of functionality into the VE538. You get a 2-megapixel camera, basic internet browser, plus MP3 and video player applications. There are also a lot of preinstalled applications like Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail and ShoZu. The ShoZu application lets you upload content like pictures and videos straight onto several social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. Of course you can also update your statuses and connect with family and friends straight from the phone.

One small letdown is the lack of a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, as some people will want to use their Motorola VE538 for listening to music on the train home from work. On the other hand, there’s A2DP Bluetooth capability and a microSD card slot for extra storage, which balances things out.

Finally, the Motorola VE538 comes with a VGA camera on the front of the handset that makes quality video calls. Other PIM features include a world clock, unit converter, sound recorder, calculator, alarm clock, calendar and stopwatch.