We check out the upgrades in our Motorola RAZR2 V9x review, as the RAZR family keeps churning out new brood.
Review summary of the Motorola RAZR2 V9x:
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 The Motorola RAZR2 V9x has lost much of the appeal of the original RAZR brand, in that it isn't very thin or sleek. In fact, these days it seems like a wide, bulky phone, but all that width and heft helps drive the two great screens, the bright and colorful internal display and the surprisingly large and useful external screen. Overall, there may not be much clout left in the RAZR name, but that doesn't keep the Motorola RAZR2 V9x from being a very nice multimedia phone. Call quality was very good, much better than most phones in this class, and the phone also packs a nice range of 3G features, including a capable Web browser from Opera and GPS navigation. The Motorola RAZR2 is a nice choice for folks who want plenty of features on a phone that isn't too smart. For these folks, the RAZR2 may be a shadow of its former self, but it's still a phone that might just turn a few heads. Release: December 2008. Price: $150.
Pros: Great external display with touch controls. Loads of features. Nice style.
Cons: Not too exciting in form or feature set. RAZR brand is beyond dated by now. Lacks range of messaging clients.
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Full Motorola RAZR2 V9x Review:
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Design - Good
The Motorola RAZR2 V9x is not as shockingly thin as the original RAZR was, compared to its contemporaries. In fact, it isn't shockingly anything, but that doesn't mean it isn't an attractive, appealing flip phone. Our review unit came decked out in all black, with varying finish styles from glossy to matte, with chrome accents. The RAZR2 doesn't have the neat lines and tight fit of the original, but it's still a modern-looking clamshell. It does retain the completely flush keys of the original RAZR's keypad, but these were all around easy to use, since there was plenty of space in between each number and key.
Motorola has dressed up the standard AT&T multimedia phone platform just a bit, but that mainly entails adding some transitions to menus and rearranging the icons. Nothing interesting to see here. We think Moto and AT&T could do a much better job. For instance, there is no dedicated camera button, so activating the camera requires drilling through 2 layers of menus.
It's actually easier to use many features through the external display. The music player, photo gallery and streaming video service were all close at hand with the clamshell shut. Honestly, when its more convenient to leave the phone closed and navigate the smaller screen on top, it's time to seriously rethink the user interface. Still, kudos to Motorola for such a large, dynamic screen on the cover. The external display has some touch control along the bottom for navigation, and it even acts as an electronic viewfinder for the camera.
Calling - Very good
Calls on the Motorola RAZR2 V9x sounded very good on AT&T's 3G network. The phone uses Motorola's signature Crystal Talk technology, sort of a noise reduction system for the built-in microphone. Just about all of Moto's Crystal Talk phones sound great, better than their competitors, and the RAZR2 V9x does the family proud. We had no reception trouble, either, as the phone regularly reported 4-5 bars of service, and always remained at the head of the pack of AT&T phones we're currently testing. For battery life, we got a little more than 4 hours of talk time as we traveled between the high-speed HSDPA network in Manhattan and the EDGE networks we see more frequently in New Jersey. AT&T estimates only 3 hours or so under HSDPA, and we think that's probably accurate, though you might get up to 6 hours if you stay under an EDGE umbrella all day long.
The phone has an adequate address book, with plenty of options to add extra fields. We wish that there was an easy way to synchronize our Outlook contacts, but AT&T hasn't included any options. We'd also like to see the address book work better with other apps, especially the AT&T Navigator software. Otherwise, the phone packs all our favorite calling features. Speaker-independent voice dialing was easy to access and worked very well in our tests. The speakerphone was nice and loud, and the phone paired with all of our Bluetooth headsets without incident.
Messaging - Good
For messaging, the Motorola RAZR2 V9x gets a pretty basic mix of options, the same as we've found on every other mid- to low-range AT&T phone recently. SMS and MMS are your best bet, and these worked well in our tests, though the client apps weren't anything special. We'd like tighter integration with the address book, and a dedicated key to jump right into messaging is always nice. Much better than a dedicated key for streaming video, right? For e-mail and IM, the clients are very basic, and the selection of available service is limited. For both, Yahoo, AOL and MSN users will have no trouble connecting. But everyone else, aside from a handful of e-mail providers (no Gmail), will have to give up messaging for this phone.
The phone's keypad was very flat, but wide enough that this didn't bother us or hold us back in our typing tests. The phone uses iTap for auto-completion, and this worked well in our messaging trials. It was difficult to type without staring directly at the keys, as there is little tactile division between the numbers, but this is par for the course on today's stylish multimedia phones.
Multimedia - Good
For multimedia, the Motorola RAZR2 V9x is better on the outside than it is on the inside, literally. The exterior screen can jump directly into the music player and offers basic, but effective, playback controls. We could browse our library and playlists easily on the clear external screen, and in the rare instance where our album artwork was transferred properly, it looked great on the V9x's external display.
Which brings us to our biggest problem with the RAZR2 V9x. For a multimedia phone, it lacks most of the necessities for playback. The phone uses a microUSB connector, which is nice because we have a few of those cords lying around, but there is no software for synchronizing music. We had no trouble with Windows Media Player on the Windows side, and on the Mac side we just dragged our files onto the microSD card. There is also no headphone jack on the RAZR2 V9x. This is a silly omission, and a simple addition like a real headphone jack would make this phone much easier to recommend. The phone also lacks any included storage, though it handled our 8GB microSD card with no trouble.
For video, we liked being able to access and browse the Cellular Video menu from the external display, it was a level of control we don't usually see without opening up the clamshell. Once videos were playing, too, they looked very good on the external display, though not as great blown up on the slightly larger internal screen. Still, the quality of the content and the variety being offered was completely unimpressive. We can't imaging shelling out an extra monthly fee for this service, though we would consider paying a premium for a RAZR2 with AT&T's much better Mobile TV service.
Web browsing - Good
The Motorola RAZR2 V9x uses a browser from Opera, and we found the page rendering engine to be much better than other, simpler multimedia phones we've seen recently. Our own homepage came through looking very good. Not perfect, some text was misaligned and the browser displayed some strange red bars that shouldn't have been there. But images looked very good, and text was neat and legible. Also, the browser does a nice job scrolling through long pages quickly. We wish there was a mini-map, like we've seen on the most recent version of Opera Mobile 9.5. Still, for a simple multimedia flip phone, this browser was much more useful than it needed to be.
Camera - Mediocre
The 2-megapixel shooter on the Motorola RAZR2 V9x disappointed us with its image quality. The camera is clearly a fan of bright reds and orange colors, but everything else turned drab and noisy beneath its lens. Under the best lighting conditions, we got plenty of nice detail, but the poor coloring made images less than ideal.
Self Portrait
Noise everywhere on this shot. It's on our face, our shirt, our clean, white wall. The picture lacks detail, but noise is the real problem.
Close-up Figurine
Our little figurine looks like it spent a weekend at 3-Mile Island. The glowing pink completely dominates this shot, obscuring the more natural pinks and other hues in the small rock.
eBay shot
Here, those explosive reds and oranges work nicely, though they are obviously pushing the limit. More importantly, though, the camera got some of the fine detail right, including the important asst. numbers at the top of the card. These are surprisingly clean and legible in this shot.
Price and availability
The Motorola RAZR2 V9x is available now from AT&T for $200 with a contract agreement. A mail-in rebate of $50 is available when signing up for a qualifying plan.
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