Motorola RAZR V3 Review
Wow
Once in a while, something special comes along. Something that stands out from the crowd, something that will be remembered for years to come almost as a benchmark. Previous mobiles such as the Nokia 7650, the Sony Ericsson T68i, the Nokia 3310 and, to a lesser and more recent extent, the Sharp GX30 and Sony Ericsson S700, have all had their massive impact on the mobile phone market over the last 5 years. These are some of the select few who, once every so often, revolutionise the mobile industry. Ladies and Gentlemen, enter the Motorola Razr V3.
First Impressions
The second you see or pick up this phone, you almost instantly understand what the fuss is all about. It’s elegant, compact, functional and above all else, cool. Just saying ‘thin’ and ‘light’ simply don’t do this phone justice, this thing is WAFER thing and pretty much FEATHER light. OK, slight exaggeration, but you get the idea, its pretty small overall. But its not just the size of this phone that makes you think “wow”, it’s the features too. And don’t forget the quality, just holding the phone for a few seconds makes you realise the quality of the build and the effort that must have gone into this phone. This phone definitely feels like its £500 sim-free price tag both inside and out.
What’s great is just how perfect it feels. Rather than being ridiculously thin or too light it’s the perfect size and perfect weight for that ultimate ‘shirt pocket’ type of small phone. Admittedly its width isn’t going to make it look like slimmer of the month, but its thickness makes up for that. In fact, while you’re holding it you think to yourself “if this was not this width, it’d be too slim”. Again, it’s the perfect size. You could seriously put this in your shirt pocket and forget its there, which seemed to be Motorola’s intention when designing this handset.
Features
What you see isn’t just what you get Unlike previous attempts to make a luxury, expensive, high-end classy phone (*cough* Nokia 8850, 8910…) Motorola have heavily concentrated on the features on this phone. While it might not be the most feature packed handset on earth, it does have a very impressive feature set that almost makes it worth the asking price alone. Inside the all-aluminium casing you’ll find
- 2.2” 262,000 colour TFT internal display (resolution of 176x220)
- External 4096 colour CSTN sub-display (resolution of 96x80)
- 22 kHz polyphonic speaker with MP3 playback support
- Long range Bluetooth (v1.2)
- Video playback
- 3D Java Graphics chip
- Integrated VGA camera
- Quad-band
Screen & Camera
The screen is fantastic overall. The colours are spot on and pictures are displayed largely and crisply. The video’s really excel on this handset however, as they playback at full speed with no lagging or slowing down, no jerking or fuzz effects. The camera, the same one used on the other V-series camera phones, is excellent when used on the phone, as with all the other Moto’s, but doesn’t always appear quite as spectacular when e-mailed or sent to a PC. But then again, most people who want high quality pictures own a digital camera anyway. To be honest, for the price, I would have rather seen the mega pixel camera used in Motorola’s American phone’s to make its UK debut in this handset, which would overall complete the package and appeal to a whole other range of buyers.
Packaged With Pride
Even the packaging that this phone comes in screams out to the world how expensive it is. When you buy the V3, rather than getting a cardboard box, you get a very thick brushed aluminium case with a small glass (or thick plastic? I can’t really remember) circular window on the front to show off the V3. To open it you slide the top part off the case to reveal the contents of the phone’s package.
However, to somewhat compensate for this, you do also get a USB cable and a full version of MPT (Mobile Phone Tools) curtsey of Motorola (even thought the cable is just a standard mini-USB cable like you get with digital cameras, hardly expensive nowadays), as well as a little full-leather pouch to put it in and a wrist strap in case your particularly paranoid of dropping it (well who wouldn’t be?).
Aye Aye Captain
The menu’s on this phone, like all Motorola’s, are well thought out, easy to use and seem to adapt very well to whatever it is your doing. For example, almost all of the menu’s use a transparency effect, so you can still see the background image when you open the menus etc. But this also applies to text messages and the like. For example, if you are reading a text and have just pressed ‘send’ for the reply you’ve written, as the phone is sending the message it will display the original message that you were sent in the background using the transparency effect.
Summary
In short, this phone is amazing to behold, and the ‘wow’ factor is certainly what this phone is all about. However, it’s not all perfect. For the money I would at least expect a Bluetooth headset, or at the least an in-car charger (although to this date no manufacturers have included a car charger with their phones), and the lack of a mega pixel camera is a bit of a disappointment, but not sorely missed.
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