15 February 2013

REVIEW: Motorola RAZR i


Remember the Motorola RAZR, the super thin flip phone from the mid noughties? We do, and quite fondly as well. In fact a few of us Test Pitters had that particular model, back in the days when the best you could hope for in a phone was that it made calls, sent texts and took tiny lo-res photos of your dog sleeping. These days our mobiles do a wee bit more, so it was with excited anticipation that we tore open the box of the new Motorola RAZR i.


Motorola have been somewhat lacking from the shelves since the smart phone revolution and the company’s products have hardly been on the public radar. That is until now, however. The RAZR i is a 4.3 inch smart phone with a few nifty features. We got to grips with it, gleefully.

The handset itself is nice and slim and a joy to hold. The marketing is blasting on about the 4.3 inch screen being ‘edge-to-edge’, so we were expecting something a bit more… erm… screeny. However, even though a lot of phones have the 4.3 inch screen these days, the fact that there is very little ‘edge’ to the RAZR i means that the whole handset seems much smaller and neater. Even the girl we handed it to thought it was okay size-wise. A girl!

Switching it on we were especially impressed by the quality of the nothingness. By that we mean the blackness of the screen. The Motorola M logo burned onto the screen in bright red, while the surrounding surface remained completely black. It was a nice introduction to what is beautifully bright and crisp display, probably one of the best we’ve seen on an Android phone.

Android 4.0 looks lovely on the phone and everything runs extremely smoothly – thanks no doubt to the Intel processor deep within the innards. The presence of the processor is further highlighted by the ‘Intel Inside’ logo on the back of the phone, which if we’re being honest, detracts from the overall sleekness. Still, the other people on the tube will be dead impressed while you chatter away.

Speaking of which, call quality was excellent, as was texting and composing emails/tweets/notes etc. We really did notice the processor working, as every operation (and we ran several at once) was quick and smooth with no detectable lag or slowing down.

The camera is another big highlight of the marketing. The 8MP camera takes good quality shots, sure, but nothing we haven’t seen before. The great feature of the little snapper is ‘multi-shot’ mode, in which you can take ten shots in the space of just one second. Not really useful for capturing the sleeping dog, but if you’re YOUNG and into EXTREME sports, you can snap your mates on their skateboards, popping ollies and falling over on their FACES, seeing perfectly the moment that their nose breaks.

Motorola also inform us that the RAZR i is splash and scratch proof. This is good news, particularly if you work in a sand paper factory near the sea. However, the sim card and SD port are located on the side of the phone under a flimsy plastic cover, one that wobbles about a bit, even straight out of the box. How this will stop those splashes getting into the insides of the phone, we don’t know, and the slight of the flap did cause us to make a sad sound, as did the visible screws on the case.

But still, these physical flaws aside, the Motorola RAZR i is a very good phone, solidly built and enjoying its impressive processing power. If you’re looking for a smart phone that will not only look different to all the rest on the high street but also pack a punch in operation, the RAZR i might be the one for you.

£319.99 – depending on where you buy.

Check out more specs and details at www.razri.com  
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