Motorola RAZR VE20 Review

Performance:

Performance on the phone was a mixed bag.  Reception was very good; the VE20 tended to pull a stronger signal and hold onto it better than other Sprint phones.  On our end callers sounded very natural, with good volume and voice reproduction.  Callers said we sounded “hollow” and “muffley” however, and rated sound quality at a 6.5/10.  We were asked if we were using a Bluetooth headset because it sounded as if we were.  The battery is rated at 4 hours of talk time, but in our testing we were amazingly able to achieve just over 5.5 hours.  Oddly enough we found ourselves charging the battery frequently though, with moderate data and no voice usage we were dead within a day.  The talk time is a great improvement, but over this does not bode well as the same problem plagued the V3m.


Conclusion:

The MotoRAZR VE20 sets out to replace two phones in Sprint’s lineup, the RAZR V3m and RAZR2 V9m, and for the most part does a good job.  Menu speed and stability, perhaps Motorola’s biggest issue, has seemingly been corrected.  The inclusion of a 3.5mm headset jack is very welcome and the form factor is better due to its narrowness, though we would have liked to see the V9m’s 2” external display.  The camera, a strong point of the RAZR2, was a disappointment and we still have battery concerns however.     With Samsung slated to launch five and six hundred series phones we’re inclined to wait and see right now.  Call us biased, but Moto has earned their lousy reputation on Sprint, and while we like what we see in the VE20 for now we’d have a hard time recommending it until it proves itself over a period of time.