Motorola RAZR2 V8 Review

Camera:

The RAZR2 V8 is equipped with a 2MP camera but lacks autofocus or a flash. It did capture photos rather quickly but saving them seemed to take a few seconds.  Photos came out clear and objects were overexposed only when they were light and in bright environments. The maximum resolution for photos is 1200 x 1600 but three additional ones are present. The only quality settings available are good, better, and best.



Camcorder:

The camcorder is accessed through the camera options by selecting video mode. The resolution can either be set to 128 x 96 or 176 x 144. So small videos are usable only for MMS messages and are useless on a computer. Video length is set to either MMS short, MMS long, or maximum are saved in a 3GP format. The controls are very similar to the camera so users should have few if any problems using the camcorder.



Audio:

So, no handset would be complete without a media player and Motorola seemed to go out of their way to make sure that it lived up to the hype. Music is selected like on an MP3 player, by artist, album, genre, etc. It’s just a little sad to see that the UI is a little plain as it only show the song information, controls, and status.

Close the handset and a very similar interface will be shown on the external display. Control is possible thanks to three touch sensitive buttons at the bottom. What happens if you like to keep it in your pocket? Well, the button on the left just below the volume rocker will lock the external controls if held for about three seconds.

So, the media player is up to the task but what about sound quality? We’re glad to report that it sounds surprisingly good. Sadly, there are no equalizer settings but spatial audio, which makes the audio sound much wider, and bass boost, that does make a difference. The headphones supplied are surprisingly comfortable with decent sound quality even though it’s a little flat. A wide selection of formats is supported: MP3, AAC, ACC+, eACC+, WAV, WMA v10 and v9.

On the downside, the media player is slow to respond to commands and when switching between songs, even though the music is on the internal memory. Also, the memory is a little clumsy to use. When a song is uploaded to the V8, it’s stored to the handset’s memory and has to be transferred to the extended memory. It’s more of an annoyance than problem but it’s worth mentioning.


Software:

You’ll find that the V8 supports Java applications and best of all they can be ran in the background. When exiting out of an application, you are presented with a set of choices asking whether to go back to it, put it in standby, or close it. If these choices are ignored, it will just go into the background and stay there until it is closed or the handset is restarted.