Motorola Razr i review

Battery life

We're willing to live with the slight performance issues though as the Razr i has stunning battery life the best result we've ever seen.

For our intensive battery test we set corporate email, Gmail, Facebook and Twitter accounts up to push content to the phone throughout the day, and we also carried out a range of tasks including browsing the web and watching a forty minute video. Brightness was cranked up to maximum, Wi-Fi turned off, and battery saving modes were also disabled.

Battery life is phenomenal - beating the best iOS and Android has to offer

Motorola's phone is the third handset to last beyond the 12 hour mark in our test, and it's the longest-lasting Ice Cream Sandwich device we've tested. After twelve hours the Razr i still well over a third of battery power remaining (34 per cent). This beat the Samsung Galaxy S3, which had 27 per cent remaining at 12 hours and left the iPhone 5 for dead as the Apple device ran out of juice completely after 10 hours.

Display

It's got good power and top-tier battery life, but the Razr i isn't as expensive as the priciest handsets. The screen is one area where the budget has obviously been cut: the 4.3in panel is physically smaller than the 4.8 screens included on other phones, and the resolution of 540 x 960 means the Motorola can't compete on a pixel-by-pixel basis, either - its 256ppi is no match for the 306ppi of the Samsung.

Pixels are visible if you look closely, but the Motorola redeems itself elsewhere. The AMOLED screen's brightness level of 219cd/m2 is reasonable, even if it can't match the 240cd/m2 of the Galaxy S3. That's partnered with the perfect contrast provided by the AMOLED panel, and it makes for a screen's punchy, with accurate colours.

The handset itself doesn't break much new ground, but build quality is good throughout, and its 8.3mm girth is 0.3mm thinner than the Samsung. The styling won't be to everyone's taste, with exposed screws and Kevlar backing lending the Razr i an industrial feel. Durability has been improved across the entire handset thanks to Motorola's water-repellant Splash-Guard coating, and this is one of the toughest Android handsets on the market.