Motorola RAZR V3 - Excellent, But Not Perfect

Author's Rating:

Pros: Stylish, well-built, excellent interface/menus, great functionality, performance, large screen

Cons: Price, pretty wide, need to create new phone entries for voice dialing

The Bottom Line: 
I am very happy with my phone and recommend it to anyone. With cool styling, worldwide compatibility, excellent reception and sound...

Author's Review
After using the Innostream 89 phone with my T-Mobile account and being disappointed with reception and sound quality, I decided to get the Motorola RAZR V3. I got it for less than $100 (provided I get my rebate for extending my service contract).

The RAZR V3 immediately impressed me with its features, looks and, more importantly, performance.

Update 12/2007: I bought the new RAZR 2 to replace this RAZR and it is a major improvement. See my review of the Motorola RAZR 2 V8 / MOTORAZR2 here.

Features and Benefits

The Motorola RAZR V3 is stylish flip-style phone, features a large and colorful screen (2.2-inch, 176x220), laser-cut keys, bright button backlight. It has a smaller color screen on the outside (96x80), letting you identify callers before opening the phone.

The phone has no external antenna, but still features excellent reception. The V3 has a VGA camera with 1x, 2x or 4x digital zoom. It lets you record videos as well. You can take a picture and attach it to a phone number so that when the person calls you, you can see their picture and recognize who is calling you.

The phone also lets you browse the web. It has Bluetooth connectivity. The V3 has 4-band GSM compatibility (850/900/1800/1900) and can be used in any country that uses GSM (virtually all European countries). It also comes with a charger that can be used in any country (110-240 V).

The phone lets you record voice memos. You can also record names for people and attach them to their phone numbers and later use the phone’s microphone for selecting the number to dial with your voice (voice recognition).

The phone features nice polyphonic ring tones (40 ringtones, 4 MP3 ringtones) and good talk/standby time. It has a speakerphone functionality as well.

Getting Started

Once I received my phone, I inserted my SIM card, attached the supplied battery and battery cover and plugged the supplied worldwide charger into the wall outlet and the cord into the phone. The battery was fully charged in less than an hour, at which point I was ready to use the phone.

The phone offers you to go through the initial setup, which is rather easy. The menus of the phone are easy to use, even for someone who have not read the manual. The phone automatically set the time, which I find convenient.

I also had to peel off the numerous protective film pieces covering all parts of the phone.

Construction

The phone is well-made and has a sturdy construction. The materials it is made of are durable and look nice. The phone is a flip-style with good amount of effort required to open or close.

The buttons have good tactile response and backlit well.

Usage

The phone is very easy to use. I only had to read the manual for about 5 minutes and only to figure out the advanced functions of the phone: voice dialing. The rest is easy to use and intuitive.

The menus are easy to use and the large screen lets you see a lot of information on the screen. The voice dialing is a convenient feature that works well, but requires you to create a duplicate phone number entry in the phone’s memory (even if you have the same phone number on your SIM card already) and only then attaching the recorded name to it.

You can send email or SMS messages easily and also can use instant messenging through AIM. You can also browse the web (something I do not do).

The phone lets you customize its numerous features, e.g. you can specify if you want to answer a call by flipping the phone open, by pressing any button or neither. You can select from numerous ring tones for incoming calls, SMS or voice mail. You can also customize what picture appears or what tone sounds when a certain person calls you.

You can customize the volume of tones for all functions (incoming call, SMS, etc.) independently. The volume can be set to a rather loud level and you can also select a profile that makes the phone ring and vibrate at the same time, which is useful in loud environments.

I find the phone's buttons on the side not very convenient to use. They are narrow and are located on the thinner part (the one that houses the LCD). I feel that it would be better if they were in the thicker part (the one that houses the keypad.

Performance

The most important aspect of the performance of a cell phone is its reception and sound quality. The RAZR V3 absolutely excels in both and blows away my previous phones: Nokia 6610, Motorola C650 and Innostream 89. With the later, I used to get no reception at home at times and now I get between 50% and 100% of signal strength with the V3. The Nokia also shown about 20%-30% less signal strength than the V3.

I also bought the Samsung E335 for my mother and that phone also shows 20-30% less signal strength than the RAZR.

The sound quality is very good, although still not quite up to the sound quality of the land line. Overall, I am very impressed with the RAZR's reception and sound quality.

Even in its speakerphone mode, the sound quality was excellent. I was able to use it at a distance of more than 10 inches with people on the other end having no problem hearing me. They did not even know I put them on the speakerphone.

The battery lasts quite a long time for its size. I have not validated the claims by Motorola about up to 200-430 minutes of talk time, 180-290 hours of standby time. But I know that the phone can definitely handle a week of my, admittedly short, phone conversations and standby with no need to be recharged, which is enough for me.

The camera provides pictures that are adequate to use as photo caller ID or for emailing. The camera has effective 4x digital zoom and produces pictures that are a little noisy in low light, but still usable.

Dust Buildup

After having the phone for over a year, I discovered that there is dust behind the glass that covers the screen. It is annoying since it makes it very difficult to see and also because there seems to be no way to get rid of it.

After googling this issue, I found that you can remove the glass (rather transparent plastic) and clean the screen, then reattach the glass (it has sticky glue on its perimeter). Alternatively, you can buy new front glass and use it after you clean the dust. I used the former approach.

Pros

The phone is stylish, well-built, has excellent interface/menus, great functionality, performance, large screen.

Cons

Not cheap, pretty wide (because of the large screen), need to create a new phone entry in the phone’s internal memory to use advanced features like voice dialing, easy to push buttons on the side of the phone by accident.

Bottom Line

I am very happy with my phone and recommend it to anyone. With cool styling, worldwide compatibility, excellent reception and sound quality and good battery life, it is an excellent choice.