Motorola RAZR2 V9

In The Box

- MotoRAZR2 V9

- Headphones

- Travel Charger

- Mini-USB Cable

- Manual Books

- Motorola Phone Tools CD

The RAZR2 line from Motorola continues the tested and true clamshell line for the American cellphone makers. The RAZR 2 line spawns several models- and the one we are looking at is the 3.5G-enabled V9.

Design

Anyone familiar with the venerable design of the RAZR would recognise the similarities of RAZR 2 V9, however this time around the design has been revamped into a seamless clam-shell. The large plate glass of the front is definitely a welcome addition. The device weighs in at 125g, which isn’t all that heavy. The phone’s got the great tactile feel of the RAZR line, as it feels great in the hand. More importantly it just looks attractive.

The 2.2 inch internal display runs at 262K TFT colours, meanwhile the RAZR2 V9’s external display is vibrant and fun to use with three touchscreen controls, which allow you to tweak your multimedia functions- which extends to three menus, namely pictures, videos and music.

The haptics- which is the little jiggle when you press the external keys of the phone that lets you know that your actions are executed on the V9. It is a fun little indicator that tells you that the V9 has processed your commands. This also means you can be focused on the computer screen and still change your tunes from the plate glass from the flip.

As usual the RAZR2 has one universal port for the charger and USB transfers. The left spine has a smart key and a volume rocker. Meanwhile, the right side has a quick camera button.

When the clam shell is opened, the sunken keypad reveals itself, the keypad has a main navigation button. Other keys include the function keys, re

The back of the phone is pretty standard, a 3.7V battery sits there covering the SIM slot- with a strip paper to help pull the battery out of the phone. The phone allows microSD hotswapping, but it involves removing the rear cover first, then pulling open a rubber stopper and pulling out the SD- all of this requiring a little bit of fitness.

The box comes with pretty much everything- including a microSD adapter which we felt was a necessity for file management. The box also has a bunch of manuals, Motorola phone tools CD, and a Motorola Travel Charger.

Features

The V9 relies pretty much on the same old proprietary Motorola OS with some additional functionality. The grid shifted to a 3x4 grid from the RAZR, with extra Internet utilities this time around.

The WebShare application is a bloggers tool to post up photos, stories, audio and video clips to your blogsite.

The PIM extends to calculator, calendar, alarm clock, world clock, dialling services and notes.

The menu interface has adopted most of the features found in the RAZR line, as the menu interface retains the 3x4 grids format. It also has similar applications such as the Alarm Clock, Calendar, Voice Recorder, Calculator, and a World Clock device. The music player can handle a variety of formats including MP3, WMA, WAV and AAC files.

The exterior plate glass as mentioned before has three touch buttons, but we really hoped that Motorola would have extended the touchscreen for the entire secondary glass plate, which would allows us to expands the phone’s functionality to the outside.

The V9 wears heavily on the battery life, it holds up about a day under standby time and much less if you wear it on with music and videos.

Connectivity

The MotorRAZR2 V9 is has quad-band connectivity (800/900/1800/1900 MHz) and a HSDPA 3.5G, the V9 also has Bluetooth and GPRS and of course the ubiquitous Motorola mini-USB cable.

Camera

The camera has stayed pretty much the same since the heyday of the first RAZR, a 2.0 megapixel camera with the same similar feature as the first versions. Meanwhile, camera mode has 8x zoom and various effects including style, lighting and exposure.

The camera has 1600 x 1200 pixels, video (QCIF- Quarter Common Intermediate Format) which has up to 176 × 144 pixels. In video camera mode, the phone has up to 2x zoom. One interesting thing is the singular camera design Motorola went for- the call camera extends only to the flips, this means that whenever you need to use the videocalling feature, you have to dial the phone from the opened up clamshell and close it to use videocalling.

Games

There are three games in the V9, the first one is JAMDAT bowling which pretty much self-explanatory, but it is surprisingly addictive and quite difficult to master. The second game is JAMDAT Sudoku which is the Java version of the popular pencil and paper Japanese puzzle game. The last one is the Tetris from EA, which yet another reiteration of the popular brick game.

Verdict

The phone is yet again a shining example of the long standing Motorola RAZR design form factor and its no wonder why Motorola has decided to stick towards the tried and true. However, at RM 1,500 the phone seems somewhat pricey, despite having good connectivity options, the geriatric design and user interface hardly garners a pricing such as that.

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Motorola ROKR E8

The Motorola ROKR E8 takes us back to the E-suffix for the ROKR range, after a minor excursion with the Z6. Anyway, there have obviously been many changes, and this appears to be a music player with the mobile phone added later.

In the box (prototype)

- Handset Transceiver

- Battery (standard bttery)

- Charger

- Headset

- Data Cable

- Manual and CDs

Exterior

The ROKR E8 is a sleek device, bevelled at the top and bottom edges to turn what would be an otherwise ordinarily-shaped candybar device into a work of art.

The E8 is designed for heavy music usage, as can be deduced from the headset jack which is found on the top of the device, much like in a music player. Toggle buttons are on the left of the device, while the power switch and micro USB port are on the right side of the device.

The microSD memory card slot is under the cover, but not really blocked by the battery so while you could theoretically force a card in, taking out that card might not be quite possible.

Buttons/Screen

The buttons are mainly of the touch pressure variety under the big transparent frontpiece. The keypad does not light up at first but simply displays the music controls. Lighting up the numberpad is done by pressing the left softkey which then lights up the numberpad so that you can make a call.

The keypad makes a curious sound which can only be described as squeaking. Initially, we thought that it was the plastic protesting against our rather forceful pressing on the keypad. But the lower part did not make that sound until we activated the numberpad.

Therefore, it was a built-in effect.

The screen is specified at 240 x 320 pixels with 262K colours.

Software/Messaging

We were given the R6713 version of what appears to be a Motorola proprietary operating system. The menu was of the scroll from side-to-side variety and we could not find a way to change that into the commonly- found grid display. Not from the settings menu anyway.

SMS and MMS is included as expected. Email is also available but the touch screen controls did not make for very responsive text entry.

PIM

The PIM section has the Tasks, Calendar, and a Calculator. The common Notes application is nowhere to be seen, but the Alarm and World Clock applications can be found here.

Camera/Video

The E8 has a 2.0 megapixel camera with the lens on the back of the device. There is a multi-shot option that permits a setting of 4, 6 or 8 shots. The maximum resolution for still pictures is 1600 x 1200 pixels

The navigation key provides access to the picture effects. You can filter images in red, green and blue, but this was almost the limit of the effects section.

The maximum video resolution is 144 x 176 pixels. Although this leads us to conclude that the E8 had a fair camera, it was not meant for heavy imaging use. Touch-sensitive controls are difficult in the real-world use of a digital camera.

Multimedia/Voice

The multimedia section is quite developed, seeing that this is a music phone with 2GB of memory space inside. There is also a radio receiver built into the device, but we were quite surprised that there was no equaliser inside.

Connectivity

There is no 3G or HSDPA option for this phone. It does support GPRS and EDGE up to class 12 and comes with the requisite Bluetooth for local connections. Other than that, the USB port is also useful for PC to phone data transfer.

Games

There were two games inside the device. One was a Sudoku game which is pretty self-explanatory. The other is Asphalt 3 3D, which is a racing game called Asphalt 3, despite the rather confusing title. The racing game was fairly simple. I managed to finish second out of eight the very first time I tried it out, so I am either a very good driver or just lucky.

Motorola ROKR E8 vs Samsung SGH F250

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