Motorola V3 Razr Review.

After owning a Razr for two weeks I thought I would write a little review. I am not going to discuss features of the phone in this review, you can find that out very easily, but rather provide my personal experiences about several different aspects with it, which should be more useful for someone interested in buying the phone.

Reception/call quality

One of the main reasons I wanted to get rid of my old phone (Moto V60i) was because it always dropped calls, or there would be a situation where I could hear the other person and they could not hear me or vise versa. Reception was the most important factor to me when buying a new phone and if the razr did not cut it I planned to return it. But reception is excellent and so far all my convo’s on the razr have been very clear with no cutouts (that were the razr’s fault anyway). With my old phone I would usually have 2-3 bars of service in my room, with the razr I usually have 3-4 and have even seen it at 5 a few times! I always have service in places other people don’t (basements and such) and even if the phone only has one bar it is good to go and will place a call just fine.

The quality of the calls has been very good as well, callers always sound natural and clear and I never have to shout in order for them to hear me. About the volume, yes it can be a bit too low for situations where there is a lot of background noise. When I am at a party I usually need to find a quiet spot in order to talk, but then again I am used to this because my old phone was the same way. I have found that some callers are very loud and other are softer, it depends, also how you hold the phone to your ear makes a difference as well. Overall I do not consider it a big flaw, esp since you can edit in call volume pretty easily with a program or two, but I have no felt the need to do yet. As for the the speakerphone, I have found it to be plenty loud and don’t have to yell in order for the caller to hear me.

Form/Build Quality

I don’t really need to discuss the form/style of the phone, it pretty much speaks for itself and everyone knows about how thin it is ect. In my opinion it is the best looking phone I have seen and it gathers a lot of attention whenever you pull it out. I feel that this phone is build very well. It is metal, rather than typical plastic which is nice. It has a very solid feel to it and does not feel cheap at all. Opening and closing the phone also feels very solid and has no “slop”, when the flip is open it does not move from side to side at all which is nice because I have seen cheaper phones with this movement. It feels as good as its price tag would suggest, the only thing that feels a bit cheap are the side buttons, they just do not feel as solid as they should.

Keypad/LCD

I really like the keypad, some knock it but it looks awesome and works great for me, I have heard of some saying the keys are hard to press but mine respond well to very light presses. Texting is not weird and I have not found any shortcomings to this ultra flat keypad. As for the LCD’s, The outside screen is pretty small; it should have been as big as the glass covering it, but it is still nice and clearly displays necessary info as well as caller ID names and pictures. A small flaw with the outer LCD is that it is very hard to see the time without hitting the backlight; you have to turn on the backlight in order to see anything else such as missed calls, signal strength, ect. The only reason this bothers me is times when my hands are dirty (at work) and I want to check the time or see if I have any missed calls but don’t want to get the phone dirty, or get paint on it. The inside LCD is very nice and very large for a phone, one of the reasons I don’t mind the phone being so wide is because it allows for this nice screen. Indoors the screen is very vibrant and easy to read, outdoors, depending how the sunlight hits it can be very difficult to see, but this seems to be the case with most phones that have a colored screen. For me this only becomes and annoyance when I am trying to take a picture, otherwise I really don’t care, I can still clearly see who is calling on the outer LCD. From what I have heard Moto put some kind of coating over the screen to make it look better indoors, but at the expense of reducing outdoor visibility.

Camera

Honestly the camera is not that great, esp when compared to some of the new phones out that have megapixel cams. And for the price of the phone one would probably expect it to have a megapixel cam. However I really do not care, I have a nice Canon digital camera that I use for taking serious pictures. The reason I wanted a camera phone was for caller ID pictures and for capturing random moments at parties and such, and the razr’s camera works perfect for this. I have seen many cell phone cams that were pretty much un-usable; the razr’s cam defiantly gets the job done and will take an almost decent picture. I attached a few pictures so you can see...

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› See More: Motorola V3 Razr Review.

Other features

The phone has voice dialing, my old phone had this and I really like the feature, I have it set up for maybe 10 people, the people I call the most. It is really good when driving, so you don’t need to take your eyes off the road. The phone can store and play MP3s as ringtones which is really cool. With the mobile phone tools software you can cut down any MP3 that you have on your computer, edit it and then send it to the phone for use as a ringtone. No more paying for ringtones, I now have my entire music collection (around 4,200 songs) to choose from! I have never used Bluetooth so I cannot comment on that, however I have heard it works fine with this phone.

Battery Life

Battery life on this phone is decent, I usually go 2-3 days with a charge, that is without talking crazy on it though. Also if you play around with the thing often it really cuts down on the life of the battery. I really can’t say how many hours talk time I get; I would say it is at least 3. But I am in the habit of charging the phone every night, no matter what the battery level is at, so I don’t really worry about it. I have not been in a situation where I was pissed that my battery died. Another nice thing about the Razr related to charging the battery, is how it charges though a USB port. I have found that with phones like my old V60i and my friends V551 that use the “three prong” connector that plugs into the bottom of the phone. After a while it seems like the phone has a problem making a clean connection with the charger and it can be quite frustrating trying to get the battery to charge.

Memory

As far as memory for storage of pictures, ringtones, videos, ect goes, I am sorry but 5.5 (non expandable) MB’s for a phone this price is pretty sad and one of my biggest complaints, that said so far I have not had a problem filling it up. Pictures really do not take up much at all ranging from 5kb to 50kb (in my experience) and besides caller ID pictures, I really don’t store many on my phone, I just transfer them to my computer and keep them there. Ringtones can take up quite a bit, 300-500 KB’s seems to be the average. Again I only keep at max maybe 5 on it at a time and keep the rest on my computer. I don’t have any videos stored on my phone but I am sure they take up the most. I will be able to get by with 5.5 MB’s, but it sure would be nice if there was more, and with memory so cheap these days I don’t see why there isn’t, a phone this price should have at least 32 MB’s.

Customization

This phone, like other Moto’s allows you to change the shortcuts on many of the keys, for example don’t like how hitting right on the directional pad brings you to the AIM menu, then change it to recent calls list. The phone also supports skins and themes to change the look of all the menus. Then there is the “un-authorized” side of customizing, this is something I am really interested in. There are a ton of different things you can do to it, from adding video record, to changing the cingular logo on the outer LCD when the phone is open. I defiantly want to get into some modding and this phone has a big fanbase with a ton of info for that which is nice.

Conclusion

Overall think it is a great phone, can you get a more feature packed phone for the same price, of course, no doubt you are paying more because of its looks, my friend has a V551 and it is pretty much the same thing feature wise (actually offers a few more) for $100 less. But honestly I don’t care, it is such a cool/different phone and I am so sick of all the run of the mill models that are out today, plus the razr seems to gather attention, esp at parties, whip it out and everyone goes “o **** you got the razr, damn” There are also a lot of “haters” that like to bash this phone; I personally think most have never used one or maybe got a defective one. A lot of people also bash the moto software, which is a personal option, I myself really like it and am very used to how things are setup (since I am used to my old Moto), everyone raves about Noika’s software but I honestly don’t like it, and it reminds me of my very first huge Nokia cell. There is no way this phone is worth the $500 it was sold for when it first came out and I feel bad for anyone who bought it at that price, but I think $200 is more reasonable, like I said you can get a more feature packed phone at this price but its not gonna have the style of the razr and I feel the razr is a good balance of style and features for its price, plus it is very good at doing its main indented function, being a phone! BTW I am someone who normally always favors function over form, for example there is no way I will pay $50 for a polo branded shirt when I can get the same thing from a generic manufacturer for $10. But with this phone I just had to change my ways, I am going to have it for two years so I don’t want to be stuck with a boring phone for that long.

Pros

- Top notch reception and call quality
- Great style/build quality
- Nice and big LCD screen
- Very customizable

Cons

- Weak amount of memory
- Inside LCD hard to see in direct sunlight
- In call volume may not be loud enough for some (can be increased however)
- Sub-par camera for a phone this price

Well that’s about it, I may add a few things if I think of anything I left out that is worth mentioning. But I hope some people find this review useful, if you do please give me some rep, thanks. Attached here are a few pictures of my phone.