Motorola RAZR2 V9 article

We open up a new RAZR2 from Verizon Wireless and wonder how it differs from what we’ve seen. Is this the new RAZR2 to own, or could there possibly be more on the way?

Of all the RAZR2 phones that will be released before the holiday season, the two most similar are the Sprint and Verizon Wireless phones. Though there are differences between the two, and each certainly has its high points and lows, in terms of our testing, most of the important differences were negligible.

Design – Very good

We like the color of the Verizon Wireless RAZR2 better than the Sprint model. The copper has a nice warmth to it, and it complements the polished design. We prefer the dedicated speakerphone key on the Sprint version keypad to the confusing Camera / Camcorder toggle among the Verizon RAZR2’s keys. See, we could really nitpick like this for days, but the designs are so similar, once again the RAZR is differentiated more by color and simple style choices than real functional difference. The Verizon Wireless RAZR2 gives you access to speaker-independent dialing on its touch-sensitive external screen, while the Sprint phone lets you watch Sprint TV. Ho-Hum.

To its credit, we’ve been playing with RAZR2s for a couple weeks now, and we still really like the style. It has a more adult styling, more metal than plastic, and a nice, comfortable weight to it. It feels well made, and we dig the big, smooth swivel. It’s very classy. Let’s hope Motorola and the carriers can keep the look fresh with some interesting styles and upgrades.

Calling – Very good

The Verizon Wireless RAZR2 sounded better than Sprint’s V9m in our lower Manhattan offices. On the VZW V9m, we got a solid three bars of 1X voice service, but little to no EV-DO reception. Still, data seemed to be working fine, so perhaps the metering was simply off. We enjoyed the loud speakerphone, the easy-to-use Bluetooth, and especially the accurate speaker-independent voice dialing, accessible from the face, as we said. Conference calling on the RAZR2 functioned exactly as it did on the recent LG Chocolate update, which we found intuitive on the first attempt. Unfortunately, the RAZR2 also inherits the Chocolate phone’s lackluster address book, which lacked many of the fields we crave, like address (since it is an address book, after all).

Messaging – Good

We liked the SMS app on the Verizon V9m, but some of the other messaging programs gave us problems. We couldn’t log onto our hotmail e-mail accounts because the logon screen apparently doesn’t let you enter capital letters into the password field, a necessity in our case (MOM). On the MSN Messenger app, the space key seemed to stick, and we had to press twice each time to get out of the autocomplete field. Probably a mistake on our part, but the default should be easier. We’re getting more used to the ultra-flat, slick keys, but we’d still like something a bit finger-friendlier.

Camera – Good

We got some very strange colors out of our V9m’s camera, mostly purple. Images were very noisy, blurry and pixilated around the edges. We noticed lots of ghosting around more distant objects. Also, again the default setting stymied us, as the camera twists into landscape by default. You can adjust to portrait, but it took us a moment to figure it out. The camera is accessible from the external touch screen, but for many options, like exiting the camera, you have to open the flip and work it from the inside. Editor functions were impressive, with red-eye reduction and some funny face filters. And, if you decide to send your pics, you can do so over Bluetooth or e-mail, no sweat.

Video – Good

Verizon’s V Cast Video player on this RAZR2 definitely trumped the pinched Sprint TV player we saw on the other network’s phone. Although content was similar, though Verizon Wireless lacks any long movie selection, the video quality on the VZW RAZR2 was better. Not perfect, and not as good as The Network’s V Cast Mobile TV. Now that would make an interesting RAZR2. This phone, however, played videos smoothly, with good lip synching on music videos, though these did take a few minutes to download. We’d appreciate a better video player, with more robust options and faster scrubbing, but we like the stereo Bluetooth support in the video player, a feature many multimedia phones are still lacking.

Audio – Mediocre

Because we had a few other RAZR2 phones lying around, we happened to have a USB cable that would fit the new mini-USB port on the Verizon phone. Verizon Wireless still refuses to bundle a USB cable with their “music phones,” but we were able to synchronize our RAZR2 with our Windows Media Player library. Or at least we tried to sync the two. Unfortunately, only a few songs came through, a random jumble from our long list, though we had plenty of space on the microSD card. Our own microSD card, of course, as Verizon Wireless doesn’t include memory with their “music phones.” In any case, the few songs that did synchronize sounded good, even over our stereo Bluetooth headphones (no headphones from Verizon either). Again, the music player can be accessed from the external screen, but the touch sensitive buttons lack robust control over the player, and we were always forced to open the phone to complete our tasks.

Web browsing – Mediocre

The Web browsing experience on our RAZR2 was disappointing, especially since the phone choked on our homepage, claiming insufficient memory. Slashdot loaded fine, with a lack of color or mastheads, but text was properly formatted and styled. It looked a bit blocky, but was legible. Scrolling long, columnar pages took far too long, as the supposedly smooth scrolling we selected felt much more like jerky clicking. We also miss the alternative wide page views for Web site, and any sort of navigational aid, like a mini-map.

GPS Navigation – Very good

The RAZR2 V9m did a fine job wielding GPS with VZ Navigator. It tracked us well on our long commute into the New Jersey suburbs, and kept us on screen through turns and short tunnels. Maps seemed to load on the RAZR2 quicker than they did on the LG Chocolate phone, and we never had the problems with starting points that we experienced on that phone.

source:infosyncworld.com
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