Motorola launched the RAZR yesterday, giving me some early hands-on time with a preproduction model. Here’s my initial thoughts.
On The Plus Side:
The original RAZR was a huge hit in its time, largely due to its amazing (for its time) design. There’s no doubt that the new RAZR is an eye-catching phone, largely due to its size and slender profile.
It’s also a very solid feeling phone; the combination of a kevlar back and gorilla glass front means it’s a phone you could chuck into a (large) pants pocket and not worry about damaging. You’re more likely to damage yourself than the phone.
The screen is big and beautiful. A 4.3 inch 960×540 display screen is the natural friend of photos, videos and web pages, and it’s also very nice and bright.
The overall response is good, which you’d expect out of a dual-core premium Android phone. I’ve not had enough time to draw much of a conclusion beyond that on software grounds, although it is personally pleasing that MotoBLUR is now an add-on component rather than a mandatory step that you’ve got to undergo when first setting up the phone.
On The Minus Side
It really is big. When I handed the phone to Elly this morning, she very quickly worked out that there was no real way she could use the RAZR on a day-to-day basis, simply because it’s too large for her hands. The bezel around the screen feels a bit like wasted space, especially when you consider that this is a much larger phone than, say, the Galaxy S II, but they’ve actually got the same screen real estate to play with.
It’s not a flip phone. The RAZR brand is iconic, but it’s iconic as a flip phone format, and if you’re going to reintroduce a brand, radically changing it feels a little… wrong, somehow. I’m not sure how you’d go with an actual flip Android, but somebody’s got to be the first — why not Motorola?