Reviews

Motorola Razr review

Motorola has resurrected the venerable Razr name for its new ultra-thin Android smartphone, but is the company on the bleeding edge or trading on past glories? Julian Prokaza finds out in our review.

24 Nov 2011

Smart Actions are a powerful tool.

The RAZR's 1780mAh battery can't be removed, but it lasted just over 20 hours in our video playback test with all wireless radios off and the screen permanently on, which is very good going. Call quality is within acceptable limits too (helped by active noise cancellation via a secondary microphone) and the loudspeaker works well enough for hands-free calls, despite sitting on the back of the smartphone.

With an unlocked price of 360 ex VAT online, the Motorola RAZR costs about the same as the Nokia Lumia 800 and HTC Titan, but it has a better overall specification and, for the time being, a more useful operating system.

An upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is due next year, but Google will launch its Android 4.0 Galaxy Nexus in the meantime and it too pairs a 1.2GHz dual-core smartphone with a big screen. So, as tempting as the RAZR is for now, it would be wise to wait and see what the Galaxy Nexus brings before splashing out.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

The Motorola RAZR has all the makings of a great Android smartphone, but the middling quality of its big-screen is a let-down and the imminent Galaxy Nexus looks like it could be a better option. For now, the Samsung Galaxy S II is still our favoured Android smartphone, despite its smaller screen.

Connectivity: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G 850/900/1900/2100 Display: 540 x 960 pixels, 4.3 inches OS: Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread Camera: eight megapixels rear facing, 1.3 megapixels forward facing GPS: A-GPS Processor: 1.2GHz ARM Cortex A9 dual-core Bluetooth: 4.0 Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n (dual band) Storage: 16GB internal plus micro SDHC slot RAM: 1GB Dimensions: 131 x 69 x 7.1 mm Weight: 127g Battery: Lithium Ion 1,780 mAh Part code: XT910