With the release of the MOTO RAZR 2 V8, Motorola has yet again raised the bar for stylish cell phones. In fact, just “stylish” doesn’t do it justice-it’s stunning! In its second iteration, the body of the MOTO RAZR is built from exquisitematerials; it comes with two large screens, a revamped keypad, and a great music player. The RAZR 2 feels slimmer than the original RAZR, thanks to a less pronounced chin.
The 2.2- inch LCD on the flap is the first of its kind on any phone-it’s sharp, and the clarity is amazing. Near the bottom of this screen are touch-sensitive electrostatic keys. All the keys on the new RAZR, including the touch-keys, vibrate when pressed-this, we think, is good in terms of hapticfeedback. The interiors of the V8 are pretty similar to those of the original RAZR except for the keypad layout and the overall feel. The main display is similar to the one on the flap-2.2-inch, 256K colours.
The display is sharp and completely legible outdoors. The keypad has changed for the better-it has more feedback, and the backlight is much better than on the original RAZR. The most significant change, however, is in the user interface. The phone is based on the Linux+Java platform, called MOTOMAGX. The interface is visually more refined and definitely better than that of the older Motorola phones (the ones we’re used to cursing!). The multimedia, especially the music player, is excellent. Playback can be controlled without opening the flap, thanks to the touch-sensitive buttons. Audio quality is excellent, and the bundled earphones are good. The phone supports the MP3, AAC, and AAC+ formats, but there’s no FM radio. Also, bundled memory is just 512 MB, with no expansion allowed-lame, from a media player perspective. The camera is reasonably good-about as good as any other 2MP cell phone camera. Indoors, photographs turn out dark; colours also get affected in low-light conditions. Video ecording is strictly okay. In our tests, signal reception was good in all the conditions we put the phone through. Voice clarity was good, with no crackling or echo when we used the speakerphone. Battery life, when compared to the earlier model, is much better: with nominal usage, the phone remained alive for two days.
