Nokia's no stranger to innovative and groundbreaking designs. But that doesn't mean it's too proud to take a few style tips. Nokia's latest N series phone, a symphony in metal and glass, pays tribute some of the best elements of Mototorola's RAZR design and incorporated them into an elegant and extremely desirable device that's equipped equally for work and fun.

The resemblance to Motorola's hugely successful RAZR range, in its slimness, the way the flip nestles into the body of the phone and the keypad layout, is certainly not coincidental, but it's also got a few Nokia N-style tricks all of its own.

For a start, that mirrored outer screen is a beauty, though of course it's a smudge magnet. The colour screen within the mirror is actually much smaller - the 160x128 pixel screen measures 22x28mm to the mirror's 36x51mm.

With 262,000 colours though, plus an ambient light detector to establish just how bright it needs to get, it's certainly no afterthought and is great for viewing pics as wallpapers or when you're using the music player with the phone closed. But more of that later.

It's a sleek-looking package alright, with the glass front framed by chrome-look metal and shiny black (or red) plastic, with a practical little rubberised pad on the back to prevent slippages.

Not too slim

But while it's certainly slim, it's also broad - not disastrously so, but it will probably lend itself more to the average male palm than female. That said, we're talking about a 3G-powered Symbian S60 smartphone here, and in comparison with most of its 'N' brethren, it's Kate Moss to, say, the N95's Marilyn Monroe.

With the flip open, the RAZR comparisons become even more obvious with a similar flat, metallic keypad layout, and raised section at the heel of the phone, which the flip slides into. The inner screen is similarly large too, at 38x50mm, but it sports up to 16 million colours and looks stunning.

One of the most obviously fun things about the N76 is the music player controls mounted on the front. They can be locked by clicking the RWD and FFD controls in quick succession, but a simple press on the play button activates the player. Then it's easy to navigate through the menus using the volume controls on the side.