Motorola DROID RAZR XT910 review

We surely all remember the original Motorola RAZR. It was super thin for a phone of that time and I personally thought it was a great piece of kit anyway. Motorola have tried to revive this idea with their new DROID RAZR. This was actually out around November 2011 but when I first heard about it, I knew I was going to get one at some point, and I did in March this year.

In the box
One of the main advertising points for this device is that it is "impossibly thin" and this is also shown in the box it comes in. It is quite a bit thinner than most phone boxes but it is wider as a result so the correct components can fit in. We open the box and are presented with the phone right in front of us. It is sitting on a card partition, below which is the other components such as charger and headphones. The mains charger is the common type today, a USB port to charge the phone, which uses a micro USB cable. The headphones are the fairly common style with most phones and have a sort of felt-like material around them. The actual sound quality on them isn't terrible but I still use other ones.

Size and external features
The screen on this phone measures 4.2inches and the handset is slightly larger to fit the other touch keys and front facing camera. I have compared it to a Samsung Galaxy S2, which is a very popular phone now, and it is ever so slightly larger. It is also very light, weighing in at around 127g, but I thinks it's actually lighter. On the top of the handset we see three ports. One is the 3.5mm headphone jack, which is really useful being on top of the phone so it can be left in a pocket when listening to music. There is also a microUSB port and a micro HDMI. The only fault here is that the phone does not come with a micro HDMI cable, which costs around £7 for a new one.The only other features around the phone are the power button and volume control keys on the right hand side. These do not stick out much and are very easy to use.

Strength
The major point about this phone is that it is "impossibly thin". The handset measures an mind blowing 7.1mm thin at its thinnest point. The top of the phone is not like this as it houses the ports and camera. Being this thin, Motorola have added extra support by making the back of the phone out of laser-cut Kevlar. This makes the phone very strong and it look pretty nice as well. This does come at a cost though because the back is fixed and therefore, like the iPhone, it cannot be removed. Another strengthening feature to the device is that its capacitive touchscreen is made from gorilla glass, which has some strength already. The phone also has special coating over it to make it splash proof. This means that if you spill something on it, you can practically shake it off the phone. This technology is also present in the circuitry within the phone for extra safety.

Operating system
At the moment, the phone is running Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread but it will be upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) in the near future. However, it does also contain some features from ICS as a sort of demo. These include aspects such as new panorama camera features and Swype text input, which I love. There are also various other apps pre-installed on the phone such as a full version of Quickoffice so you can create, view and edit Microsoft Office documents. There is a great application for the phone and PC called Motocast. The installation software for this is on the phone and it allows you to view, stream and download file from your home or work computer when on the go.

Camera and Storage
The rear camera on the phone is capable of 1080p image and video capture, which is helped the Super AMOLED advanced display, which look amazing. I have friends with iPhones who are envious of the display on this thing. The front facing camera shoots up to 720p, which is still pretty good. This does come at cost if you haven't got a microSD card as HD videos use a lot more memory. The phone does actually have 16GB internal memeroy which is split up for different uses. 8GB is for internal storage, 4GB is for apps, and I don't know where the other 4GB went, but it is their somewhere.

Processor and Battery
The phone is capable of handling various tasks as it has a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. This makes it pretty fast and more able handle certain apps and services. Dual-core does use up some battery life though but I find I can make the battery on this phone last a full two days most of the time, with a fair amount of use. If you wanted more battery life, Motorola also made a RAZR MAXX, which is slightly thicker but has the longest battery of any smartphone available at the moment.

Final View
Overall I would say this phone is a must have if you can get one. It's got great features and more will come when it updates to ICS. It may not be very popular now because the market is dominated by Samsung and Apple, but most of the people I have shown this phone to wish they had one. You will certainly be the envy of your friends (provided they're not stupid Apple fanboys). If I had one major criticism it's that there are very few accessories available as this phone is not as popular as it should be.