Motorola Razr2 V9m on Verizon Cell Phone Review
By Mark Brezinski
Reviewed.com Editorial Staff
September 20, 2007
The Motorola Razr2 certainly has big shoes to fill. The original was ubiquitous because its small, sleek design was unique. Now, small, sleek phones are everywhere, and Motorola has to up the ante. They attempt to do this on the new RAZR2 with upgraded hardware, including improved battery life and a huge, touch-sensitive external screen. Unfortunately, Verizon’s version of the RAZR2 V9m is stuck running a similar OS as the original RAZR2; there are a handful of updates, but the software is pretty much the same. The phone itself is slightly larger and heavier than the RAZR, but only by a little. It is still a small, svelte phone that can easily slide into a pocket.
Modern phones are increasingly becoming all-in-one multimedia devices. Their main function, however, remains placing and receiving calls. So that's one of the major things we test, timing how quickly we can make calls. The Razr2 V9m did well in these tests, with the large, comfortable keypad letting us make calls in less than 3.5 seconds. Call management was decent, as well, providing easy access to dialed and received phone numbers. The contact management software wasn’t as thoughtful; while it has the basic features, it doesn't allow for much customization (Sprint’s version of the RAZR2 is better in this respect). The rest of its organizational software was equally vapid, even for a non-business-oriented device; this isn't a phone you should choose if you rely on your cell phone to organize your life.
As far as audio quality, Verizon’s RAZR2 did well. Sounds coming in through the phone are cut off a little at the highest end of the spectrum, which means voices on the other end of the line might sound slightly clipped. This most likely won’t cause any issues, though. The phone didn’t perform so well sending voices, however. It dampened lower frequencies and overemphasized higher frequencies, which means your voice will sound thin and reedy. The V9m performed a little below average here.
The V9m has decent imaging for a phone. In our resolution test, the V9m was able to discern 988 line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) horizontally and 958 lw/ph vertically. Line width per pixel height refers to how many alternating black and white lines the camera can discern before it simply interprets them as gray. To put that in context, though, a typical point-and-shoot shoot digital camera will get a line width per picture height rating of 1500 or above, so the images the RAZR2 captures are nowhere near as sharp. The V9m also did well with color, though it did tend to oversaturate yellows and reds a bit. The video it captures is decent and would be fine for capturing candid moments. As far as playing back media, the RAZR2 V9m handled music and video well. We liked the external screen’s music controls, though we would’ve liked to be able to play back and control videos on the external screen, as well; they can only be viewed on the internal screen. The music software, however, is really bad. The left soft key is dedicated to bringing up Verizon’s music catalog, which is annoyingly invasive if you want to just play your own music. Also, when browsing through lists of your songs, only three display at a time because Verizon decided about one-third of the screen should be dominated by a picture of someone listening to music.
As far as messaging, the RAZR2 V9m provides average functionality, where it provides any at all. First of all, it doesn’t have an e-mail client, so business users should steer clear. E-mail is handled through a web client, which means you can't send or read e-mail while the phone is out of Internet range. It supports instant messaging, but each message is charged as an SMS message, which can get expensive if you don’t have an unlimited SMS plan. MMS messaging receives standard support, but, like most phones, you can’t attach media to a text message – MMS and SMS are separate. The online experience is also standard, especially if you’re used to Verizon’s BREW browser.
The Razr2 V9m’s battery life was above average for normal phones. It lasted through 4 hours and 45 minutes of constant calling, 8 hours and 55 minutes of constant music playback, and 4 hours and 51 minutes of constant Web browsing. That's a good set of battery scores, although the talk time is a bit low.
The RAZR2 is a good, well designed cell phone in hardware terms; both screens are great and the keypad is comfortable. However, the software on Verizon’s version simply doesn’t take advantage of this hardware; it doesn't allow you to do things like play videos on the external screen. The lack of a software upgrade means the user experience is much the same as the original Razr, only with a much more inflated price. As this is the case, we don’t feel the RAZR2 V9m is a good deal at this point. It's not a bad phone, but the upgrades are just not worth the extra cost. We would recommend waiting for the price to drop before you pick it up, or wait for a version with software that justifies the cost.
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