Gadgetory

the Droid Razr HD is one of a few new droids being offered on the Verizon network by Motorola we recently had a chance to take it for a spin we had a couple questions we asked how does it stack up against the original Droid Razr do you need to fork out the extra money and get the Droid RAZR MAXX HD or is the Droid Razr HD enough for you to have as your regular daily driver I'm Joe Levi this is PocketNow and this is the full review of Verizon's Motorola Droid Razr HD it wasn't that long ago that we were wowed by the original Droid Razr it's thin bezel was amazing now the new Droid Razr HD isn't quite as thin but it's got something the original razor didn't incredible battery life one that in just a minute the razor HD is still very thin fairly light and its construction feels impressive on the front of the phone is a beautiful slab of Gorilla Glass with moderate Motorola and verizon branding gone are the capacitive buttons of previous generations they've been replaced with on-screen buttons that we've become accustomed to an Android Ice Cream Sandwich and jelly bean motorola took the opportunity to rework the layout of the stuff on the front of the device as well they moved the front-facing camera and sensors positioning them higher up on the device which freed up a lot of room for the new HD screen they also included the largest multicolored notification LED that we've ever seen the HD screen looks quite good it's got vibrant colors the text is crisp and clear and it's readable in virtually all lighting conditions the back of the phone is covered in a soft touch Kevlar that's durable doesn't show fingerprints and is very grippy the camera LED flash and speaker grille occupy a very slight hump on the top of the backplate the headphone jack is up on the top a very nicely textured our button volume rocker are over here on the right and the micro USB and HDMI ports are on the left just below the sim and SD card slot to get to either of those you'll need to use the included pokey thing or a very slender paper clip during the course of this review I wasn't able to get the door open despite my best efforts the battery inside the razor HD is significantly larger than the underperforming battery that came in the original Droid Razr now if you remember the original Droid Razr was followed up by the original Droid RAZR MAXX with a much larger battery well like that the razor HD has a counterpart the razor max HD and it too has a much larger battery however we don't think you're really going to need it the 2530 milliamp hour battery unfortunately isn't user removable in our tests the battery lasted well over 20 hours with regular use including plenty of YouTube and web surfing the razor HD is powered by a dual-core MSM 8960 Snapdragon s4 plus processor running at 1.5 gigahertz and an Adreno 225 GPU it's got 1 gig of ram under the hood to help keep everything running smoothly 16 gig of internal storage space and an SD card slot for additional storage if you can get that little door open motorola still isn't running stock android but it seems like they're starting to get the message we want simple elegant stuff so they're scaling back quite a bit without losing too many of the niceties that we're used to in motoblur the launcher is still very much Motorola the circles widget is front and center but the other widgets seem to be getting dumbed down one of the more notable inclusions in this iteration of Motorola's launcher is the unique Settings panel to the far left on the home screen that gives you access to all your comment agha land even direct access to your full settings disappointingly there is some lag in you eye whether this is due to their decision to use an S 4 plus processor rather than an S for pro or the fact that the razor HD is running Ice Cream Sandwich and not jellybean the lag wasn't around all the time but when it was it slowed down the whole experience sometimes for three or four seconds at a time benchmarks however we're all-around impressive quadrant smart bench Linpack and antutu all scored very well if you want to get the exact numbers make sure you head over to the full review at pocketnow.com LTE speeds are going to vary by your location we usually have between three and four bars and usually got around 13 megabit per second down and 10 megabit per second up the phone itself does support HD calling but we weren't able to tell the difference between HD calls and normal calls that's not necessarily a bad thing because calls were always crisp and clear and we never once dropped a call or ventured into an area that didn't have voice coverage the still camera does what you'd expect but colors aren't great and the shutter speed seems a little slower than some of the other phones that we've tested recently indoor shots were dark and noisy outdoor shots were always too bright or too dark HDR seems to help a little bit and pulled some details out of the shadows but overall eight and megapixel we expected more so what does all this boil down to let's talk some pros and some cons pros the razor HD has a terrific display extraordinary battery life is built very very well and we love the fact that it's got this grippy Kevlar back how about the cons unfortunately with this iteration there is no more webtop if you want to use your phone and plug it into a laptop or plug it into one of the webtop accessories you're not going to have that experience I'm sorry you're out of luck there's no jellybeans out of the box it's running an Ice Cream Sandwich normally that wouldn't be a problem they've said that they're going to release an update but motorola has a bad reputation for not keeping their OS upgrade promises and last there's also a slight lag in the UI at times animations can slow down to a ridiculous crawl so in conclusion should you get this phone if you're a Verizon customer and you're looking for a new phone you don't need to look any further the Droid Razr HD or the the RAZR MAXX HD should probably be your next phone it's very well built it's got a beautiful screen and the battery even in the non max version will last literally all day long and then some we give the Droid Razr an eight point three out of ten that'll wrap up our full video review for the Motorola Droid Razr HD for the Verizon network if you'd like to get even more details specific benchmark scores and all kinds of stuff that we had to leave out of this video for brevity make sure you head over to pocketnow.com if you liked the video make sure you give it a thumbs up and of course if you'd like to follow us so you don't miss out on any new phones or any new news about this phone you'll want to follow at PocketNow to eat if you want to follow me I'm at Joe Levi for PocketNow thanks for watching the Droid Razr HD is one of a few new droids available from Motorola on the Verizon network forgot everything