Motorola V3

...away I updated to the Motorola V3 RAZR. Having owned this phone for over 16 months and having put it through some heavy and torturous use I feel its time the Motorola V3 RAZR was given the MotoAthan treatment.

This phone is/was arguably the 'it' phone of recent times. The RAZR will be remembered with nostalgia because of its form factor, its profile and its looks. It has become the benchmark upon which many fashion phones are compared ...
...released (in Australia). Damn you Motorola and keeping your releases hush hush until only days before their actual launch. The pink version has gained some popularity amongst predominately female users. I personally think that pink mobile phones are a little too "look at me, I'm skanky" (I'll keep my D&G Gold opinions to myself) but to each their own.

One advantage of the RAZR is definitely the fact that it will fit in very ... more

After a long hiatus I'm back and while I was away I updated to the Motorola V3 RAZR. Having owned this phone for over 16 months and having put it through some heavy and torturous use I feel its time the Motorola V3 RAZR was given the MotoAthan treatment.

This phone is/was arguably the 'it' phone of recent times. The RAZR will be remembered with nostalgia because of its form factor, its profile and its looks. It has become the benchmark upon which many fashion phones are compared and has inspired several imitations (cough Samsung) and a trend towards thin mobiles (well at least by Samsung and Motorola).

Review: I warn you that it's a long read.

--- STYLE ---

If I could describe it in one sentence it would be, 'Style over function'. If you are a RAZR user you must deal with the reality that you're superficial and go for looks over brains. I have come to terms with this fact.

Admittedly, my first glance at the RAZR left me a little unimpressed. Seeing the phone in photos and then seeing it up close is what made me change my mind. The first thing I noticed was the odd looking bulge at the bottom of the phone where the speaker/microphone is located. This section of the RAZR is what I have coined the 'under-bite'. As odd as this 'under-bite' looked initially, I couldn't imagine the RAZR without it. It has become a unique aspect of the phone. You either hate it or you love it. I now love it because no other phone has this. Looking at other slim clamshell phones on the market, eg- Samsung A900, they sort of look too plain and flat to me now.

I must admit also that the RAZR has spoilt me for fat phones. Once you go RAZR you can't go fat. I look at new fatter phones on the market and simply can't buy them because it would seem like going backwards. To me it feels like downgrading to a monochrome phone after owning a coloured screen phone.

The keypad looks fantastic! Its made of anodized metal and the bluish backlight is of the highest quality. Admittedly it does take some getting used to. The keypad is very flat and it is difficult to feel for the buttons. After some playing around with it you'll get the hang of it. The metal looks very striking and adds some class to the phone.

Overall the phone is extremely thin. I presume that the phone gets its name from the fact that side on it looks like an opened razor. Its very sleek and made from a very tough, light weight alloy that is remarkably scratch resistant. Although not all the phone casing is metal and the 'under-bite' section is in fact plastic although even this plastic has yet to show any scratches. This keeps the phones overall weight down, unlike the Nokia 8800 (beautiful looking phone) whose casing is made out of stainless steel and is consequently quite heavy. The RAZR comes in silver, black, pink and D&G gold. I have the silver although I prefer the black. I missed out on the black because I bought my RAZR one week before the black version was released (in Australia). Damn you Motorola and keeping your releases hush hush until only days before their actual launch. The pink version has gained some popularity amongst predominately female users. I personally think that pink mobile phones are a little too "look at me, I'm skanky" (I'll keep my D&G Gold opinions to myself) but to each their own.

One advantage of the RAZR is definitely the fact that it will fit in very tight jeans or in any pants and not make a huge bulge. It often doesn't even feel like the phone is there and I find myself patting myself down to make sure it is in fact there and I haven't lost it.

--- DURABILITY ---

The RAZR is a very tough mobile. I've dropped pretty much every phone that I've owned in the past including my current RAZR. I've had one's bezel crack after dropping it a short distance onto concrete (Motorola V600), and I've had another's replaceable "X-press on" cover pretty much break in two. I'm always having accidents with my phones. Whether its dropping them or by mistake washing my high school pants with my Ericsson T28s in them, theres always some exciting blunder going on with me.

As the story goes… I was locking my car in the car-park at uni and juggling a school bag, wallet, RAZR and keys when it dropped out of my hand and fell onto asphalt face down. This was only about 3 months after I bought my phone and I was in a state of shock because I'm usually very careful in the early days of adoption. I hesitantly picked it up and checked out the damage. Three small scratches on the top corner and a very small chip out of the 'under-bite'. Overall very minor cosmetic blemishes and absolutely nothing wrong with its internal vital organs. The front screen was unscathed, thank the lord. Perhaps one of the most durable phones I've owned.

If I could have a new Motorola RAZR now and treat it any differently I would have to say I would have to reassess my rough usage of the keypad. The metal of the keypad scratches and looks not so flash after heavy use. I suggest you keep your nails trimmed and manicured, your keypad will thank you for it. I also recommend you invest in a pouch to put your V3 in when not in use. Motorola's official V3 pouch with magnetised flap was my choice and it looks very sleek.

--- FEATURES ---

As I have already mentioned, the RAZR is not a phone for the tech-heads. Saying otherwise would be flat out deception. It will not be your first choice for portable camera and it doesn't offer video capture (although I believe the newer versions do). It wont do your income tax returns either.

I have to admit that I have almost always gone for fashion phones. I just prefer cool looking phones and will concede the loss of some features.

The RAZR uses a VGA camera which at the time of its release in late 2004 was pretty standard although now mega pixel cameras have taken the mobile phone industry by storm. It takes pretty standard looking pictures and it has no video record functionality although it does have video playback.

The user interface is dated and looks ugly and I have heard rumblings on internet forums that Motorola is planning to update their UI very soon with the soon to be released successor to the RAZR later this year. Although being a veteran Motorola user I have pretty much mastered the UI and the menus.

We'll now look at the screens, the camera, the applications and connectivity options.

---- Screens ---

The RAZR has two screens. An internal/main display and an external LCD colour screen. The internal screen is very sharp and is a vast improvement over the Motorola V600's screen. It supports 262,000 colours (TFT) with a resolution of 176 x 220 px. The backlight is very bright and it poses no problems or strain on the eyes.
The external screen supports 4,096 colours and has a resolution of 98 x 64 px. It also is bright. Motorola's weakness in its clamshell phones has to be its external displays. It seems to always get them wrong. The display cannot be seen unless you use the backlight and even if the backlight is on you have to look at it front on. There is absolutely no colour penetration at all when the backlight is not on. Motorola needs to look at Samsung for inspiration in this department and take notes from the Samsung Z500's external screen which has very good colour penetration, with or without backlight.

--- Camera ---

While the industry is moving towards megapixel cameras in phones, I'm still asking the question; why do we even need cameras in mobile phones? I must admit that I have taken about a dozen pictures with my RAZR and they are all stupid pictures of me or my friends acting like fools. Hardly Kodak moments.
The RAZR's camera is only a VGA with 4x zoom. Pretty standard for its time and now seems outdated. If you really want a phone to use as a camera then the V3 is not for you. The V3 only has one lens, but you can take self-portraits using the small LCD screen on the front. The phone's camera doesn't have flash.

---- Applications ---

The phone comes with all the standard features you can expect in a mobile nowadays.

Calendar:
Although many RAZR online reviews I have read criticize the Calendar and claim that it is useless and I have found myself using it quite a lot for reminders and checking out the date etc. Its very easy to use looks half decent.

Games:
Games include, Billiards, Golf, and Skipping Stones. Although perhaps a couple of years ago I might have cared about what games are included in a mobile phone, this is no longer the case and in fact I haven't even played any of the games.

Other Apps:
Slideshow and 3D phonebook. Admittedly I haven't used these either but their function is quite self explanatory.

Calculator:
Kudos to Motorola for including a usable calculator. I have used my fair share of mobile phone calculator applications and I must say this is one of the most intuitive versions I have used. Easy to use and no fiddly bits. While its no Texas Instruments TI-83 Plus, it'll get the job done.

Media Centre: (Multimedia)
Includes, Themes, Motomixer (make your own ringtones by remixing base tones), Camera, Picture viewer, Sound player, and Video player. The RAZR supports MP3 ringtones and WAV formats. It supports real and polyphonic. They sound quite good and are very loud.

Phonebook:
Motorola needs to wake up and smell the complains. Okay that doesn't make sense. The phonebook really irks me. Why you ask? Because its possibly the only application that I really want to use and its just all wrong. While it allows you to designate ringtones to particular contacts and allows you to set up groups ect it has one major short coming. It doesn't group the different numbers of the same contact under the same entry. That means you can potentially have 6 'Danielas' on your list, one for Home, one for Mobile, one for Fax one for Email etc. Motorola wake up and fix this!
Also it only allows you to search up to one character. At least 3 letters are needed especially when you have a very long list of contacts that start with the same letter.

--- Connectivity ---

The RAZR supports mini USB and Bluetooth as well as WAP. The Bluetooth has proved invaluable and is easy to use and sync up your RAZR to your computer using a Bluetooth dongle. I haven't been a major fan of Motorola's included PC sync software and the RAZR proves no different. When you get the software working and it does in fact recognise that you have connected the RAZR to the PC using the mini USB cable it works like a dream but sometimes it just frustrates me ever so much when it decides not to recognise my RAZR. WAP works very well also and can be used to check news or sport scores as well as download ringtones or other multimedia off the net although the high price of this service charged by my service provider proves to be a deterrent for me.

--- AVAILABILITY AND PRICE ---

The RAZR was released in late 2004 at a very steep price. Its approaching its 2nd b'day and is now relatively cheap. I have seen this phone outright in Australia retailing for AUD 300 or about GBP 120 (and have been informed by some ciao users that they have seen it outright in the UK for about 70 GBP). Its free on most plans nowadays. The price of the phone should decrease even further in the coming months with the release of the true successor to the RAZR the phone dubbed RAZR 2 or the rumoured Motorola KRZR (aka Canary).

--- FULL SPECS ---

Dimensions: 98 x 53 x 13.9 mm, 65 cc
Display: TFT 176 x 220 pixels, 9 lines (main)
Ringtones: Polyphonic (24 channels), MP3, Vibration, Composer software included.
Memory: 5.5MB internal, 1000 phone book entries, last 10 dialed, missed and received calls. No expansion slot.
Connectivity: Mini USB and Bluetooth. No SD Slot or Infrared.
Messaging: IM, SMS, MMS, EMS and Email.
Standby time: 280 hours (more like 160 max)
Talk time: about 7 hours (more like 3 hours max)
Material: Alloy metal, plastic.

--- BATTERY PERFORMANCE ---

I've been impressed with the RAZR's talk times and standby times. With heavy use you can expect to recharge your phone once every two days. With very light use it can stay alive for up to 6 days. Using the applications will drain the battery just like any phone.

--- CLARITY AND CALL PERFORMANCE ---

All my Motorolas in the past have performed exceptionally well in terms of clarity and call performance. Since the primary function of a phone is making calls (well for me anyway) I demand a high quality device. Unlike some other phones I've used in the past that making hissing noises (cough SonyEricsson T610 - wow I just can't get over it lol - the phone I have dubbed 'the hissing cat') the clarity on the V3 is fantastic. When talking on this phone its like the other person is in the same rooms as you! And the in-call volume is also acceptable.

--- CONCLUSION ---

Scores:

Design: 10/10
Durability: 9.5/10
Features: 6.5/10
Battery: 8/10
Connectivity: 7.5/10
Lasting Appeal: 9/10
Call Performance: 10/10

OVERALL SCORE: 8/10

The Motorola V3 RAZR was a very difficult phone to review. While it excels in design its major shortcomings come in the form of the lack of features. If you're like me and want a hot looking phone that will age gracefully then the RAZR is for you. I'm the kind of person that doesn't really care for features because I find myself not using the majority of them. If a phone has good quality screens, a phonebook, calculator and looks hot and trendy I'll buy it. The Motorola V3 has proven a huge success for Motorola and has really turned the company's fortunes around. Lets hope to see only great things from Motorola in the future. As for my next phone… I'll be in line waiting for the RAZR 2.

Definately very SHARP!

© MotoAthan 2006 

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