Motorola RAZR2 V8 Preview

Introduction:

Back in 2004, Motorola released the RAZR V3 which became an instant hit. Despite the lack of many features and a poor menu system, the phone was a big success for Motorola and they have been building on it since then. Three years later and we are close to the release of the RAZR2 which is supposed to completely reshape the RAZR series. The RAZR2 has big shoes to fill if it wants to be more successful than the original RAZR and all the variants. To see if Motorola has managed to build a successor to the RAZR, we will look at the RAZR2 V8 today.

Keep in mind, this is a PROTOTYPE unit, and in the final version may have changes.

Let’s look at some of the key features and see how this phone stacks up to the original RAZR. First, the RAZR2 V8 is a quad-band GSM clamshell phone. It is equipped with Edge for faster surfing on the internet.

Motorola managed to shave off 2mm off of the thickness of the phone, but the RAZR2 is 5mm longer than the original RAZR. The width only has not changed. All this translates to a dimension of 4.05" x 2.08" x 0.46" (103 x 53 x 11.9 mm) compared to 3.85" x 2.08" x 0.5" (98 x 53 x 13.9 mm) for the first V3. The weight has been raised by 0.77 oz (22g) for a total of 4.12 oz (117g)

The V8 lacks a memory card slot but this is made up by the amount of memory built-in. You can choose between two sizes depending on your needs, 0.5GB (512MB) or 2GB. The original RAZR had only 5.5MB of memory, which means that the new one has 100 or 400 times more! The camera is now a 2MP camera compared to a VGA (0.3MP) camera on the original.

PhoneArena's Motorola RAZR2 V8 Video Preview:

Design:

The phone looks very appealing and much sleeker that the original. The front is made up of a very glossy material which, surprisingly, hides fingerprints very well. The second item that you notice immediately is the large external screen. When holding the phone, you notice that it feels very solid. At the very top of the phone is the 2MP camera. The is no flash on the phone which is a big let down as most cameras phones come with at least an LED flash nowadays. There is also no mirror but since the front is very reflective, the lack of one is not an issue.

As before, there are two displays but Motorola placed a large 2inch screen with 256k colors on the outside. When using the media player, touch sensitive buttons appear on the bottom of the screen. The inside screen is just a little larger at 2.2 inches and lacks touch sensitive area. Both have a resolution of 240 x 320.

When looking around the phone, you will notice that there are three buttons and a USB port on the left and one button on the right. The volume rocker and the camera/accept button are on the left side towards the top. As before, the volume rocker lets you select the different profiles. Below, there is a microUSB connection from which you charge the phone and can connect to a computer. Motorola RAZR2 are the first phones to offer microUSB, but after that Nokia announced three new devices also using it.

There is a button on the right which appears to have no function set. As none of the buttons have any symbols on them, it is hard to tell what the future function will be. When the buttons are pressed, they give off a slight vibration for feedback.

Once the phone is opened, you will notice many similarities to the RAZR V3. The keypad is still made of a very glossy material and the buttons are arranged in a similar manner. The main changes to the keypad are how the buttons feel. All the numbers are separated into rows with a slightly raised line in-between them. All the numbers are raised but it is still difficult to distinguish some of them without looking. When lit up, there is a white backlight. The only buttons that differ are the hang up, which is red, and the call, which is green.

Interface:

Motorola needed to do a redesign on the menu as the old Motorola UI is becoming very outdated. In the RAZR2 V8, JUIX interface is used, which is Motorola’s JAVA-Linux interface, also used in phones like ROKR Z6.

The home screen displays plenty of information and is very vivid. At the top, you have the signal strength, battery life, Bluetooth, alarm and any other similar notification is shown. Right below is the network and date. In the center of screen are displayed the shortcuts for the directional pad. In the bottom right-hand corner is the time. At the very bottom there are two options which can be selected by the left and right soft touch button. The right button leads to the main menu and the left leads to options.

When customizing the home screen, you can change the themes, shortcut keys, clock style, and date. There are two themes loaded on the by default. The main menu is arranged in a 3 x 3 grid design. As of now, there are 8 menus and all the icons are animated. Motorola has managed to make the menu very vivid and the icons are easily distinguishable. All of the icons can be selected using the number pad instead of using the directional pad to cycle through the entire menu.

Most of the options fall right within their group but some do feel out of place. For example, there is an option to call the voicemail within the messaging menu. While a text is sent when a voicemail is received, one would not think to look within the messaging menu for the voicemail.

Another example of bad organizing is the location of the text settings. To access this menu, one has to go to main menu -> settings -> phone settings -> text entry. There is no need to busy such a menu so deep. Instead, this menu should be within the messaging menu.

The menu seems very sluggish at times, however. If a selection is made, it may take a second or two before the phone will process it and then enter the menu or carry out the command given to it. Again, keep in mind that RAZR2 we had is just a prototype and most probably the speed will be increased!

There is also a little bit of inconsistency with the buttons. The c key doubles as a back space. If a menu is accidentally selected, it can be pressed instead of the right soft key for back. However, if certain menus are entered, such as create a message, then this key will have no effect. Instead, you have to go through options and then select cancel. Holding the key will not exit the menu either. This should be much more consistent so that the user is not confused when trying to navigate through the menu.


Phonebook:

At the top of the phonebook, there is a banner that states whether you are looking at the SIM card, phone, or SIM card and phone contacts. When adding a new contact, there are five menus to go through, contact information, mail information, picture, notifications, and notes. In the contact information, you input the first and last name by which the contacts are ordered. Next, you input the number and the type. The type can be mobile, home, work, fax, or other. A total of four numbers can be added and they have the same types of categories. Below that, there are two email addresses that can be added can be categorized as work, home, or other. The last contact information is the IM ID.

This can be categorized as unassigned, family, friends, work, or you can create your own category. When adding the category, you can name it what you wish, assign a custom ringtone, assign a category message alert, and a picture can be added. This is a lot more useful as you can create ones to differentiate the IM’s between AIM, Yahoo, MSN, or any other messenger that you may use.

In the address field, you can add two addresses. There are separate fields for city, state, zip code, and country. You can set a category for the addresses which are home, work, or other.

When you assign a new picture, you have the choice to either take a new picture or you select one that was taken previously. Under custom notification, you can set a special ringtone and message tone and then you also have the option to make the contact a private contact.

The notes section has plenty of options that will let you add most, if not all, the information that you would like to have. There is notes, voice notes, company, title, manager’s name, assistant’s name, URL, nickname, spouse, children, birthday for which you can set an alarm, anniversary for which an alarm can also be set, and zodiac sign.

When looking through the contacts, all the names are displayed at the top with the number right below. To the right there is a small icon the lets you know if the contact is stored on the SIM car or the phone.

Organizer:

In the calendar, you can choose to view it by day, week or month. In the day view, you can set it to be separated either by hour or by task. Days of the week can be set to 5, 6, or 7. You can choose which day the week starts at to your own liking as well. The time at which the day starts and ends can be changed as well as the interval at which the day view is worked. This can be set to ½ hour, 1 hour, 2 hours, or 3 hours. Incase you do not have the time to clean out your calendar, there is an option to have them deleted at after a certain time. This can be set to 1, 2, 4, or 8 weeks, or never at all.



When adding a new event, there are four menus to select: General information, notes, attendees, and repeat. Under general, there is the option to select the type, the subject, location, if this is an all day event, the start and end time, start and end date, alarm, and alarm style. Under notes, there is a field to be able to add anything special that needs to be reminded of later on or just random notes. The field is very long so there is little worry of running out of space. Next, is the attendees field which looks very similar to the notes field. Below the field, there are two options that are show time as and sensitivity. Under show time as, free, tentative, busy, or out of the office can be selected. Under sensitivity, normal, personal, private, or confidential can be selected. the final menu is repeat. By default, this menu is set to off but can be change to daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

Alarm:

To set the alarm, you can either go to it through the options on the home screen or through the office tools menu. Once opened, you have three options: 30 minutes, 1 hour, or a specific time. A maximum of three alarms can be setup on the phone. When the alarm is set, you are directed to a new alarm. For the ring tone, you can select and preloaded one or you can record a new one. For repeat, you can select just once, everyday, weekends, weekdays, or custom which lets you select the days that you want it to go off on. Snooze time is set to minutes and can be set anywhere from 1 to 99 minutes in 1 minute intervals. Alarm volume goes up to 7 and is very loud to wake the person up. The rest of the features will be discussed later so they will be skipped for now.

Messaging:

Motorola made it easier for users who send SMS and MMS messages quite often by combining the two. If there is just plain text, the message will be considered an SMS. Once any graphic is added, however, the phone automatically changes the message to an MMS without warning. Within the menu, there are the options to create a new message, go to the inbox, call voicemail, my folders, templates, drafts, outbox, create postcard, and email.

When create new message is selected, the menu leads to the new message. At the very top, there is a banner stating that you are creating a new message. Just below the banner, there is a second banner that informs the user which text mode is used, whether the text is upper case or lower case, and the number of characters within the SMS. The option for predictive text is automatically enabled. By default settings, this system will learn your words and, when typing, will offer completions to the word. Pressing up and down on the directional pad will cycle through all of the possible words. To accept the word, the right direction pad is pressed. Pressing the center of the directional pad or continuing typing will discard the completions for the word. The # key will cycle through types of text methods, the * key will add a space, and the 0 key will cycle between lower case, all upper case, and first letter only upper case.


Connectivity:

As stated earlier, the RAZR2 V8 is a quad-band GSM/EDGE phone. If you are looking for a 3G version, then look more towards the V9 instead of the V8. For those that use Bluetooth headphones, you will be pleased to hear that this phone is equipped with A2DP.

As this is still a prototype, there is no software for synchronization bundled with the phone. To see whether Motorola will come out with a new version or just update their current version to support the RAZR2, we will have to wait for its release.

Internet:

The RAZR2 V8 is equipped with Opera 8.50 for internet surfing. Since this is not 3G phone, surfing speed is average. The page will be shrunken down so that all the scrolling that needs to be done will only be up and down, not left and right. The images are very clear and sharp. Due to the size of the screen, viewing large pages can be a little challenging but once used for a bit, this will be very simple to do.

Camera:

The RAZR2 V8 is equipped with a 2MP camera. The camera has no autofocus and tends to capture photos rather quickly. The quality is still low for a 2MP camera. There is haze and fringing found throughout the photos. The maximum resolution for photos is 1200 x 1600. The other resolutions that can be chosen are 240 x 320, 480 x 640, and 1024 x 1280. Settings for picture quality (compression) are limited to good, better, and best. There is no option to increase exposure, set the ISO, or white balance as of now. Also, with the lack of flash, there is very little chance of using this in the dark.

Here are a few sample shots from the prototype. We hope the quality will be improved in the commercially available units.

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. Files are saved in a 3GP format. The controls are very similar to the camera so users should have few if no problems using the camcorder.

Conclusion:

The RAZR2 has very big shows to fill with the success of the RAZR. One has to wonder if Motorola is a little too conservative with the styling of the phone however. Just looking at the RAZR2, you can see many similarities between the two. With the market overflowing with many slim phones of all form factors, the RAZR2 will have a much harder time getting to the top especially with average quality camera and interface speed compared to the competition. Once the RAZR2 V8 comes out, only time will tell whether Motorola has produced a successful RAZR replacement or not.

Expect our full review when final, commercial samples are released.