The Droid RAZR is one of those rare phones that qualifies as a leap forward in hardware design and engineering. Sure, other handsets have higher-resolution displays and faster processors, but only the Droid RAZR squeezes a full set of competitive state-of-the-art specs and an LTE radio into a body just .28-inches thick ¡ª a profile thinner than any other modern smartphone available. Even more remarkably, the RAZR has a bigger battery than the Droid Bionic inside its ultraslim case. In other words, it's the best phone Motorola's ever put together, at least on paper. How does it hold up in the real world ¡ª and is it worth getting now instead of waiting for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which was announced on the same day and features Android 4.0? Read on to find out.
2Android 2.2 G88
Display
While the RAZR is the first device to ever ship with a 4.3-inch qHD 960 x 540 Super AMOLED display, it's not quite the achievement Motorola made it out to be at launch. First, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus features a higher-resolution 720p HD Super AMOLED display, and second, the RAZR's screen looks pretty bad. Super AMOLED panels use the inferior PenTile pixel arrangement, and the RAZR's 256dpi pixel density doesn't hide it ¡ª in fact, it seems to make it worse. Not only are individual pixels readily apparent, but text looks jaggy, there's red fringing around vertical lines, and images seem to de-res when scrolling in the browser.
Compared to Motorola's excellent qHD LCD displays in devices like the Bionic and Droid X2 and Apple's industry-leading iPhone 4 / 4S Retina Display, the RAZR is a major disappointment ¡ª and that's before even taking into account AMOLED's inherent love-it-or-hate-it hypersaturation and consistent off-axis blue color shift.
According to Motorola, choosing Super AMOLED helped make the RAZR thinner ¡ª AMOLED displays don't need external backlights like traditional LCD displays. It's just unfortunate Motorola had to sacrifice display quality as well.
Software
Motorola's dropped the "Motoblur" and "Blur" branding for the skin it puts on its high-end smartphones, but this nameless evil is still to be feared. I actually quite liked the skin Motorola used on the Droid X2, which did little apart from tightening up some visual elements of Android and adding clear buttons to individual notifications, but things have gotten substantially worse with every subsequent Motorola device. The current version of Moto's skin is overwrought, fussy, and confusing in many places, and while there are some redeeming elements, nothing about it is clean or inviting ¡ª it's almost like the OS is screaming at you. Just watch the extraneous random "glow" animation that accompanies each homescreen transition, or the super-slow zoom in effect when you open the app list. Both are cute the first time, and then quickly irritating. HD2 T8585
That said, Motorola has added some interesting pieces to the RAZR.
Performance and battery life
Motorola might pack on the unnecessary animations and bloat, but the RAZR's overall performance is quite good: I got Quadrant scores of between 2400 and 2800, which is in range of other high-end Android devices like the HTC Amaze 4G and the Samsung Galaxy S II. I did notice a fair bit of occasional lag in the web browser, although it was inconsistent, and the SunSpider browser test returned a score of 3448.6, which is in line with other high-end devices.
Motorola only gave us but a single day to review the RAZR, so we'll have to see how the battery holds up over time, but in average use the RAZR's battery held up as well as any other LTE device ¡ª I browsed the web, made a few phone calls, checked my mail, and otherwise used the phone like normal for most of the day before having to charge up. Unsurprisingly, the more I used LTE, the quicker the battery drained. The 1780mAh battery is a bit larger than the Droid Bionic's and it offers slightly longer quoted talk times, but it's also sealed in ¡ª you won't be able to quickly swap it if you're a serious road warrior.
Cameras
The 8-megapixel camera on the back of the RAZR is the same as the Droid Bionic. And just like the Bionic, the RAZR takes reasonably good photos when everything is perfectly in order, but the slow autofocus and relatively poor low-light performance doesn't make that easy ¡ª especially not compared to the newer, faster cameras in phones like the iPhone 4S and HTC Amaze 4G. Similarly, the 1080p video is reasonably fine, but not spectacular, and it generates huge files ¡ª perhaps that's why the RAZR comes preset to 720p out of the box.
There's a 1.3-megapixel camera up front for video chatting, which works with the bundled Google Talk client. As with other front-facing cams, that's really about all you'll want to use it for. Android 2.3 FG8
Wrap-up
So is the Droid RAZR worth Motorola's marketing blitz? Is it the phone to get? Well, probably not. While the hardware engineering required to stuff the internals of the Bionic into the thinnest smartphone design on the market is nothing short of amazing, the compromise on display quality needed to get there simply isn't worth it. The quality difference between the LCD 4.3-inch qHD panel on the Droid Bionic and the Super AMOLED panel on the RAZR is simply night and day ¡ª and while the Bionic isn't as sexy as the RAZR, I prefer a screen that's easy on the eyes to a Kevlar back panel. And the RAZR's over-the-top Android skin makes a bad display look even worse.
"Something better is coming" is usually bad buying advice when it comes to Android phones, but in this case it's true. The upcoming Samsung Galaxy Nexus is nearly as thin, offers a larger 4.65-inch display with higher 720p resolution, and will ship with stock Android 4.0 as a Google-blessed device that's first to get software updates. I'm concerned that the Galaxy Nexus also has a PenTile Super AMOLED display, but all things being equal the RAZR appears to be just one step behind.