subject: Reviews Of Motorola Droid Razr M: Concentration Is The Essence [print this page] On Sep. 5, 2012, Motorola held a conference for unveiling its new products. Motorola Droid RAZR M, one of the published products in the conference, is regarded to be the successor of the high-end Droid RAZR announced last year. Droid RAZR M has been made great improvement on its hardware specs. Not only is its hardware, like its processor, superior, but also its price- $99.99 is very appealing.
As Droid RAZR M is, indeed, the enhanced version of the high-end smartphone, Droid RAZR, it is difficult to identify the two versions from appearance. The traditional RAZR inherits many innate features of Motorola. Judging from RAZR A performance, it can be considered to be a satisfactory product with reasonable price.
Hardware and design
Droid RAZR M takes the same design riff from its predecessor RAZR. The same style of the two smartphones reflects Motorolas confidence for its Droid RAZR series and its preference for these sturdy devices. Both of the traditional RAZR smartphone and Droid RAZR M have their edges softened, similar to the Atrix HD made by At&T. Frankly speaking, the Droid RAZR M abandons the clear-cut edge style.
What characterize Droid RAZR M and RAZR is not the clear edge design, but different size of the two devices. The new Droid RAZR M has a smaller size, whose depth, width and height is only 0.33 inch, 2.39 inches and 4.82 inches respectively. It is just a little bigger than iPhone 4S. Droid RAZR Ms design is contrast to Android. Droid RAZR M begins to turn to the design for a smaller size but better handheld feeling, which reflects Motorolas unruly character. In light of its actual using performance, Droid RAZR Ms small size does guarantees comfortable handheld feeling. Although it is short and small, its hardware specs havent been reduced to a lower level accordingly. It also houses a 4.3-inch display with frameless design. The small device makes full use of its screen. No matter you browse or play games, the Droid RAZR M is none inferior to any other smartphones of this size.
In terms of its hardware, Droid RAZR Ms hardware is more superb than many smartphones of the same price. With compacted internal structure, it has no peculiar features on its appearance. The 6 pieces of metal plum blossom screws on its two sides make Droid RAZR M more solid and firm. Of course, due to users different flavors, some may question how could Motorola adopt the screws on the industry design of its modern smartphone. Like the previous RAZR, RAZR M has its internal equipments plated with nano coating, thus guaranteeing good waterproofness. On the back of the body, it is decorated by Kyle Ralph panel and man-made carbon fire, while the camera on the top is paired with a mirror plane. There is a volume, a power button on its right hand side, which are convenient for the right hand to operate. On the left hand side is a Micor USB port, a dustproof SIM slot and storage slot.
Droid RAZR M holds a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED screen. Both of RAZR M and RAZR adopt the same screen with the same resolution and size, yet the screen of RAZR M is brighter and sharper, along with extended visual angle. Although it is incompatible with those 720p HD smartphones in the market, its updating is undoubtedly a great improvement. In the future, Motorola will launch a 4.7-inch 720p Droid RAZR HD.
Camera
Droid RAZR Ms camera performs rather well in outdoors, yet its shooting capacity indoors is not as satisfactory as outdoors. Similar to Motorolas other smartphones, Droid RAZR M is installed with an 8MP LED flashlight rear camera that supports 1080p HD video recording. The built-in camera supports setting toggles, including HDR and panorama shooting.
Droid RAMR Ms camera is very fashionable and responsive. It has the functions for focusing and continuously focusing by touching its screen. These functions enable the shooting to be more simple and intelligent, and they allow those users short of professional design knowledge and techniques to shoot specialized photos. But the frequent shutter sounds generated in shooting are very boring. Luckily, users can shutdown the sounds through settings.
The shooting capacity of Droid RAZR M ranks top among the current mid-rang smartphones, especially when shooting outdoors. Yet its performance turns out to be so-so when shooting indoors. It may be hard to see the difference results, but when the photos are transferred into the computer, we can find out the photos of Droid RAZR M took indoors are unacceptable. However, its 1080p recording capacity is rather good when the background light is sufficient enough. The built-in front-facing camera works well, and it can offer bright graphics both in autodyne and video calls.
Software
RAZR Ms original Android 4.0 will be replaced by the updated Android 4.1 at the end of the year. Meanwhile, Motorola has slightly changed its UI so as to better reserve the complete Android features. Unlike other UI provided by other manufacturers, Motorola adds more custom-made content plug-in to its UI. The function model layout of RAZR Ms main screen is similar to Photon Q. Yet, it discards many relative prevailing plugins but adds menus for rapidly adding plugins instead, which includes Wi-Fi, ring, Bluetooth, Fly Mode and lock screen. This is one of Motorolas features as most of manufacturers put the above functions inside the notification bar.
In its conference, Motorola stated clearly that as the first set of Android smartphone with a built-in Google Chrome and regards it as the defaulted browser, however, Dorid RAZR M reserves Androids features. It is smart for Motorola to default Chrome as its browser as Chrome is one of the super browsers that can synchronize bookmark and personal information. Well, what Motorola will introduce Googles factor to its future smartphones? We dont know yet at present.
RAZR M is equipped with an exclusive app platform, Moto app store, which offers users practical apps. Of course, users can turn to other excellent third party app platforms to replace Moto app store. Yet, we have to point it out that the official version is safer than the third party. In addition to the above apps, RAZR M also owns a new Smart Actions App, which can accomplish many auto tasks. For example, When users plug in earphone into the device, it will automatically play Google music; when users fell into sleep, the smartphone will automatically start up the Silent Mode. In fact, users can adjust the running model of the Smart Actions App according to their actual needs. This, indeed, is of great practice.
Performance
Theres one sentence to sum up Droid RAZR M: high-end capacity, but mid-range price. RAZR M houses a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor and a 1GB memory. Yet, its officials havent revealed which kind of processor they have adopted. Through the detection from some third-party apps, it is said that Droid RAZR M is likely to apply the Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 chipset that is used by HTC One X and Galaxy S III. All in all, RAZR Ms performance will be very excellent among the mid-range smartphones, and it is even no inferior to many high-end flagship products. Priced only $100, it is bound to attract many consumers. As for the Android 4.1, although Motorola has promised updating to the new system, it is still a problem on whether it can guarantee the experience as good as on the Android 4.0.
As the smartphone is still a cell phone, its call performance is still an important part of it. With the integration of Verizon and Motorola, Droid RAZR Ms call performance is very super. At the same time, owing to the availability of Verizons 4G LET network, both the 15Mbps and 10Mbps uploading speeds are well guaranteed.
Motorola installs the RAZR M with a 2000mAh Li-ion, larger than the 1750mAh one of RAZR. However, due to the large consumption from the LTE and Androids innate large power consumption, the battery only keeps working for a day. This is greatly different from the 3300mAh Li-ion of RAZR MAXX. During the burn-in test, when the 3G network was available and the screen brightness was adjusted to 65 percent, the battery kept running for 4 hours and 54 minutes for browsing webpages. Yet, its working time was shorter in the LET network test. Obviously, RAZR M doesnt belong to the one whose standby time can reach up to 2 days. Therefore, it fails to meet users need in this aspect. But if you dont have too much requirement for the standby time, this device is absolutely a best choice among Android devices.
