Motorola decided to resurrect the RAZR brand with their latest LTE offering with Droid RAZR for Verizon. Making yet another addition to the carrier’s high-end Android devices, joining the Rezound and the up-and-coming Galaxy Nexus. Motorola has gone to make a modern version to shatter the previous design/image of what we knew of the RAZR brand. With some cues borrowed from the Droid Bionic coupled with a new design, the new RAZR is now the thinnest smartphone one can buy. Is Motorola’s new RAZR worthy of your attention? We break down the details, specs, up & downs on the device as we put it through our standard TGSB testing to answer just that.
Motorola decided to go all out with the design & build of the new RAZR. Moto’s latest still maintains the bump on the top-rear of the device for the camera sensors but the rest is completely new. The Droid RAZR offers a new, look with octagon corners made from premium materials. They wanted to make sure sure that not only the RAZR looked different but that it can also take a beating. They made sure to equip the display w/ Corning’s now standard Gorilla Glass coupled with a liquid-proof nano-coating to protect the outside & inside of the device. The rear of the device is constructed with Kevlar fibers for durability. No the device is not bullet-proof but can take a slight beating and feels smooth & great on hand. With the RAZR’s design, Motorola definitely went outside of their recent manufacturing points and went outside of the box a little with this. This RAZR lives up to the name by being thin in a major way. Measuring in at 7.1mm thin, makes this the thinnest smartphone on the market right now. Even besting the Samsung Galaxy S II which measures. It is so thin, that Motorola decided to prevent access to the battery by offering LTE SIM card & microSD card slots on the bottom, left-hand side of the phone. After adoring the hardware on the new RAZR, I am definitely looking forward to see what Motorola will use for devices in the near future.
Motorola also stepped outside of the typical visuals and decided to step up the screen technology on this one. The RAZR is equipped with a 4.3inch AMOLED (which usually a technology Samsung normally uses in smartphone screens) qHD display w/ 960 x 540 resolution. During our hands-on with the RAZR at its unveiling, the display looked great under the bright showroom lights. But under normal lighting and direct sunlight, our view of the screen has changed. Looks like being super-thin acts as a double-edge sword as for manufacturing purposes, Motorola went with PenTile display (same as the Droid Bionic) which definitely takes away points from this device. The problem with the PenTile display is that it offers a heavy-pixel look to any text or certain images viewed on it, especially lighter colors and white fonts on a darker background. While its not all bad, the RAZR is one of the few devices to offer Netflix in HD and watched Limitless on it and it looked great on it. But in regards to everyday viewing, the RAZR is seriously lacking to its competitors.
I decided to highlight this part of the RAZR’s software cause it is definitely a stand-out feature built into the deivce. With Smart Actions, you can create rules that trigger actions to make your life a little bit easier. For example, I have four rules setup on my review unit: 1) when the device is charging, the app automatically puts the ringer to silent, 2) when the battery level gets below 10%, the app shuts off cellular data, 3) whenever I miss a phone call from my wife or my brother, it automatically send a text saying “Sorry I missed your call. When I get a chance, I’ll call you back.” And lastly 4) whenever I plug in my headphones, it launches the Google Music app. You can do much more with yours like automatically turn Wi-Fi on when you get home using your GPS location as the trigger. Definitely a feature Verizon and Motorola should use to advertise instead the weird commercials they are currently using.
Despite the visual side of things, the RAZR’s performance is that of other high-end Android devices. With not a heavy amount of carrier-based and pre-loaded software on board, the Droid RAZR offers a speedy performance on a daily basis. Very little lag if any at all in going through the screen transitions, opening apps, multitasking, etc. thanks to the 1.2GHz dual-core OMAP processor. So all of you concerned with Android skins, the less-intrusive Blur UI doesn’t weigh down on the RAZR’s performance. The Droid RAZR is equipped with a 1780 mAh battery inside that provides a great battery life. I managed to get a little over 6 hours in heavy usage (listening to Google Music, emails, Twitter, & a few normal phone calls) and over 10 hours on minimal usage (emails, tweets, a few short phone calls). Definitely not bad in regards to your standard Android battery life. On regards to the speed department, the RAZR performs in its typical LTE speeds in northern NJ. I managed to get peak speeds of around 13Mbps on the download side and 5Mbps on the upload side. Who can complain about that?
Armed with a standard 8MP rear-facing camera capable of 1080p HD video and a 1.3MP front-facing camera capable of 720p HD video. The 8MP optics on the new RAZR are similar with the Droid Bionic. The camera software can be laggy at times as it can take a moment to process a picture. You’ll get decent quality photos but nothing in comparison to the lens found inside HTC’s latest and the iPhone 4S. The front-facing camera has been improved to take less grainy shot. The rear camera’s video recording is decent but on the upside, it does offer image stabilization for a more steady recording. And like the display, the optics is behind the competition.
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| Droid RAZR sample pics |
In conclusion the device feels light & thin in hand, decent battery life, great performance, and superb LTE speeds. The display and the cameras are let downs compared to the specs described on paper. With Bluetooth 4.0 enabled, micro-HDMI out, enterprise support (remote wipe & government grade encryption) makes it a more well-rounded high-end device. The Droid RAZR has both good and bad points that are noteworthy if you are considering this for your next purchase. I would have to recommend the Rezound or wait for the Galaxy Nexus to get more bang for your buck in the high-end Android phones on Verizon. Sorry Motorola, the RAZR is designed well but the display and optics need some improvement. Now with Google on-board, hopefully from here on out the devices can be more superior.
