Motorola Droid RAZR Review - A Better Clad Bionic
by Brian Klug on December 16, 2011 2:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Droid
- LTE
- 4G
- Motorola
- Android
- Mobile
- Droid RAZR
- motorola droid RAZR
Final Thoughts
The RAZR is honestly some of the best Android hardware I’ve seen in a long time. It’s incredibly thin, has awesome build quality and an excellent in-hand feel to boot. I find it interesting that we now have Apple, Nokia (Lumia 800), and Motorola shipping their highest-end devices with sealed internal batteries - it says something about the kinds of tradeoffs that have to be made to get the slim form factors that people identify with the highest end. I remember a time when the highest performance commanded the most awkward and bulky packages - anyone remember the HTC Apache? That said, if you really do want to be able to swap out batteries, there’s always the Bionic (which is essentially the same hardware).
The unfortunate reality is that the RAZR released at quite possibly the worst moment in the Android release schedule. It’s difficult to sell the enthusiast crowd on the same hardware platform in another physical package, and at the same time running a version of Android that’s behind a handset whose release is imminent. The latest crop of Motorola phones will get their well-deserved Android 4.0 upgrade, but 6 months is admittedly a long time to wait and having a locked bootloader makes sidestepping the carrier and OEM testing period overhead impossible as well.
OEMs are starting to recognize that regular updates breed platform loyalty, and are even offering preview ROMs (like Huawei with their ‘demo’ Android 4.0 ROM) that sidestep the carrier testing process. I wager that the enthusiast crowd is willing to deal with some bugs and beta issues in exchange for faster updates, and at the same time help OEMs by providing feedback. It doesn’t make sense to hold the enthusiast crowd to the same bar if they’re willing to run bleeding edge builds. Minimizing support calls resulting from buggy OTA updates is one thing - testing for six months until the phone is nearly obsolete (there’s a running joke that handsets are now obsolete every 8 months) is something else entirely.
In any other circumstance I’d recommend the RAZR for Verizon shoppers purely because it’s the best hardware out right now. As cheesy as it sounds, the Kevlar does lend the phone a unique feel, the hardware is impressively thin, and the display is no worse at color rendering than any other AMOLED panel. It just needs Android 4.0.
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Devo2007 - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
Brian Klug - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
Motorola a few times made specific note that their skin isn't called Blur, even though in build.prop and relevant places, it's called "Blur." I guess it all just boils down to semantics. :)-Brian
yas69 - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
S2 benchmark values are different with November/December stock firmware.I get 1130 on vellamo with recent S2 firmware. Sunspide/Browsermark values are better than also higher than Razr.
Brian Klug - Saturday, December 17, 2011 - link
What ROM and browser are you tesing in? I can't get any higher than what's in the article on our UK SGS2 with the latest ROM from Kies.-Brian
yas69 - Sunday, December 18, 2011 - link
I9100XWKK2 / I9100XWKL1 both perform better than previous versions.yas69 - Monday, December 19, 2011 - link
sorry.I9100XWKK2 (2.3.6)
Vellamo = 1161
sunspider = 1980
browsermark = 78014
lemmo - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
Thanks for the review, but do you have any more info on audio quality in terms of music playback? You are saying that it is an improvement over the Bionic but how does it compare to other phones like SGS2 and iPhone?Your detailed review of audio quality on the SGS2 was really helpful and I thought you were going to include this testing methodology on all smartphone reviews from now on...?
kishorshack - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
Even i expect the same thing brian klug it would be awesome if you update this review someday :)Brian Klug - Saturday, December 17, 2011 - link
We're definitely going to do some more in-depth audio testing, it's something new to me but we've finally got the hardware and methodology, just have to interpret results. I did link to the RMAA runs from here for your own perusal, which we're going to talk a bit more about in the Galaxy Nexus piece.-Brian
lemmo - Saturday, December 17, 2011 - link
Thanks Brian that's great news :)As I asked in my comment below, will you do a comparative audio test with other phones when you do the Nexus review? The test results for just the phone you're testing don't mean much unless we know how they compare. Cheers