Review - Motorola RAZR XT910

Ever since we had our first look at the Motorola RAZR XT910 last year we have been chomping at the bit to get our hands on a review model. With the news that Rogers and Motorola have teamed up to really push the handheld wonder as a Valentine’s Day gift, we needed no excuse to push for a handset – and we were more than happy when not only the phone itself arrived, but also a truck load of accessories including the LapDock 500 Pro, LapDock 100, Smart Controller and HD Station. It goes without saying that we’ve had something of a busy week here in the Click Office!

We’ll start with the most important piece of kit – the phone itself. The first thing that really strikes you about the handset is its size. It is an absolute monster, at least when it comes to length and width, it’s actually surprisingly thin, but we’ll get to that now in a moment. The beautiful 4.3 inch Super AMOLED touch screen takes up the majority of the phone’s 130.7 x 68.9 mm facia, offering a huge amount of real estate for your viewing pleasure.

As we mentioned, the RAZR is also deceptively thin, measuring in at an astonishing 7.1mm at its thickest. Despite this, it never feels like it’s going to snap during use thanks to its Kevlar (yes, the same thing they use in bullet proof vests) enforced chassis. Weighing in at just 127g, it’s a damn sight more pocket friendly than the majority of other smartphones on the market, which is a real accomplishment given the size and power of the thing.

It is powered by a dual core 1.2Ghz Cortex A9 processor and 1GB of RAM, putting it on a par with many lower end netbooks, however its streamlined Android 2.3.3 operating system ensures that it feels a hell of a lot quicker than some of the bloated Windows 7 based netbooks on the market, which is obviously something that Motorola have kept in mind, given the additional netbook-esque functionality which is provided by the LapDock peripherals. The PowerVR SGX540 GPU is no slouch either, offering users excellent viewing options for all kinds of media, as well as the latest Android games (which are quickly starting to improve to the standard of their iPhone counterparts).



The touch screen itself is composed of Gorilla Glass from Corning, a specially formulated glass which is designed to be light, durable and very, very strong. Between this, the Kevlar and the steel reinforcement within the device, you’re going to have to be either the unluckiest person alive, or the most awkward, if you’re going to do much damage to the RAZR over the course of your ownership.

Fortunately all this protection doesn’t have any kind of adverse affect on either performance or usability. The touch screen is as responsive as we have used, which is helped in part by its size, and even the opinion splitting touch buttons beneath the display work perfectly, shooting holes in the arguments of those of us who prefer physical buttons for the more common uses such as home and back.

Both the front and the rear of the device sport cameras. The front facing device, useful for video based communications is a rather unimpressive 1.3 MP offering, but the rear mounted camera fares much better. It boasts 8MP capability, as well as the ability to record in 1080P HD for those of you who want to get stuck into some video recording. Without the flash it can struggle in light conditions that are even a shade less than optimal, which is a shame, but with the flash things do improve to a usable level.

The remainder of the phone’s body is pleasingly bare for the most part. On the left hand side, as the screen faces you, you’ll find the SIM and Micro SD card slots, hidden neatly away behind an easily manageable hinge, while on the right hand side you’ll find the only physical buttons on the entire device. The uppermost button is the power/lock button, which does feel a little out of place at first, given the fact that most devices choose to place it on the top, but it does make sense to have it there, given that it falls quite naturally under the finger or the thumb when you pick the handset up. Just below that is the volume rocker, which is every bit as dull and uninspiring as it is on everyone else’s phones.



At the very top of the phone, you’ll find the mini jack for your headphones, a Micro USB port and a Micro HDMI port. The former can be used for all the usual applications – charging, browsing the phone’s contents and accessing the phone’s debugging features – while the Micro HDMI port comes in particularly handy for those of you who really want to take advantage of the device for some of the more advanced functionality offered by the device.

Performance wise, the phone does everything that you could reasonably expect from a mobile device. The battery life is extremely impressive given the power of the handset, boasting a standby time of up to 304 hours (at the time of writing ours had been out of the box and left powered on for 3 days without doing much else, and had still only dropped to 82%, which is impressive given that we’re not even sure it had a full charge when it arrived). When it comes to actual time in use, you’re looking at about the same time as you’ll get out of an iPhone or comparable Android device. That is to say if you’re the sort who is continually using data, browsing the web and chatting, you’ll get about a full day out of it, but those of you who are lighter users should be able to get away with a charge cycle of every two to three days. It’s still not quite as good as we actually want from these kind of devices, but given that you can charge via USB anyway, it’s not the end of the world.

As with any smartphone, you’re only going to get out of it what you put into it, which is to say apps. At this stage we’re sure all of you have a good idea as to what you can expect from the Google Marketplace, and you no doubt have your own favourites built up over the past few years, so you’ll be pleased to know that we ran into absolutely no issues with app functionality or compatibility on the RAZR, which we had fully anticipated anyway. Whether you’re a gamer, social network addict or one of the few genuinely hard workers who are only concerned with productivity, you’ll be more than adequately catered for.



As a phone, we’re certainly quite impressed with the RAZR. It’s got a huge amount of power, more resources than you could shake a stick at, and the ability to outperform the vast majority of phones – however the real question that you need to ask yourself before taking the plunge is whether or not you’re actually going to make use of all this power. The bottom line is that this is a super high end phone, with super high end users in mind. Sure, everyone can use and enjoy it, but it’s not exactly the cheapest phone on the market, and to get the most out of it you’re going to need to spend big month on peripherals, so it’s definitely worth given a little extra thought to.

For those of you who would consider yourselves to be power users, we’ve got a few more reviews for you to read up on before you get the complete picture when it comes to the RAZR…

We’ll start with the LapDock 500 Pro review right here.