Wow, what a rush - Motorola RAZR2 V9

Author's Rating:

Pros: It’s smart, stylish, and keeps me in contact with the world.

Cons: pricey if bought out right

The Bottom Line: 
I’ve owned a lot of their products. This is one of the most innovative phones I’ve ever owned. It’s smart, stylish, and keeps me in contact with the world.

Author's Review
I was forced into upgrading my phone last November after my previous Motorola RAZR started dropping calls and acting odd. I’d bought the phone just after they came out and it was used very frequently. I’m sure it was just worn out.

I’m standing in my local AT&T store looking through the phones when I see the Motorola RAZR2 V9 on the shelf.

The Looks

The Motorola RAZR2 V9 is mahogany in color. Almost like a deep burgundy red. The color was nice, very eye appealing, and I’ve found out, hides scratches very well too.

The first thing you notice about this phone is the outside display screen. Absolutely huge, a 2.0” QVGA screen that displays a 320x240 pixel picture at 262,000 colors! It was almost as if you were looking at a small PDA or computer monitor instead of a phone.

To put this into comparison, the RAZR that I’m getting ready to replace has a 96 x 80 pixel screen that displays in 4,000 colors. Needless to say, I was impressed

The phone itself is a bit taller than its predecessor at 4.05 inches vs. 3.86 inches. While the width and depth both stayed the same.

You flip the phone open only to find an even larger screen on the inside. A 2.2” QVGA screen that also displays the same 320x240 pixels at 262k colors is very nice on the eyes. In comparison, the original RAZR phone has an internal screen of 176 x 220 pixels at 260k colors but is not QVGA, or in other words, not near the quality of picture as you get on the Motorola RAZR2 V9.

The buttons on the Motorola RAZR2 V9 are almost identical to the original RAZR. The only real difference is the mail icon on the original RAZR has been changed to the CV (Cellular Video) button, which is a shortcut to a video links site. Other than your normal, off/on and number buttons there is also the Media Net button that has a globe on the button to take you to their homepage.

Phone Specifics

This V9 model comes with 45MB of on board memory. That is a huge amount compared to other phones. The original RAZR comes with 5 MB. There are two other models of the RAZR2 that come with smaller processors and onboard memory amounts. The Motorola RAZR2 V9 has the largest processor (500 MHz!) and the most onboard memory.

The memory is nice and will allow you plenty of ringtones, music files, or pictures. It also has an expansion slot under the battery cover for a Micro SD card up to 2 GB. You can see my review of the Micro SD card below:

http://emcphers.epinions.com/content_422852005508

This will allow a huge amount of extra space for videos, full song MP3s, and allow computer connectivity.

Note: The phone will charge when plugged into the USB cable from the computer, but you can only transfer files back and forth to the Micro SD card and not directly to the 45 MB of onboard memory. So in order to transfer files to the onboard 45 MB you have to use Bluetooth, etc.

All direct connectivity and charging on the Motorola RAZR2 V9 is through Micro USB. What I was very impressed with is that the phone came standard with two reducers for my existing USB connectors and chargers. I bet I have 100 different chargers with probably 50 different types of connectors for cell phones around my house. It seems that every cell phone that comes out has a different connector for charging. This one had a different one, but gave you the ability to hook up the adapter and I didn’t have to go buy new car chargers, etc. Bonus points for Motorola!

The Motorola RAZR2 V9 comes standard with a 950 mAh battery. mAh stands for Milliamp Hour, a technical term for how much power a particular battery will hold. In comparison the original RAZR came standard with a 680 mAh battery. The battery life has been very impressive. I use my phone for almost everything. I take quite a few pictures, use the internet, send a ton of text messages, and it’s used as my only form of contact for work. I’ve been impressed how good the battery lasts under my extreme conditions. I normally charge my phone every night while I’m sleeping, and I don’t believe I’ve ever had a huge issue with it trying to die on my during the daytime hours.

Imaging

The phone comes equipped with a 2.0 MegaPixel fixed focus camera. I’ve used the camera quite often to record things that are happening at work and then email them to myself to keep for records. The first time I used the camera and sent them to my email, I was amazed that I got a full size (1200x1600!!), very nice picture. It is definitely not the normal grainy picture you get from a camera phone.

I wouldn’t go as far to say that I’m going to get rid of my digital camera, but it definitely works when that camera is not within reach.

The Bluetooth Printing function that comes with the phone is a pretty neat idea. I have not personally used this feature, but the way I understand it, is that you can connect through a Bluetooth connection, either on your personal computer that is attached to a printer or through a Bluetooth capable printer and print out your pictures. I don’t know how popular this will be with the WiFi networks being so common place anymore.

Video

The phones video features are even as impressive. It shows videos in a resolution of QCIF or 176x144 with 25,344 Pixels. QCIF means "Quarter CIF". To have one fourth of the area as "quarter" implies, height and width of the frame are halved.

I shot some videos of my kids out hunting Easter eggs and downloaded them to my computer. I was really amazed at the resolution and clarity. It actually plays MPEG movies at 25 fps and WMV or RealPlayer movies at 15 fps.

It can play videos at lengths of up to 1 hour! I haven’t seen the need to play a 1 hour video on my cell phone, but the option is there.

The phone also supports both video streaming and progressive download of videos off of the internet. I have utilized both of these features and it’s actually pretty fast and you can then save or discard the video after viewing. This option does need to be supported by your service provider, but I believe most providers do support that now.

Music

When I seen the phone in the display at my local retailer, the first thing the young lady wanted me to check out was the sound. She promptly brought up a MP3 file and started it playing. The sound coming from the phone sounded like my Sony MP3 player or my kids IPod. It was clear and wasn’t distorted at all. All the vocals were clear with no crackling or popping like I’ve heard from my original RAZR.

She then closed the cover and the music continued, but on the front screen you could see the album, song, and artist of the track that was playing and it had 3 buttons for advance, go back, and pause/play on the bottom of the screen. She promptly touched the screen and the music paused. It had a touch screen! I was sold. She didn’t even have to tell me you could make calls from it, I was hooked.

The Motorola RAZR2 V9 uses the Motorola Media Finder as its music player. You can manage your music using the smart keys on the sides of the phone or by using the touch screen. It also has the ability to lock the smart keys and the keypad so nothing gets accidentally hit.

This was important to me, since I was planning on using mine while I ran. After hearing the sound on this phone, I didn’t have any need for this and my Sony MP3 player. That’s one less thing I had to carry while I went out for my runs.

I currently am using a corded headset but I soon plan on taking advantage of the Bluetooth stereo headset features of the phone. I believe that could be one of my favorites once I invest in my new earphones.

The phone does support streaming audio off of the internet. I’ve not yet used this feature, seeing as I’ve got almost all my songs I need on my Micro SD card. This could be nice for checking out some new tunes though.


Internet & Messaging

The Motorola RAZR2 V9 has a full HTML browser to access any current web site. I have accessed my favorite sports sites and even Epinions from my phone and it honestly works great.

The phone is equipped with High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) which makes it one of the fastest internet phones on the market today. It has a data rate of 3.6 Mbit/s. I’ve honestly seen times when it will download sites faster than my home computer can do it.

The phone also has the ability to receive POP3 or IMAP4 mail (Ex. Yahoo) or HTML bases email such as Hotmail.

It of course supports the standard SMS and MMS messages and has the iTAP feature which will completely spoil you. This feature learns how you type and what words you use often and it will do automatic word completion for you. This saves me enormous amounts of time. I’ve picked up other phones since and it takes me 5 minutes to send something from the other phone that would take me 20 seconds on mine. Awesome feature!

Overall

The phone also is equipped with CrystalTalk. CrystalTalk is Motorola’s innovative technology that automatically adjusts audio to ensure clean calls even in a noisy environment.

I’ve used my phone inside the factory where I work. My family swears they can hear me a lot better on my cell phone than they can on the desktop phone we have out on the floor. The background noise is at least in half.

As I’m sure you can tell, I’m completely sold on this phone. I haven’t found anything about it that really bothers me.

The phone seems very durable. I’ve dropped the phone quite a few times and seems to keep on ticking. This is my second phone since November. The other one kind of got ran over. Luckily I had insurance on the phone and I got it replaced.

Motorola has been a leader in cell phones for many years. I’ve owned a lot of their products. This is one of the most innovative phones I’ve ever owned. It’s smart, stylish, and keeps me in contact with the world.

Thanks for reading and God Bless