3GWeek - Asia’s Mobile News

You must have heard, read, and seen about the legendary RAZR. Few years ago, it led to brand new trend. Slim design and sexy. Everybody, especially women, are drooling about it. Lot of other phone manufacturers try to copy the idea.

Now, Motorola wants to strike back. They unleash the new RAZR2 V8. Will this phone be as success as its predecessor?

Thanks to Motorola Indonesia, 3GWeek are able to review the handset.

It is the 420 MB internal memory version. Other version come up with regular 2 GB internal memory and Special Edition 2 GB internal memory.

For a fashion - plus multimedia - phone, I must say I am impressed with the look. It is sleek, slim, and shiny. The clamshell-built is tough enough. The display, inner and outer, are both fantastic. Definitely will make everyone turn their eyes at the first sight.

But somehow I must admit for the sales-record, it won’t beat its sibling. The RAZR era has gone and Motorola is going to fall on returning the old story. The fashion phone segment is quite niche, while big players now are focusing into multimedia area.

Motorola need to catch up, otherwise maybe we need to say goodbye to the second position in market share around the world. In every report, Motorola sales is decreasing heavily, while Nokia –with its benchmark NSeries– enhanced successfully.

Let’s get started with the basic phone utilization. The package comes up in beautiful black box with gold packaging inside. The accessories included are charger, earphone, USB-slot cable, Motorola Phone Tools CD, and Windows Media Synchronization CD.

The dark pearl gray color covers the metal-like phone frame. It is quite heavy actually for nearly 12 mm thin, 117 grams in hand. The flip is quite tough so I am sure that it won’t broke easily.

The keypad is quite ergonomics, although there is difficulty on pushing the button. When you are not use to RAZR design, you need to push the keypad harder than the regular one.

The 4-way navigation key is quite good and responsive. The 770 mAh Lithium-ion battery life is quite good. For medium-to-low usage, it may last until 4 days, while it is quite tricky to open the battery cover.

One more tricky thing is to open the charger-pin cover. The cover is made from rubber and cannot be opened easily for early trials. When you use it for some period, you tend to feel that the phone is getting hotter, because of the battery.

When you try for a call, it gives full satisfaction. The sounds is so clear (and loud) for ears, thanks to the advanced of CrystalTalk technology. It will result great voice even in noisy environment.

The text messaging experience in the other hand is not that easy. It comes up with pre-define dictionary, that may help you not to write long word, but it may bring difficulty also to switch between word suggested when it is not matching yet.

In multimedia side, we found the strongest capability is in music. Definitely two thumbs up. The earphone and the loudspeaker give us a better music experience. When the music is played and we close the flip, the playlist will be displayed in external screen and can be rearrange by touching the screen.

Yes, it is external touchscreen only for music menu. Both external and internal display great visualization. The User Interface has made improvement and come with beautiful iconizing menu. It is based on Linux platform, but seems like most of the applications are proprietary so we cannot optimize the application all-by-ourself.

As for the camera, it is quite disappointed for 2 megapixels result. The noise is everywhere. Well, the purpose is to shot candid moment only. Once you take a picture, you find it hard to view it for a moment. The menu will come back directly to take-photo mode. If you want to view the result, you have to go to File Manager.

One good thing is, when you want to make self-taking picture, the external screen will turn into camera display when the flip is off. The turn-down side, it is not equipped with FM radio.

There is no specific built-in office software like word processing or Acrobat reader. In Office Tools menu, you will only find Organizer, Alarm, Notes, File Manager, MOTOSYNC, and Download Manager (to handle any file accepted from connection tools, such as Bluetooth).

For connectivity, we can find Bluetooth with A2DP profile. With this equipment, we found out that it transfers file in fast rate, although it took a while when searching for the peers. There is no WiFi, 3G, or Infra Red available.

What is the competitor? Nokia N76 and Sony Ericsson Z610 are the closest rivals, while LG Shine and LG Prada are the nearest contender for slimness.

In positive sides, it has great music chipset for loud speaker and headset, sleek and slim shape, and great display for inner and outer. The area that need improvement is the quality of camera, FM radio functionality, and wider connectivity like 3G or Wi-Fi.

In short, if you are fashionable people who place style above anything else, the phone is definitely for you. But if you are looking for multi-utility phone, maybe you need to find other all-in-one product.