Gadgetory

Motorola's released three new droid razors and we've got one of them I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is the Motorola Droid Razr m full review let's get to it we took a brief tour of the razor M's hardware in last week's unboxing video and as I mentioned there you could be forgiven for overlooking this device in the shadow of its to larger beefier siblings motorola is marketing this device as having an edge-to-edge display and while it's not quite what we had in mind when we think of that term the bezel is quite thin they needed to make this device notable in some way and it wasn't gonna be the display itself which is the same panel as on the original Droid Razr a 4.3 inch Super AMOLED advanced at qHD resolution with a pentile RGB jisub pixel arrangement the screen has taken a lot of heat for those specs but it's not without its pluses we found the excellent color saturation and the deep blacks to be really wonderful and overcoming those deficiencies for the most part the casing itself is pretty unremarkable from a design standpoint the phone is 8.3 millimeters thick and vaguely wedge-shaped without the distinctive camera bulge that has defined the razor line until now motorola has brought its popular kevlar micro weave backing to this device and it combined with the Gorilla Glass 2 screen protection the aluminum frame and the water-repellent nano coating give the 126 gram razor amma solid feel in the hand there is a notification LED up here but annoyingly it's not used for anything but low battery blinking for guts we're looking at a fairly typical spec loadout a dual-core 1.5 gigahertz processor is backed up by one gig of ram and 8 gigs of storage expandable via microSD for radios Verizon's CDMA and 4G LTE bands are here as well as global roaming with HSPA the primary camera is 8 megapixels and shoots video in 1080p and all that is powered by a non-removable 2000 milliamp hour battery all that hardware is put two solid use on the software side the razor and we tested isn't running final software and it's not running anything fancy like jellybean but it's still a fairly smooth experience specifically we're talking about Android 4.0.4 with Motorola's custom UI skin which seems to be growing more and more subtle with each new device Motorola's custom unlock screen here is back with its quick jump shortcuts and other Flair's have returned as well like the circles widget we know and love from our time with the Atrix HD and Photon Q motorola has also rethought the home screen layout positioning the primary home screen all the way to the left of the ribbon it's let Motorola build a custom quick settings pane full of useful toggles as well as a jump link to the full settings menu which is quite handy importantly the Motorola keyboard has undergone some serious revisions while it's still listed in the software as Motorola input the keyboard is as close to stock Android as we've seen with its autocorrect and responsiveness much better than on other Motorola devices otherwise it's typical Ice Cream Sandwich with folder support widgets multitasking everything we're used to seeing from Android we tested the razor m in the Greater Boston area and found its performance to be better than average for a mid-range smartphone as we mentioned before UI responsiveness was quite good with the device only stuttering and lagging occasionally and benchmark scores were close to the last Motorola device we reviewed the photon queue that leads to smooth internet browsing and gameplay most of the time and video playback is also good considering this isn't even final software that bodes well for the phone's future if it gets updated regularly camera performance was average which is actually a step up from most other Motorola smartphones we've reviewed there's still the issue of the viewfinder software being finicky when it comes to white balance and focal point with mixed bright and dark backgrounds but at least Motorola has finally included an HDR mode for photos which helps a lot macro shooting is acceptable the camera app launches quickly and shutter responsiveness is quite good the bug that we noticed on the Atrix HD and photon Q which causes music to momentarily blast from the speakerphone when you're taking a picture while listening to music is still here but one step at a time we suppose in line with other Motorola hardware phone calls on the razor and we're crystal clear and callers said we sounded fine reception over both 3G and LTE was excellent speakerphone performance in calls wasn't as loud as during media playback but it was plenty loud for most circumstances speaking of media playback there are some handy equaliser functions here that helped music sound better through headphones which we appreciate it there's also automatic volume limiting if the phone thinks you're listening to music too loud which we didn't appreciate at all please please please let us do what we want one of Motorola's big focuses with its new smart phone line has been in endurance and battery life on the razor M was quite good we were able to get more than a day's use on a single charge right in line with Motorola's claim of 20 hours of mixed usage and that's without using the power saving Smart Actions rules the razor M isn't going to turn many heads sitting as it does in the shadow of its more notable siblings but it serves an important function it's a mid-range device that doesn't sacrifice a lot in the way of features or performance in order to get its price down it sits well in the hand it feels exceedingly well made and it runs Android like a champ the software modifications make Android better and not worse and it lasts a long time on a charge the razor M is proof positive that it is possible to make a mid tier smartphone feel in many respects like a premium device it does the rebooted razor brand proud in our opinion we give the Motorola Droid Razr m an 8 out of 10 that's going to do it for a full review of the Motorola Droid Razr m if you liked the review please throw us a thumbs up here on youtube if you want to leave a comment please do so at the post the full review at pocketnow.com where you can read more in-depth impressions from my time with the razor m thank you for watching in the interim please follow us on twitter at pocket now twitch you can follow us on facebook and google+ as well if you want to follow me on twitter i'm captain - phones that's captain the number two phones we've got as always a lot more content coming up at pocket now in the days and weeks ahead so once again thank you for watching and we'll see you next time