By Nathan Olivarez-GilesEmail Author
On Wednesday in New York, Motorola’s CEO, Dennis Woodside, introduced a lineup of three new Razr smartphones, the first handsets of what he called a “new Motorola” — a hardware manufacturer, owned by Google, that seeks to offer the best Android handsets on the market.
But the first phone of Motorola’s new era, the Droid Razr M, doesn’t feel very new at all. Rather, the Razr M is essentially a very attractive repackaging of previously used parts pegged at an enticing price point: $100 on a 2-year Verizon data plan.
The most noticeable piece of the Razr M brought over from the old Motorola is its Super AMOLED PenTile display. The 4.3-inch display, with a 960 x 540 resolution, is essentially the same display we saw on last year’s Droid Razr and Droid Razr Maxx. Let me put this as plainly as possible: PenTile displays stink. The mobile industry really needs to give up on them, especially the two biggest purveyors of PenTile screens — Motorola and Samsung.
The PenTile subpixel arrangement on every Droid Razr handset released so far results in discernible pixels and jagged edges between colors, especially visible whenever white and black butt up against each other, as they do on many app icons and text.
The “qHD” resolution is also tough on the eyes. In the age of HD video and games, there’s no good reason to deliver a smartphone with a 960 x 540 resolution. I’d like to see at least 1280 x 720, as we saw on Motorola’s recent $100 Atrix HD, but instead we’re left with a lower-resolution screen that results in web browsing that feels cramped, video that doesn’t look as detailed as it should, and noticeable pixilation of text and images.
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| The Razr M has a thin, wedge shape that is both attractive and comfortable to hold |
Inside is a speedy 1.5GHz, dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of included storage and a microSD card slot for expanded storage — same setup as what’s found in the Atrix HD. After just a few hours of hands-on time, the Razr M feels adequately quick but with the occasional slowdown when launching an app or returning from an app to a homescreen.
The Razr M runs on Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, lightly skinned in Motorola’s user-interface changes. An update to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean will reportedy arrive before the end of the year, but Motorola’s version of Ice Cream Sandwich is the best offered by any hardware maker, due in large part to the fact that the company left most of the software unchanged. The Razr M does come pre-loaded with apps from both Verizon and Amazon, one of Google’s biggest Android rivals. We’ll reserve judgment on the inclusion of those apps for our full review.
Aside from the display, everything else on the outside of the Razr M looks good. It’s about as thin as Apple’s iPhone 4S but features a wedge-like shape that is both unique and comfortable to hold. The chassis has a matte finish, in either black or white, that gives off menacing hot-rod vibe, and there are six small black screws, three on either side, that lend an industrial feel. The Razr M has seams, and it doesn’t try to hide them. Rather, they’re a part of the design, and it looks good.
The Kevlar back, which seals the non-removable battery in place, is a carryover from last year’s Razr and the pre-Google Motorola that I really like. Going with Kevlar helps the Razr lineup be both thin and light — and it looks awfully cool, too.
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| A carry-over from the old Razrs we like: the Razr M’s kevlar back |
