Sprint sends us our first RAZR2, with a huge external screen and haptic feedback. Does the new RAZR2 top the old, or should you wait for the next round?
Review summary of the Motorola RAZR2 V9m (Sprint):
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_it00.jpg) Hanging out with the RAZR2 is like seeing an old high school buddy again. It looks good, and you can have a lot of fun together, but then it reminds you why you prefer your college buddies. The RAZR2 has some nice features and some serious foibles, but for $250 with a contract agreement, it should be Sprint and Motorola's multimedia flagship. Instead, almost everything needs improvement; the camera, the video player, the music player, the Web browser and even the messaging apps. That being said, one thing that does not need improvement is the shell. The phone itself looks great, and we'd be happy to whip it out in a crowd and start flashing it around. We'd even make calls with it. But that's where the party ends, where we want to say goodbye, and go back to hanging out with our more educated, mature friends. Release: August 2007. Price: $100.
Pros: Great, polished design. A real improvement and modern update to the aging RAZR body. Good calling, with plenty of calling features that work well. Huge external screen.
Cons: Small video windows make viewing difficult. Stereo Bluetooth a complete bust in our tests. Music player too simple for an advance multimedia phone. No headphones, even though the connector type is very new.
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Full review of the Motorola RAZR2 V9m (Sprint):
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When we first opened up our Motorola RAZR2 V9m test unit, there was one thing we knew for sure. It would be the first of many. Our old RAZR V3 impressed us when we first bought it, but eventually became a blight on our collection. However, the RAZR V3xx, one of the last RAZRs to be released, is a very good phone, and fixes most of the problems we had with the original. The RAZR2 V9m has a striking design, and makes some interesting leaps in terms of multimedia. Like its predecessor, not all of these leaps land on their feet.
Design - Very good
If the Motorola RAZR Maxx Ve and the Motorola KRZR had a baby that was smarter than both of them, it would be the RAZR2. With a glossy steel shell like the KRZR and a jumbo-sized external screen (QVGA resolution, thank you) like the Maxx Ve, the RAZR2 may not inspire the same awestruck stares its predecessor got when it was first released, but in many ways the phone is more stylish and grown up. Unfortunately, the grown up phone is such a magnet for fingerprints it will make you feel like a preschooler, but the external display still looks good, even while grimy.
The buttons on the RAZR are flat, as you would expect, with a slight groove between the rows. The buttons are slick and glossy, but have enough travel to be tactile. Typing beyond simple number dialing was a drag, but the navigation circle is nice and big with a brushed finish, so navigating wasn't as difficult.
The RAZR2 has two QVGA screens, with a large 2-inch external screen and an even larger, 2.5-inch internal. The external screen is very nice, with a strip of touch-sensitivity on the bottom, corresponding to soft keys for the video, music and camera apps. The RAZR2 also features haptic feedback, so when you press a button or the external touch screen, the phone delivers a quick, sharp ping. We've felt this sort of feedback before, and are disappointed to say that this implementation is our least favorite. The jolt is a bit too sharp, almost like an electric shock, and left us with an uncanny, uncomfortable feeling. The idea of physical feedback is nice, but on this phone it wasn't a sensation we enjoyed.
Calling - Very good
Calls on the RAZR2 V9m sounded good, with a nice clarity to the midrange of voices. Occasionally, listeners reported some crackling and a slightly digitized sound, but mostly the sound was good. Reception was never an issue. We got 4-5 bars of signal on Sprint's network in lower Manhattan, even while our Sprint Treo 700p showed only 2-3 bars. The speakerphone was very loud, even outdoors. Speaker-independent voice dialing worked flawlessly, but conference calling required a couple more steps than we would like.
The address book looked nice, but didn't have as many fields as we like. The V9m lets you assign ringers to contacts, and even lets you record short video ringers, which was fun, but we'd rather use the songs we purchased through the Sprint Music Store, a feature the phone forbids. Though there is no included synchronization software for contact lists, Sprint does offer a Wireless Backup service by subcscription. Frankly, since this is probably a service you'll use once every year or so, we think a flat rate would be more appropriate.
Messaging - Very good
The RAZR2 V9m is capable of IM and e-mail in addition to SMS, but not out of the box. The downloadable e-mail program is good (and free) unlike the IM apps, which are specific to their networks and cost $3/month each. So, if you want to chat on AIM and MSN, you'll have to shell out a ridiculous $6 monthly fee. Setting up our Gmail was automatic, and though our mailbox populated slowly, the program was quicker once the initial setup was complete. IM, on the other hand, was buggy and inconsistent. The phone does not alert you when a new IM comes through in the background. Also, the IM client had trouble holding onto our T9 setting, so we kept having to reset intuitive input. The flat keys caused a few typos per message, but nothing fatal. Text could not be resized, but we were happy to fit an entire SMS message, a full 160 characters, on screen for incoming messages, and the font was quite legible.
Camera - Good
Everything about the camera on the V9m is simply average. Image quality is fine, not as abysmal as we've seen on other phones. Colors looked good, perhaps a bit oversaturated. Pictures had lots of noise and aberrations around the edges of details, and bright spots were very overexposed. Videos were more blurry, and looked dull and grey. The camera features some basic editing functions and a nice set of uploading options, including the ability to upload pics directly to a Web site. Sending pics via e-mail or MMS was simple, though even at 2-megapixels and all settings on auto, we weren't thrilled with the pictures we were distributing.
Video - Good
Though you can watch Sprint TV on the external screen, you won't be happy with the experience. Streaming videos cannot be played full screen, and in fact seem to take up about half of the real estate, making them quite small. Movies in the Sprint Movie app were even smaller, about the size of a postage stamp. Far too small to enjoy, or even understand, was "Bridge to Terabithia," the newest release in the movie store. Video quality was okay, with some pixelation and blurriness, but the videos never stuttered or stopped during playback. Of course, they took longer than we would like to start playing, but played through smoothly. The video player supports stereo Bluetooth, but to our ears all of the audio sounded like it was mono, and quite distant. Overall, a disappointing experience that should have been one of the key bragging points for this phone, considering Sprint's interesting streaming options and the large external screen.
Music - Good
We are sad to say that music was an even more disappointing experience than video. Though you can start the music from the external screen, and even play, pause or scrub through tracks, you still have to open the phone to navigate the menus, or to choose another song. The Sprint music store has an excellent catalogue, but a mundane interface. We won't detail all our problems with the store, but suffice to say that you can't download more than one track at a time, you can't queue an entire album for download, and though individual downloads may take less than 30 seconds per song, creating a music collection this way would be tedious. To test stereo Bluetooth, we used Motorola's S9 headphones, and the experience was horrid. Standing still, at our desks, things sounded fine. However, walking around in the East Village, we couldn't hear two notes in a row without stuttering and complete silence. We can't account for the issue, but this was our experience. Since Sprint doesn't bundle headphones or an adapter to fit the new mini-USB plug on the phone, and we don't have any mini-USB headphones yet, this was the only was we could listen to music. Sprint does include a 256MB microSD card, which is a nice size, but again, this included accessory may be the best part of the music experience.
Web browsing - Very good
The Web browser on the V9m lacks many options, like the ability to view pages full instead of in single column view. Still, it surprised us with its ability to load even complicated, image-rich pages, like our own homepage, and keep them looking clean. Text in the Web browser looked much more blocky than in the messaging apps. Scrolling was also difficult, requiring numerous clicks to navigate a long column.
GPS - Very good
There are two navigation options available for the RAZR2 V9m. Our RAZR2 came preloaded with "Where," the new location based services (LBS) app. Sprint Navigation, a TeleNav app, was available by download. We were disappointed with TeleNav, which had trouble finding us, and clearly didn't understand the idea of "pedestrian directions," refusing to let us walk the wrong way down one-way streets. "Where," on the other hand, was a very cool app. The directions weren't great and tracking could have been more sensitive, but the app has plenty of other cool features. "Where" can download the Google Street View photo for a location, which makes finding a specific hole-in-the-wall restaurant much easier. In addition to points of interest, "Where" also grabs a local event calendar, so it can show you not only where to go, but what's happening there and when. Additionally, you can download widgets for the "Where" software, which add more LBS services.
Odds and ends
The RAZR2 V9m was kind of a buggy phone. The browser app, which controls many of the phone's features, never properly quit for us. We always had to exit the app more than once. Like Windows Vista, the phone was constantly warning us that this or that application was about to access the network or the GPS locator. Even when we granted eternal permission, we were continually asked. The soft key designations need some polish, as well. The "select" option seemed different in every app, switching from the left to right soft keys or to the center button. Also, on the external screen, there was never a way to exit out of a program, or even go backwards through a menu easily. Often, this required opening the phone to deal with the issue.
Comparison
Compare the Motorola RAZR2 V9m (Sprint) with similar products
Who is the Motorola RAZR2 V9m (Sprint) for?
Style conscious users
Price and availability
Available in the U.S. (Sprint) in August 2007, the Motorola RAZR2 V9m (Sprint) is priced at $100 to $250.
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