Motorola RAZR2 V9m

User reviews and rating

Great phone

11 Aug 2008 by Adam

8.6 out of 10

I have had this phone for a few months and i have not yet found anything wrong with it. The overall design is great, and fits in my front pockets perfectly. At first i thought it would get scratched up with the car keys in my pocket as well, but so far nothing. Being able to check messages without opening your phone is a great feature, and being able to make calls with it closed is great as well. I wish i would be able to chnage the buttons on the external display, but i will get by without it. Signal quality is exceptional. I have at least 5 bars at all times unless i am in a small town with very little towers, then i have 2. I have never dropped a call with this phone, and i go through those little towns often. Text messaging is good on this phone, just like any other phone. Battery life is good at times. depends if the phone gets a good charge or not. The only issue so far that i had with this phone is that the 2,5,7, and 9 button didn't always work. Luckily it happened within one year, and is being repaired at no cost. Friends of mine that had this phone have had a issue with the main screen, at certain angles there appeared to be a bubble. It usually happened within 2 weeks of them having it, but beings everyone was having this problem, it was repaired at no cost. GPS is great on this phone, minus the cost per month to have it! I would highly recommend this phone to anyone who wants a small, durable, and great phone.

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1 Aug 2008 by Will Gayther

7.2 out of 10

NOTE: I originally posted this as a review for the LG Chocolate 3 vs. the v9m. Since it's so long, I don't have the time to rewrite it, but I thought it was a useful comparison.

If you read the official phonearena review, they say that this phone replaces the Motorola v9m for voice quality and reception. I had a chance to buy this phone and the v9m for a week and use them almost side by side. I also had the LG 8350.

This phone is indeed an excellent phone. It had excellent reception - and since I live and work in fringe reception areas, I've had plenty of chances to test it out. It's not a miracle - in the really bad places (like the interior bathroom in my apartment, where I tested it side by side with the 8350 and v9m) I would have small dropouts in the conversation if I was moving around. My testing and usage suggested that it had equal reception to the v9m. They both had better reception than the 8350 - places where these 2 phones would drop out little parts of words, the 8450 would lose entire words. Again, I tested it several times, often with the phones side by side.

When I got my 8350, I thought that it's voice quality was excellent. Finally - a phone that I could hear what people were saying! I've been using cell phones for 5 years, so although I was used to the fact that you can't always hear all the detail in someone's voice. I figured it was just the limit of what cell phones were capable of - all my other phones had had the same thing. Then I got this phone (the chocolate 3) and the v9m. Holy cow. These 2 phones finally have that detail back in peoples voices that's been missing. As long as I have a signal, I never had to go "What?" because I couldn't really tell what they were actually saying. It's amazing - I didn't think cell phones were even capable of that kind of voice quality. Heck, seriously, I can't even think of any landline phones I've used that had this kind of detail in the voice. Or headsets.

I would say that the Blackberry Pearl had perfect sound quality when I tried it in the store (I called my voicemail and listened to messages). But you have to sign up for a data plan to have it - erg. It was amazing, though.

Next in order would be the v9m - excellent detail and very pleasant sounding voices. It wasn't as good as the Pearl because the volume didn't go quite as loud, and my ears find something in the sound occasionally irritating. It's like some frequency is overly loud compared to the rest of the sound. To for comparison, I've had the same thing happen with lots of full size headphones, and every cell phone I've ever used (except the Pearl).

Next in order would be the Chocolate 3. It also had excellent detail in the voice. It was a little louder than the v9m, and my ears also found something in the sound occasionally irritating. But it wasn't that bad, and had excellent detail in the voices. The reason I'd rate it lower than the v9m is that the sound on the v9m sounded amazingly natural, and while the sound on the Chocolate 3 is incredibly understandable, it always sounded a little more...electronic or something and not as smooth and natural. However, it did have better volume. I should also mention that I sometime had problems accidentally breathing into the microphone on the Chocolate 3 - I'd just be having a conversation sitting in a chair, and the microphone would pick up the sound of my breath hitting the microphone (like blowing into a microphone). I had to hold the microphone a little lower to avoid this, but I felt like if it was to low the other people wouldn't be able to hear me.

The 8350's sound quality was good, but it was way below any of the other 3 phones I've mentioned so far. The volume was good, and the sound clarity was good compared to other phones I've used, but it (like every other cell phone I've used before) just didn't have that extra detail in the voice that made the conversation always understandable, every time (well...except for my friend who seems to have trouble actually talking into the microphone on *his* phone). It was a little worse than your average land line phone for voice detail. But still - pretty good. I would mention that the speakerphone on the 8350 was way louder and better than the other phones - it was nice to be able to easily hear driving directions.

Lastly, I'll mention that I had a Samsung Gleam before these other phones, and all these phones blow the Gleam out of the water for voice clarity. And, funny enough, I always though the Gleam had better voice quality than my e815 before it...

So onto other features. In "the Chocolate 3 vs the v9m" -

The Chocolate is way better for texting. It's not as wide, so it's *much* easier to text with one hand (I'm a 6" guy). And it *actually* remembers words with the t9 or whatever it's called. I can't get my v9m to remember the smiley face, so I always have to go into symbols to put in the ")" on the smiley face. And the v9m doesn't do "first letter capital" right - there's a mode for it, but unless it's the 1st word of the sentence it just doesn't work. You have to put it in "all caps" mode, hit the letter, than put it back into lowercase mode for the rest of the words. And the keys on the v9m are non-standard - "flip to next possible word" is down, not 0 like it usually is. Sometimes it like to try to autocomplete the rest of the word, and I accidentally hit the right button and it fills it in and I have to go back and delete it...eeeeerg.

The chocolate also had a better form factor. Though slightly thicker than the v9m, it's less wide which makes it way easier to hold onto. And it's *much* lighter, which makes it easier to carry in your pocket. I almost chose the Chocolate 3 based just on it's form factor (well...since it was close on reception and sound quality).

The menus on the Chocolate 3 are also better, although I had to change the default theme to get a less dark colors on dark colors scheme. They just seemed much more polished and consistent on the Chocolate than on the v9m. Not to mention prettier. :-) It appears that you could also set VZNavigator to be one of the shortcut keys on the chocolate - sweet!

Both phones had an annoying beep at the end when you missed a call, even if you hit the side buttons to silence it. All verizon phones seem to have this now - it's !@#!@# annoying. I mean, I hit the side button to tell my phone to be quite - does it have to beep *again* and annoy people a 2nd time? I'd like to be able to strip the 1st 4 seconds out of my ringtones and have "vibrate, then start ringing" on my phone, but this beep makes it next to impossible for that to work.

Both phones had good screens. I found the Chocolate 3's a little dim in sunlight sometimes - I read that the brightness is automatically set by a sensor, so a future firmware update might correct this.

The internal screen resolution on both phones is the same, though the v9m screen is slightly physically larger. I really didn't notice the difference, though.

One area that the v9m actually beats the Chocolate in is the camera - the Chocolate camera is ok, but the v9m camera is amazing. It could not only take pictures inside in the dark, it could take video inside when it's half dark, which no other camera phone I've ever used has been able to do. Fantastic.

But the v9m is way worse when it comes to battery life. I never had any issues with battery life with the Chocolate 3. I don't know that I made over 2 hours of calls in a day, but the battery just always seemed fine. With the v9m on the other hand, even after a week of use it was crappy. (I've seen the battery life get better on a phone after a couple of days of use. Sometimes dramatically, as when I first got my e815). On the v9m it seemed like I'd make 2 hours of phone calls throughout the day, and by the time I'd go to battery meter was down to "low battery". I never actually ran out of battery, though, so it's possible that the battery meter was just overly paranoid. And I was keeping it in my pocket, so it was possible the side buttons were getting pushed and I walked around. But still - not real promising.

So in the end, I had to make a decision about which phone to keep. There's a lot to like about the Chocolate 3, and the v9m has some annoying flaws. But I spend most of my phone time using my phone as a phone. In the end, I kept the v9m (and ordered an extended battery) and returned the Chocolate 3. Though the volume isn't always as good, I just felt that the v9m had more pleasant quality to it's sound. When I talked to someone, they just sounded more natural and lifelike, whereas while they were just as understandable on the Chocolate 3, they sounded more electronic. To bad though - I really preferred the form factory, weight, and texting ability of the Chocolate 3. I would highly recommend either of them to anyone else.

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29 Jul 2008 by Anonymous

9.4 out of 10

picture for people who are not into high-tech phone such as Iphone, Dare, and Instinct. Very thin and heavy, but it's sturdy. i dropped this phone many times. it left marks but it still works fine. touchscreen is great, just missing texting on it. never lag for me. very loud. great signal reception. battery life sucks. call quality is excellent. it's the best on the Verizon's network. very basic phone and that's all everybody needs a phone that works well.

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