Motorola RAZR review

Motorola has made some features of Android 4.0 available here, most notably giving you access directly to the camera from the lock screen. The camera itself, with an eight-megapixel sensor, is excellent with well-managed exposures and crisp details – even when compared to capable rivals such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S and iPhone 4S. It also, automatically tags photos with any available location information and displays it when you browse through them. It also shoots impressive-looking 1080p video. A front-mounted 1.3-megapioxel camera is fitted for video chat or self-portraits.

A 100% crop of an 8-megapixel image taken with the Motorola RAZR – click to enlarge

A 100% crop of an 8-megapixel image taken with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc – click to enlarge

Other additions to Android include some fancy animations to the home screens and app tray and a handful of useful apps – including the ingenious Swype keyboard, which lets you type without removing your finger from the screen.

Among the best of these is Smart Actions, which is an intelligent battery management system. Using this you can set up rules of when to turn certain features on-and-off based on where you are and what you’re doing. For instance it can disable GPS and Bluetooth when it detects your home wireless network. It can also do other useful things, such as sending text messages automatically when you reach certain locations – telling your partner you’ve got home, or you’ve popped to the supermarket, for example.

Motocast offers great file streaming, but you’ll need to leave your PC on to make full use of it

Motocast is another useful addition. It’s a file streaming service which lets you access files from any PC. You have to install the small server program on your PCs and then tell it what folders to sync. You can then browse these files from your phone and stream or download them as you please – as long as your PC is turned on of course and connected to the internet. This includes photos, videos, music and even office documents. Speaking of documents, the RAZR comes with Quick Office to view and edit Microsoft office documents.

The Motorola RAZR is a great phone, but it enters a market of cutthroat competition, with its main rival being the Samsung Galaxy S2. The S2 has the edge when it comes to its display, but we prefer the design and feel of the RAZR. With both selling for around the same price – free handset from £25-31 per month on a 24-month contract – there’s actually very little to choose between them. We’re going for the RAZR over the S2, mainly due to the more robust-feeling build quality and damage resistant features such as its water resistance. However, it’s a very close shave, and both are excellent handsets.