Motorola RAZR2 V9 Review

Introduction:

On the heels of Sprint and Verizon Wireless, AT&T has released their RAZR2 variant, the V9. This quad-band GSM device features the same 2 megapixel camera, ultra-thin design and 2” outer display with touch sensitive buttons we found on the V9m, and the V9 has HSDPA is on board to deliver 3G data. The phone retains the same glass and stainless steel design found on all variants of the RAZR2, and the V9 gets a deep burgundy paint job.

Design

The V9 is very similar in design to the V9m. In fact, with the exception of the color difference, the casual user would never notice a difference. However, the V9 comes in at 1.6mm thicker and 7g heavier that the V8 and V9m, and the size and especially weight difference are noticeable when holding the two units.

The V9 is constructed of a stainless steel frame, with a near seamless integration of a glass cover over the 2mp camera and gorgeous front display. Along the left side is the volume rocker, a smart key and microUSB port. On the right the user will find a single key, used as a camera shortcut.



The back is again coated in a soft-touch paint to make the phone easier to grip. The battery door has no mechanical latch, but instead is slid on and off to reveal the battery, microSD slot and SIM slot. Thankfully the microSD slot is accessible without removing the battery, one of the gripes we had with the V9m. The battery must be removed to swap out SIM cards, but that is not an issue as the SIM card is seldom removed. Below the door sits the speaker. In our review of the Sprint V9m we mentioned that the slots found on the bottom of the phone were speakers, but upon further inspection they seem to serve no actual purpose as sound is not emitted from them.

The front display is 2”, with a QVGA resolution and 262k colors. The increased colors make the screen noticeably crisper than the one found on the V9m. The touch sensitive strip along the bottom is still present, but it is much less functional on the V9. More on that later in the review.

Opening the phone reveals a 2.2” QVGA display. Like the front one, the inside screen features 262k colors, again making it crisper than the V9m.Despite its actual 2.2” size, the screen looks much smaller because of the abundance of dead space around it. We feel the display could be significantly bigger, even up to 3”.

The keypad is in the same vein as the V9m, but has been reworked a bit. The directional pad is a bit smaller to make room for a back key underneath it, in-between the send and end keys. Underneath the left soft key the user will find the AT&T globe, which launches the web, and on the right side a shortcut for Cellular Video. The keypad is still very wide, meaning two handed operation will be preferred for typing out messages.



The V9m was a very solid unit all-around, we couldn’t find a flaw with the construction. The V9 is nearly identical in design and build quality, but we have to say that the flip feels downright flimsy. When closed its fine, and opening one still a bit of resistance like on the V9m, but when opened the flip will literally flop when the phone is just lightly shaken. In fact, a simple flick of the wrist and the flip will actually close. We cannot tell what’s different design-wise, but the V9 has a decidedly cheaper feel because of this.

Interface:

Mororola’s Synergy UI powers the V9, and anyone who has used theUI in the past several years won’t find much different. There have beenadd-ons to the interface such as Cellular Video and AT&T Music, butthe basic premise is the same and we can’t help but feel that thesystem hasn’t evolved since our nearly five year old T720.

The menu is arranged intonine top level icons: AT&T Music, Messaging, Recent Calls, MEdia(sic) Net, AT&T Mall, Cellular Video, My Stuff, Address Book andSettings. They can be displayed in Icon (3x3 grid) or List view, andrearranged by the user. Menu items must be selected with the d-pad,keypad shortcuts do not work on the V9. There are severalpersonalization options, including the d-pad and smart key shortcutsfrom the home screen, although soft keys cannot be reassigned fromtheir Options and Main Menu default.

For years the Synergy UI has been criticized for simply tacking newfeatures onto the interface rather than integrating them or evenrewriting it all-together. The V9 is a perfect example of this, as thesystem is downright bloated. My Stuff is pretty much a catch all formultimedia items that don’t get their own main icon, but thrown inthere with the Camera and Games submenus is Tools. Honestly CellularVideo, AT&T Mall, AT&T Music and MEdia Net could all fall underone category. The Settings menu is a mess of dislogic (what, you’dexpect backlight to be under Initial Setup and not something likeDisplay?) and there are 15 (!) submenu items under it. Synergy is niceand customizable, which was our complaint about the Verizon V9m, andthe it is plenty stable and quick, our main issues with the Sprint V9m,but honestly we’re not too happy with any of the three. The 3G-less V8runs Motorola’s new JUIX Java/Linux platform, and perhaps that will bethe holy grail UI we’ve been looking for. One can only hope.

One major complaint we have with the V9 is that it will not allow youto grant network access to unsigned Java applications. While this maybe an extra level of security, it means that every time programs suchas Google Maps attempt to send data you will have to grant networkaccess. This is annoying, to say the least, and makes even stapleprograms almost unusable.

Phonebook:

The V9 phonebook can hold up to 2000 contacts. Each entry can beassigned a personal ringer and/or picture and has room to accommodate 7numbers and two emails, and has room for extras such as nicknames,websites, postal address and notes. The phonebook can be sorted in manyways, such as by assigned groups or entry type (email, etc.)

By default contacts are stored to the phone, but in the options userscan change that to the SIM card, or individually transfer a contact tothe SIM. The options menu allows the user to send a message (SMS, MMS)to a contact, as well as send them a voice message. In typical Motorolafashion send message and send voice message are two separate menuitems, even though a voice message is simply an MMS sent without apicture. One nice feature is that the user can send a contact viaBluetooth or MMS, or just a single number from your phonebook via SMS.

Messaging:

The RAZR2 V9 allows users to send SMS and MMS messages. There isnothing groundbreaking here, and predictive text is done via Motorola’siTap. The V9 has a decent built-in email client. It offers quick accessto Yahoo, AOL, AIM, Windows Live, AT&T Yahoo, BellSouth, Comcast,Earthlink, Juno, MindSprint and NetZero email accounts. However, theuser cannot configure other email accounts such as Gmail and RoadRunner accounts. If you have one of the supported email services theclient works well, alerting the user of unread mail and giving theoption to reply and compose messages. It’s a nice though, but we’d liketo see support for any POP3 or IMAP account.

Organizer:

The calendar is a basic calendar, not quite as nice on the onefound on the V9m. It allows the user to add appointments and set themto repeat daily, weekly, monthly or yearly if desired. Holidays are notpreloaded. The alarm only allows for five alarms, and they cannot beset to repeat at any interval. Like the calendar and alarm, thecalculator is dummed down as well and only offers basic functionality,as well as currency conversion.



Another disappointment was the voice command software. Although itutilizes VoiceSignal, the software is old and out of date. Instead ofsimply saying “call Ginger Sling mobile” or “call 2 1 2 7 5 9 5 5 5 5”the user must preface the request with “name dial” or “digit dial.”Motorola has been utilizing the newer VoiceSignal software in theirCDMA handsets for years, so we’re really at a loss as to why it doesn’tfind its way into their flagship GSM unit.

Internet and Connectivity:

The RAZR2 V9 utilizes HSDPA 3.6 for high speed data on the 850and 1900MHz bands. The phone was tested in an area that is, accordingto att.com, blanketed in 3G, but we could not connect to the 3G networkwith the exception of a few times it indicated 3G then went to EDGEjust after a power up. Our data experience with the phone was ok, WAPbrowsing was speedy enough, but we’d be lying if we said it wasfrustrating to be crawling along at EDGE speeds. Web browsing ishandled via Opera 8.0 for Synergy, which means that HTML pages arerendered well.

Bluetooth was a much better experience . The phone supports the latest2.0 +EDR standard, and has support for the HSP, HFP 1.5, DUN, FTP, OPP,A2DP, AVRC, BIP and BPP profiles. While pairing with a non-audio devicewasn’t as straightforward as we’d like it to be, we were able to freelytransfer all types of files via Bluetooth.

Camera:

The 2mp camera seems to be the same one found on the V9m. Pictures were overall very good, with color representation being true and edges generally sharp. Pictures were much better in natural lighting, and colors appeared a bit washed out indoors. The camera loaded quickly, and pictures could be captures within three seconds of startup. Digital zoom is up to 8x, and there are settings to adjust exposure, lighting and style (black and white, negative, etc.) The same options are available for video, but zoom is only 2x. Videos can be recorded with a time limit for MMS or can be set to record until the memory is full.




Multimedia:

The RAZR2 V9 has robust codec support, and can play MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WAV, AMR, WMA, and RealAudio files. The internal memory is limited at 45MB, but it supports microSD cards up to 2GB. The music player can be launched with the flip closed by pressing the smart key. The user can scroll through their collection by song, artist, album or load a playlist. The touch strip on the outer display appears for the first, and unfortunately only, time when the music is playing, providing track forward, back and play/pause functionality. The touch strip is really the only thing that differentiates the RAZR2 from other handsets, and given its functionality on the V9m it’s a shame that Motorola did not implement it more on the V9. Playback was good enough through the external speakers, and when paired with the Motorola S9 stereo Bluetooth headset listening was enjoyable.



Like audio, videos are handled by the native media player . The orientation can be changed from vertical to widescreen, but otherwise the options are sparse. Since our review unit was a prepaid phone we were not able to test the Cellular Video service on the phone, but just loading the page was painfully slow so we can’t imagine video performance would have been any better.

Performance:

While we’re not crazy about the design of the Synergy UI itself, it does run smoothly. There is no menu lag present, and we did not experience a single lockup or crash. Sound quality was nothing short of excellent, especially for a GSM phone. The Crystal Talk voice enhancement used on the GSM RAZR2 variants is very noticeable, and voice quality was on par with the CDMA V9m. Bluetooth performance was not quite as good, and though we used three different headsets (Plantronics 510, Samsung WEP200 and Motorola S9) callers said we sounded “robotic” and slightly digitized. Even still, there was no echo or background noise so conversations did not suffer.

The battery is rated at three hours of talk time, and in our tests we were able to achieve that . Even still, the battery life is very short, even for a 3G phone. We were able to get 3.7 hours out of the CDMA V9m; even 3G GSM phones are usually more power efficient than CDMA. However, they’re usually smaller too, so the V9 is a bit of an anomaly all around. The standby time is rated at a more than respectable 295 hours.

Conclusion:

The Motorola RAZR2 V9 is a good phone, though we can’t help but feel underwhelmed. When it comes down to it, there just isn’t much to get excited about. It’s larger and heavier than its CDMA brother, and the build quality isn’t quite up to par. The outside display is nice and large, but it just doesn’t do anything to set it apart from other phones in AT&T’s lineup. The 2mp camera is good, but lacks advanced features such as autofocus or a flash that would bring it up a notch. The software is quick and stable, but bloated and disjointed. Even the burgundy finish takes away some of the sex appeal found in other RAZR2 variants, and at the end of the day we can’t find a reason to get excited about the V9.