Motorola RAZR - Thin as a Blade

To RAZR or not to RAZR?

The newest Motorola RAZR in town holds some similarities with its past iteration; off the bat, there's a lot of effort placed into making the phone look good but otherwise, this new family member shares more similarities with its top-end Android Atrix siblings. Some of these high-end functions include: 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Advanced touchscreen, and an 8-megapixel camera. Thin, high-functioning and attractive, what's there not to like in this svelte smartphone? Well, we take a quick look in this review:

During the official launch, Motorola waxed lyrical about "precision machine stainless steel core, laminated construction for enhanced rigidity, and laser-cut woven Kevlar fiber" and we must say, it shows magnificently on the smartphone. The back feels smooth and scratch-proof and best yet, does not attract fingerprints. Another thing to note about the construction of the phone is that it is slightly tapered at all four corners, making it easier to get a firm grip on it. All in all, the RAZR is a lean and mean phone that comes across as well-constructed, sturdy and comfortable to hold.

Not Quite Throwing out the 'Blur'

In late 2010, Motorola decided to can the "Motoblur" UI. We took a quick gander at it on the Motorola Atrix - the Motorola RAZR doesn't come with it and the interface on it is simply known as the Motorola RAZR UI. Our user experience on the new skin isn't quite positive - design elements are all over the place, and it feels cluttered/clunky and pretty confusing to navigate. Thankfully, the RAZR has a few tricks up its sleeve when it comes to software additions. One of the selling points of the RAZR is its new MotoCast app, which allows you to host your files on your own personal cloud and provides secure remote access to contents on your PC. Aside from that, the device comes with productivity features, including a pre-installed GoToMeeting app and Smart Actions app that helps save battery life and increase productivity.

A big part of the new Moto experience is the addition of the new MotoCast function, a personal cloud service. The installation automatically starts once you connect the RAZR via Micro-USB to your PC. Based on our experience, it took about 10 minutes for installation and five minutes to set up a MotoCast ID and select the folders to remotely access on your PC. As long as your PC is powered on with the application running and hooked on to an active wireless connection (both PC and smartphone), your files will sync with the RAZR without a hitch.

Oddly, there's no icon for the MotoCast app streamed content on the phone; instead, they are spread over three places - Files, Gallery and Music. The Files app show everything that is streamed on your phone while files with suitable formats will only be shown in both Gallery and Music apps. This is one of the confusing aspects that we mentioned earlier.

Benchmarking the Motorola RAZR

To give readers a gauge of what to expect in terms of performance from the Motorola RAZR, we have adopted a few benchmark tests specific to the Android platform. Within this page, we'll be looking at two specific benchmarks, both of which are downloadable via the Android Market.

• Quadrant: It measures the device's performance based on its CPU, I/O and GPU. Simply put, Quadrant is a benchmark that gives you a general idea of how your device performs against other Android devices.
  
   
• NeoCore: It is targeted towards the device's GPU performance. This is especially important given how smartphones of today have evolved into an alternative, high-powered device that dabbles in heavy graphical interfaces and gaming.

Do note that the above two benchmarks are not absolute in measuring performance, but they give you a good rough estimate of where the device stands against the competition. Our tests were conducted on devices from a fresh reboot on their respective stock firmwares. To show how the Motorola RAZR performed against similar smartphones, we compared its results against the following high-end Android devices - HTC Sensation XE, Samsung Galaxy S II and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S.

The Motorola RAZR comes equipped with a dual-core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, which puts it on par with the Samsung Galaxy S II in these two aspects. From our previous findings, we already know that dual-core devices tend towards a score of over 2000 points on Quadrant and manage an average of 60fps for Neocore benchmark results. In the former, the Motorola RAZR met our expectations with a score of 2663, beating Sensation XE's Qualcomm MSM8260 (dual-core 1.5GHz) processor while faltering against the likes of Samsung's own Exynos chipset. To give a rough gauge of how a dual-core smartphone performs against a single-core one, we have also included the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S here. As you can see, the RAZR scored at least 30% higher than the Arc S did.

However, when we take a look at the NeoCore benchmark scores, the RAZR's score comes across as pretty dismal compared to the rest. One reason being that the Neocore benchmarking tests are Qualcomm-optimized; the other reason might be due to a capped frame rate.



Overall, the Motorola RAZR performed admirably when it came down to real life usage such as surfing the web or running apps, be it apps like Facebook or games like Angry Birds, Clouds and Sheep and the 3D-rendered Dungeons Defenders. However, the user experience is sadly bogged down by the RAZR's UI and intrusive animated transitions, making navigation a tad slow, laggy and clumsy. Not really what we expect from a brand new top of the line smartphone at this point of time.

Multimedia Performance

The RAZR's screen is really bright, even at its lowest brightness setting. Size-wise, the device might come across slightly intimidating but its large screen has proven to be optimal for mobile entertainment consumption. Its 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED Advanced display comes with excellent color reproduction, contrast, and viewing angles even under sunlight. AMOLED screens are known for its higher level of power efficiency, and we were looking forward to see how it will impact the RAZR's battery life. That's covered a little later in the review, but next up is camera performance.

We found that the overall photographic competency for the Motorola RAZR to be slightly 'lopsided'. On one hand, the phone exhibited good details, decent clarity and well-saturated colors; on the other hand, auto-focusing was often slow and inaccurate and poor low-light performance meant that night shots were way too noisy. We suspect that there's a bug in the camera software: photos taken often show up as blank shots, only to reappear in the gallery "unscathed". Truth be told, we found the experience mostly disappointing - especially if you compare it to the likes of the iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S II.

Battery Life Performance

Our final performance benchmark is our regular battery test. This consists of comparing the smartphone to a select group of devices chosen based on their similarities across battery capacities, display sizes, resolutions and processing power. Our testing methodology involves testing a video with a 480 x 800 pixels resolution looping under the following conditions:

• Screen brightness and volume at 100%

• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections active

• Constant data stream via email and Twitter

We compared the phone based on primarily two sets of attributes: processing power and screen size. The devices in question include the iPhone 4S, HTC Sensation XE, and Samsung Galaxy S II.

Thankfully, the Motorola RAZR performed admirably in our battery tests, lasting 477 minutes on a single charge which roughly translates to almost 8 hours of battery juice! And that's considering we're running a video continuously, a task which is somewhat power draining. We reckon the good showing is more than likely due to its power-efficient AMOLED Advanced screen and high battery capacity of 1780mAh. It came quite close to matching Samsung Galaxy S II's battery uptime (approx. 16 minutes lesser) which in itself is pretty impressive if you consider the fact that the Korean smartphone has been the top Android contender in terms of battery life for a long time. The dual-core 1.5GHz HTC Sensation XE however, trails behind significantly despite having a similarly equipped 1730mAh battery charge. The iPhone 4S comes in third place despite having the smallest battery capacity (but do note that it does also have a smaller screen and less powerful dual-core processor).

As a result, the RAZR is within the top three positions when it comes to low energy consumption, only losing by a slight edge to both the Galaxy S II and iPhone 4S. Factor in its lighter and smaller volume compared to the iPhone 4S, it regains the runner-up position in the portability ratio index, scoring a decent 0.98 compared to Galaxy S II's 1.01.

Overall, the Motorola RAZR did pretty well, and was able to match up to the Samsung Galaxy S II in terms of battery stamina and portability. To give you another gauge, while rationing the phone for normal day-to-day operations, we observed that the phone could last for at least a full working day and a half before needing a recharge from our personal time with the phone.

RAZR or Not to RAZR?

Off the bat, the Motorola RAZR seems pretty impressive - you get a smartphone that looks pretty, sturdy, functional and yet gloriously slim. Throw in words like Splash Guard, Gorilla Glass and Kelvar fiber back... yes, you get the idea. Not only that, the device comes with pretty high-end hardware specs like a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, a brilliant 4.3-inch AMOLED Advanced touchscreen and 1GB of RAM. Useful software additions like Smart Actions and MotoCast round up an otherwise decent device. The RAZR is also compatible with a couple of interesting accessories - just like its Atrix cousin, you can convert the smartphone experience into a netbook one simply with either the new Lapdock 100 or 500. Prices of the docks are not out in Singapore at the time of publication but representatives have confirmed that they will be retailing them here.

So what's not to like? Well, we say it's a fair trade off for the things that we didn't like in the RAZR. Unfortunately, the user experience is marred by a bloated and confounding UI that is messy and not that easy to use, and awkward animated transitions; navigating through the UI is sluggish and tedious despite its 1.2GHz processor. Its 8-megapixel camera had dismal performance that was marred by finicky auto-focusing issues and poor low light performance. And in light of upcoming and existing smartphones with better camera performance, the RAZR certainly loses out. It is also important to consider the fact that the device only comes with the Android 2.3.5 version with its ICS update only available next year - pretty slow compared to the equally slender 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED Display-equipped and Android 4.0-ready Samsung Galaxy Nexus. For those chasing the latest Android OS version, it will be better to keep your options and decide a month later when the latter comes out.

Bottom line is: is the RAZR a good phone? Yes, on the whole it is. The important issue here is that it pales in comparison to its immediate and more recently launched competitors (iPhone 4S, HTC Sensation XL, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Note) in areas that consumers tend to nitpick on. For S$888, the RAZR is a reasonable buy as it is a phone with character (albeit fragmented), but patient Android fans should wait out for a while longer for better Android alternatives.

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