Motorola RAZR2 V9m on Sprint Cell Phone Review
By Richard Baguley
Reviewed.com Editorial Staff
September 14, 2007
The latest in Motorola's iconic RAZR line of cell phones, the RAZR2 V9m has some serious upgrades from the previous models. The new $250 version of this popular flip phone from Sprint has the same sleek styling, but with a huge 2.2-inch exterior screen with touch-sensitive buttons, a 2-megapixel camera, and improved battery life. It runs the same old software, however, which proves to be its Achilles heel. In addition to Sprint, the RAZR2 is being offered by Verizon (for $249.99) and AT&T (for $299.99), both with a two-year contract.
Dialing on the RAZR2 is quick; the keypad is large and easy to navigate by touch, taking us less than 3.6 seconds to dial in our tests. Similarly, the send and end buttons (which start and end a call) are easy to find; you won't spend ages hunting for the right button to answer a call. The keypad was also pretty fast for entering text messages; we measured our text typing speed at 42.9 words per minute; an excellent score for a phone without a QWERTY keyboard. You wouldn't want to write a book on it, but it is more than adequate for typing text and e-mail messages.
The audio quality of the RAZR2 V9m was decent; voices received over the phone were clear and bright, but sent voices were a little too biased toward the high frequencies. This means high-pitched voices will sound overly thin and reedy, while low-pitched ones may sound muddy.
The RAZR2 boosts the camera resolution up to 2 megapixels (from the 1.3 megapixels of the RAZR), but it's still nothing to write home about. In our tests, we found images had decent resolution (although not as good as the Apple iPhone), and reasonable color. Colors were a little oversaturated, though; some subtle colors looked almost cartoonish. But the images are fine for candid snapshots; just don't expect to be able to frame them in an art gallery. We also found the RAZR2 camera was easy to use; casual shooters won't be confused by the options it offers.
Sprint is marketing the V9m as a media phone, but there is one serious omission here: the phone does not come with headphones. It will work with Bluetooth wireless headphones, though, and Sprint offers a wired headset for $29.99. But the V9m is far from ideal as a music player; the Sprint music player is the same one used on other Sprint phones, and is slow and awkward to use. The external touch screen buttons do allow you to control the music without opening the phone, though, and Sprint offers online music downloads for $0.99 a song. Sprint also offers their own Sprint TV service, which streams TV shows from several major networks. These look good on both the interior and exterior screens.
There is only limited support for e-mail on the V9m; the only e-mail feature is a Web-based e-mail client. This is adequate for sending quick e-mails, but doesn't allow you to read or write e-mails if you are in an area without cell signal coverage. So you won’t be able to compose an e-mail on a flight or the subway. Text message support is better, though; we found the process of writing text messages to be simple and quick. There was no way to search or organize text messages, though; a serious omission for the text messaging junkie.
Web browsing is also a weak area of the V9m. Although we don't expect phones like this to offer the fully-featured Web browser capabilities of smart phones like the iPhone or the HTC Mogul, we found the browser on the V9m to be extremely basic, with no support for features such as Javascript and frames. It might be adequate for checking the news headlines, but not for any serious browsing.
Battery life is one area where Motorola has made big strides: the RAZR2 V9m had a talk time of 4 hours and 47 minutes; nearly double what the older RAZR V3m managed. That's also longer than other similarly-sized phones like the Helio Fin and the Nokia N75. It also lasted for a decent 8 hours and 40 minutes playing back music; again about double the RAZR V3m.
The RAZR V9m brings some significant upgrades to the ageing RAZR lineup. The battery life is better and the big screen adds a lot to the experience of using it. But the software the phone runs is frustrating; it is slow and unwieldy. Other networks offering the RAZR2 have taken the opportunity to use newer versions of the software, but Sprint has stuck with the older software that doesn't fit with the shiny new design. As such, it's hard to justify the $200 extra the RAZR2 V9m costs over the older RAZR, unless you have a burning desire for the bigger screens.
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