Hands on: Motorola Razr review

Hands on Motorola Razr review: Handling

Motorola has stayed true to its roots with its latest release – the Motorola Razr.

Named after the popular clamshell handset which was released back in 2004, Moto is relying on seven years of brand building in the hope that its newest handset can compete against a new wave of smartphones – including the recently announced Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

When it comes to looks, the Motorola Razr is nothing like its past namesake. Moto has dropped the clamshell look for a chassis that's ultra-thin – it's a mere 7.1mm. Motorola is claiming this makes it the thinnest smartphone in the world and we are not going to argue.

In the flesh, it is positively waif-like. It's dexterous enough, though, to not feel like you are going to snap the thing.

Looks-wise, Moto has nailed the Motorola Razr. There's a slight lip at the top, which houses all the camera gubbins and is reminiscent of the old Razr (remember the lip at the bottom when you flipped the top open?) but doesn't add too much bulk to make it unsightly.

Motorola is pleased with its design, too, boasting that it has been cut from diamonds. Personally, we don't care what it is cut from as long as it is comfortable in the hand – and we can safely say that it is.

The Motorola Razr has been built to withstand a few drops and scrapes. The back of the device has been made from Kevlar (unfortunately we had no gun to try out the effectiveness of this) and the screen is tempered and made from Gorilla Glass – which is always a sure sign of build quality.

It's also splash proof. We witnessed water being wiped on the back of the device and it seemed to survive.

The screen – which is 4.3 inches – is also Super AMOLED Advanced which puts it up there with the best of them when it comes to screen quality and resolution.

In our hands-on test, the colours pinged throughout and watching video on the device was an absolute joy.

The stock images on the phone were also bright and bold when viewed and the pictures we took – bearing in mind we were inside a hotel – had enough zing to show off the screen's visual capabilities.

And that leads on to the Motorola's camera capabilities. There is one word for this: impressive.

Following in the footsteps of the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the iPhone 4S, the Motorola Razr uses an 8MP camera and has 1080p video recording capabilities. You can open the camera app straight from the lock screen, which shows the importance that Moto is placing on the Razr's snapper.

While specs are impressive, unfortunately the Motorola Razr does loses marks for being on a lower Android OS than the Galaxy Nexus.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich won't be ported on to the device until early to mid 2012 (though OTA), according to Moto. Instead, it comes with the latest version of Android 2.3 on board. A company spokesperson did tell us that the UK version would support unlockable boot loading, though, a fact that will make some people very happy.

This is probably the last time that Moto will be playing catch-up with other manufacturers when it comes to Android – considering Google has bought up the company's mobile arm. But, Google's deal with Samsung was signed way before the Razr was announced, so it's an unfortunate coincidence that the handsets have been announced in the same week and are going to be compared closely.

Hands on Motorola Razr review: Specs and features

Motorola hasn't added MotoBlur to the OS, which in our eyes is something of a bonus. Personally we prefer our Android flavour to be as vanilla as possible – unless HTC is doing the overlay.

Flipping between the myriad screens on the device and you can see the dual-core 1.2GHz processor at work with 1GB of RAM to play with - with this amount of power, it's a bit like having a mini PC in your pocket.

The Motorola Razr is (Razr)light (groan) on its feet when it comes to processing content. There was no lag between screens and the handset managed to load up video quickly and play it without any judder at all.

Website loading was also speedy and flicking between the browser and other apps didn't slow the phone down. The more dual-core handsets released, the better: as the Razr shows, it adds much needed speed to the Android experience.

Motorola has added some interesting features to the device, including Motocast - the company's version of a cloud server.

While that doesn't sound very sexy, you can link a number of PCs and Macs to the device and mirror them on the phone - so if you leave an important document at home but your computer is still running, you'll be able to access it from the smartphone.

While you can already do this with a number of apps on the Android Market, they tend to be fairly expensive so this is a great little feature.

Moto will also be releasing a host of accessories for the Razr, including smart control lapdocks and the like to make your working experience a little more comfortable.

Motorola has benchmarked the phone and it is said to be faster at web browsing than the iPhone 4S and battery life is better, too - we will have to take Moto's word for this as we didn't have time to test the phone to its limits.

Motorola Razr: Early verdict

The Motorola Razr is a great-looking device from Motorola and a powerful one, too. We were impressed with the look of the thing and the speed.

There is the interesting omission of NFC, which Moto said would be coming in other products down the line but this is the only major question mark over a phone that has definitely impressed us.

The Motorola Razr UK release date is 1 November, with carriers to be announced.