Red Motorola Slvr: Help Africa with your mobile

Motorola has launched a red mobile phone to help some of the millions of people in Africa who suffer from AIDS. The (Product) Red campaign was founded by Bono from U2 and Bobby Shriver, chairman of the DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) charity. Their idea was to get big companies to help the fight against AIDS in Africa by creating red-themed products that would in some way financially contribute to African AIDS programmes. Products range from shoes to credit cards, and now you can buy a mobile phone.

The phone is a red Slvr L7 and features quad-band connectivity, a 0.3-megapixel (VGA) camera, a TransFlash expandable memory slot, Bluetooth, speakerphone, MP3 player, Web browser and is only 11.5mm thin.

By buying this phone, £10 from the sale will go directly to The Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. The charity doesn't stop there, however, as every time you use the phone, 5 per cent of your normal charges from calls and texts will be donated to the fund too.

This is a grand gesture from a multinational company and while we applaud their participation in such a worthy cause, we hope that it's not a short-term media stunt and that schemes like this become more common. 

Motorola claim that this will be the first handset from a portfolio of red phones that will continue to help Africa in the future. The red Slvr will be available from 15 May at BT Mobile, Carphone Warehouse, Fresh, O2, Orange, Tesco Mobile, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone and will cost around £150. -AL

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