Motorola Razr

Announced last month in the US as the Droid Razr, the Motorola Razr has quickly made its way to Asia for a retail price of just S$888. Boasting powerful dual-core 1.2GHz processors, a qHD (960 x 540 pixels) display and a 7.1mm thin profile, the Razr looks set to dazzle.

Design

You can't deny that Motorola has come up with a pretty good design in the Razr--though we do admit that it does somewhat resemble the Samsung Galaxy S II at first glance. However, the Razr does come across as having a more solid feel, thanks to a stainless steel internal chassis and a rear surface coated with Kevlar.

While the Kevlar doesn't make the Razr bulletproof, it does give the handset a nice feel. Motorola also stated that the company has coated the handset (both inside and outside) with a water-resistant "nano-coating", and our tests seem to show that this "splash-guard" works. The phone started acting crazy with the display being unresponsive and moving on its own, but we fixed this by simply giving the Razr a good shake and putting the phone into standby.

The Razr features a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Advanced qHD display. We've seen the Super AMOLED and Super AMOLED plus screens on Samsung devices, and this "Advanced" version is certainly new to us. On closer inspection, the Razr's panel sports a Pentile matrix, which is similar to the Super AMOLED version. Super AMOLED Plus, however, uses a RGB matrix like normal LCDs.

To achieve a depth of 7.1mm at the thinnest point, Motorola has sacrificed the ability to swap batteries--that's right, the Razr has a non-removable battery like the iPhone. The good news is that the battery has a 1,780mAh capacity, which is pretty impressive. And like Apple's smartphone, the Razr uses a micro SIM--the slot is located on the left side together with a microSD card slot.

On the right side are the power and volume control buttons, and because the smartphone is so thin, Motorola has chosen to locate the ports right at the top, and you'll find the microUSB and micro-HDMI there together with the 3.5mm audio jack.

Located at the rear bulge at the thickest point of the handset is the 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash. There's also a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. Finally, four touch-sensitive buttons are located at the bottom of the display.

Features

The Razr packs the usual range of connectivity options that you will find on any high-end handset. You'll find Wi-Fi, A-GPS, HSDPA and Bluetooth 4.0. The micro-HDMI port supports DLNA for streaming over a network. The only thing missing is near field communication (NFC) support, and with Motorola promising the Ice Cream Sandwich update (and its Android Beam feature), the lack of such can be considered disappointing.

As stated above, the Razr will be getting the ICS update, but it does come running Gingerbread (Android 2.3.5) out of the box. The company has also added its own UI layer over the default Android interface. The skin used to be called Motoblur, but the company no longer mentions the name. The new version is certainly prettier than the one found on the Motorola Atrix and much easier to use.

That said, there are some tweaks that leave much to be desired. Firstly, the accelerometer seems a tad too sensitive and the orientation detection can be too slow at times. The camera app also does not support the portrait mode--no buttons rotate when the phone is in this position. Furthermore the touch sensitive buttons don't always light up, which we figured had to do with the light sensor. Luckily we got used to the button placement quickly.

Like the Atrix, one of the key features of the Razr is the ability to connect to the new Lapdock 100, which will let you access the Webtop OS. Unfortunately, Motorola did not have the accessory ready in time for us to test during our review.

Note that the new Razr will not be compatible with the older Lapdock and HD Multimedia Dock accessories. This is because Motorola has flipped the micro-HDMI and microUSB's orientation around to make it incompatible. Make what you will of that decision, though we do want to point out if the Razr was compatible, sticking your smartphone onto the older Lapdock upside down sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Besides the updated UI, Motorola has also added a MotoCast app that lets you stream media and download files from a remote computer. It does require that you install the program on your PC, and then the PC needs to be on all the time for it to work. Our experience was generally fine, but leaving your PC turned on does mean your electricity bill is definitely going to shoot up.

Motorola has also added a new feature called Smart Actions. The app basically uses your geo location to track where you are, and can turn on certain features of your smartphone as necessary. For example, you can set the phone to recognize when you're home and turn off GPS tracking and lower the ringer volume. It's easily configurable and Motorola has also provided templates you can tweak.

If you want to use the Razr at work, Motorola has added some enterprise-friendly features including a remote wipe that will delete all work related info while leaving your personal data untouched. This should be handy if you accidentally leave your Razr in a bar.

Despite all the good things you've read so far, the Motorola Razr does have a downside, and it's one that may stop you from purchasing the handset. The 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash might sound good on paper, but Motorola could have done a better job with regards to performance. Autofocusing is slow, and taking a picture has very visible shutter lag. Luckily, picture quality is generally great outdoors, unless your subject is moving around. Under fluorescent lighting indoors, we noticed a blue-green cast in our images.

Performance

We found no issues with the reception and call quality--the Razr has an extra microphone for noise cancellation, which helps in making you sound better to the other party. Speaker volume is slightly above average, but because the speaker is located at the rear, the sound tends to project away from you.

With 1.2GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 processors running the show, we experienced no performance issues with the Razr apart from what we highlighted earlier which are due to the non-optimized software.

Battery life was pretty good, our test set lasted about a day and a half, more when the battery saver Smart Action kicked in to conserve battery life. This was done with our normal test settings where we have Twitter and two email accounts on push, while the Facebook app was set to a two-hour sync.

Conclusion

The new Motorola Razr certainly lives up to the Razr branding--there's plenty to like about the smartphone, but there are also the little details that don't feel ready which somehow detracts from the user experience. Then again, these can easily be fixed via a future software update. At a retail price of S$888 without an operator contract, the Razr seems to be priced very competitively. It will be facing very stiff competition from Apple's iPhone 4S and the upcoming Galaxy Nexus though. Still, it's a worthy addition to the high-end Android smartphone stable.