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Motorola RAZR MAXX review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £480
inc VAT

If you want an Android smartphone with a long-lasting battery then buy a RAZR MAXX

Specifications

Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread), 4.3in 960×540 display

http://www.expansys.com

When the Motorola RAZR launched late last year, it had everything we wanted from an Android smartphone. It still stands up well today – six months on – though it has been surpassed by the HTC One X and looks to be trumped by the imminent Samsung Galaxy S3. Just nipping in first, Motorola has launched this variant of its handset, the new RAZR MAXX.

Motorola RAZR MAXX
From the front it’s impossible to tell the MAXX from the current RAZR

The MAXX is essentially identical to the current RAZR in every respect, bar one. Motorola has upgraded the battery from a more-than-respectable 1,750mAh to a huge 3,300mAh. It’s a whopping 88% bigger, and is simply the biggest battery we’ve seen in a smartphone (and more than double the size of the current iPhone’s).

Its performance in our battery test matched up to our high expectations. For the test we run a H.264 video on a continuous loop with headphones plugged in and the screen at half brightness. The original RAZR lasted for just shy of ten hours, and the MAXX came in at nineteen hours and 23 minutes, roughly in line with the size of the larger battery.

It may have been what we expected, but it’s a still a stunning result. With a full battery charge, a RAZR MAXX would keep you entertained for the entire length of the longest scheduled flight on earth – an epic eighteen hours and 50 minutes from Newark to Singapore. Rather than set off half-way around the world, we did some more real-world testing over the weekend. Leaving work with the phone fully-charged on a Friday afternoon, the MAXX lasted a whole weekend of browsing, gaming, talking and texting. The battery was pretty much flat when we arrived back on Monday morning, but it’s the first smartphone we’ve used that can last multiple days.

Motorola RAZR MAXX
It’s a little chunkier in general, but still far from bloated

Now, most of us will still insist on charging it every night. But even then this is a phone that won’t run flat from constant gaming, or when reception is poor and the handset is constantly searching for a signal.

There’s really nothing else that compares to the MAXX in terms of battery size. Most current smartphones have batteries up to 1,800mAh in size (including the HTC One X). One notable exception is the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S3, which has a big 2,100mAh battery; though even that is dwarfed by the MAXX’s, which is still 57% bigger. With both handsets using similar-sized OLED-based displays, we’d expect that differential to roughly show itself in our tests.

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Details

Price £480
Rating *****

Hardware

Main display size 4.3in
Native resolution 960×540
CCD effective megapixels 8-megapixel
Video recording format MP4, H.264, H.263
Connectivity Bluetooth 4.0, 202.11n
GPS yes
Internal memory 16384MB
Memory card support Micro SD
Memory card included 0MB
Operating frequencies GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 HSDPA 900, HSDPA 900 / 2100, HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100
Wireless data GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, HSUPA
Size 131x69x9mm
Weight 145g

Features

Operating system Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread)
Microsoft Office compatibility N/A
Email client POP3/IMAP/Exchange
Audio format support N/A
Video playback formats N/A
FM Radio no
Web Browser Android
Accessories USB Charger, headphones
Talk time 17.6 hours
Standby time 12 days

Buying Information

SIM-free price £480
Price on contract N/A
SIM-free supplier www.expansys.com
Contract/prepay supplier N/A
Details www.motorola.com

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