1 Cool Thing: Razer Phone By PCMag

Hello happy Cyber Monday and welcome to one cool thing: PC mags daily show where we tell you about one cool thing that we've been testing here in PC labs if you're watching this on Facebook live thanks very much for joining. If you're watching this later on, YouTube definitely subscribe to our Channel. Ask us any questions that you might have when we do one cool thing: the next day: I'm Tom Brandt. This is Sasha Began and today for you, we have got the next bit. I mean the very regular phone yeah should we start by explaining the next bit thing like the heritage of the Razor phone? Ok, so razor, as you may know, is a company that makes gaming laptops, and they make perfect gaming laptops, and we love their gaming laptops right. Yeah, Racer has really set the bar very high in terms of the not only gaming laptops perform well, but they look good right, and they make, and they make mice yep, and they make pen sets keyboard.

That's anything that has to do with gaming, yes, exact and so racer thought, basically a little while ago. They looked at some countries around the world, and they said there are places where people are not primarily gaming on their laptops. They are gaming on phones, and so they went ahead, and they bought this phone. Startup called next bit, which was made of x, HTC employees primarily right, and they did this about a year and a half ago this year and a half ago. Next, bit has this really nice little phone called the Robin yeah, which was kind of a cult, hit a lot of people liked it, but it didn't hit huge, but then raids are bought next bit and the result is the razor phone which looks a lot like the next bit Robin.

Hence, my confusion. Exactly what has hey here's your razor logo, razor devices always have the Racer logo yeah, but it has a lot of unique features designed specifically for gaming as it should. So what are some of those some of those features and by the way we will take your questions as well, if you're watching us on Facebook we'd be happy to show off any features in questions that you have. So this is the first, and we'll show off some games in a minute. This is the first phone with a 120 Hertz screen, and it is really only the second device that I've seen with a hundred twenty Hertz screen in that the iPad pros have number 20 Hertz screens right, but this is definitely the first phone with 120 Hertz screen.

They have had to do some really deep edits to Android to support that. Not all games, not all games, support it and what it enables you to do is enables you to get frame rates that are higher than 60, because almost all phones are locked to a frame rate of 60 right, the same TVs ?, it's exactly it lets you get frame rates that are higher than 60 and it, and it really smoothes scrolling, which is something that happens on the iPads ? in terms of 120 Hertz screen. Oh, and now are we talking about reducing jaggedness and blurriness, or what? How does that? How does it help when you're, not in the game? How does it help your overall navigate yeah? It does see I'm scrolling right here on the other device, and it does reduce blurriness. It reduces it, reduces sort of fuzzy, fuzziness and tearing of words and images as you're scrolling on the 120 Hertz screen, but by and large I mean what that what they are most interested in, of course, is its uses for gaming sure, but as we'll get to, why that isn't, all it's necessarily chalked up to be looks like we have a question already, though, will it be on the Verizon network? No, so one of the big minuses for this phone is that this is an unlocked. This is an unlocked phone that is compatible only with a TM, TM t, mobile and now I.

Don't want to talk about CDMA and GSM anymore. Less relevant Verizon now has phones which don't have CDMA and right, but razor has said that this phone will only be compatible and is only physically compatible with the AT&T mobile networks. So it's the price. It's six hundred. Ninety-nine dollars unlocked relatively inexpensive for a high-end phone yeah, and it has I mean we'll get into the specs.

Here. It has high-end specs yeah. You have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, which is as good as you can get. You have a quad HD LCD screen. It's not OLED its LCD, but it's a very nice LCD screen could be a little brighter, but very sharp.

You have that 120 Hertz screen. You have amazing front-facing speakers are incredible. Not only how big they are when you look at them, but how big the sound that they yeah they have eight gigs of ram so that you can switch between games without having to reload your game. State. Okay, let me yeah.

Let me show you these front-facing speakers here there are notable yeah Altos adventure is just enough time. You know it's a casual game, but it'll. Let me show off these speakers a bit and train them all the way up. Yeah yeah, it's hard to play a game while looking in the back. Okay, all sorts of crazy things are happening here, but you know yes, so essentially this.

This really is filling the studio with sound about what you'd get from a laptop with front-facing speakers. Many laptops that I've heard sound worse than this yeah. This really are it's the best. It's the best speakers, I've heard on a phone in ages. Now, of course, you're going to be using the speakers a lot because you may notice no headphone jack.

This is one of those USB see. Only phones, Racer tries to sell you by saying that they have a dongle that has a premium digital audio converter in it, which is why there's a block at the end of the dongle. Now? Does that mean you can't use another converter, or you demean? You have to use their wonderful world of USB, see audio. You see in the review that we tried some other dongles didn't work. Some other dongles did work.

USB see audio is not a standard, and you're basically going to want to use the dongle. It comes with four wireless headphones. Yes, yes, what's that looks like we have another question, just gonna work with Google, fine um. Does this work with Google fie? Yes, and no. If you put a Google five SIM cards into it, you will operate only on the T-Mobile network.

It will be as if it is just a T-Mobile MVNO. You will not be able to use the cross network capability of using T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular, which is one of Google five strengths. Now so there's that, but then again you know you are really buying this phone for the gaming capabilities. Yes, you know Racer wants you to do that, so cellular performance, maybe commentary. Let me show you yeah and the modem is not the greatest okay.

This lacks Peter called 4x4 MIMO, which I'm really recommending which puts four antennas in a phone to increase speeds and signal strength. This doesn't have it a lot of other top end phones, don't have it the iPhones, don't have it. So it's not that everybody has it, but I do like to see it. I want to show you a setting screen here. That is very, unique, and this is the Racer game booster, and this is so razor.

What this lets you do is it lets you alter the settings for the phone game by game so that you can change. You can change the CPU speed by game with now change the speed once I've not seen any difference in the way I was going to say that sounds a bit. You know reminiscing of over reminiscent of overclocking, but you're not gonna, be doing the firmware to optimize for battery life, tries to turn down the clock, speed as often as possible, and so what this does are, while you're playing your game, it forces the clock, speed up. Okay, now any well programmed game, however, should do that on its own right. So I think that's a little bogus, but the important part here is that you can change the screen resolution and the screen frame and the screen frame rate by game, and what that means is that if you are going to a game where you want really high frame rates, you can kick the screen resolution down to 720p, and then you can kick the frame rates up to 100 plus right, and then you can have that really smooth, if slightly not terribly high-res experience that you would have on a laptop in the same situation and actually yeah that those higher frame rates that trade-off will be familiar to people who are PC gamers, who optimized for frame rates and are willing to sacrifice going pool.

I, know, I have to say even without playing with the frame rates. One thing I have noticed is especially in driving type games such as I'm, going to call it breakneck here. Okay and let's see if I can get that to actually work there we go and breakneck is not working right now. Okay, let me call up, let me call up Riptide so, especially in these driving type games. The controls on this phone are just amazing, very sensitive, no lag.

It's really easy to drive and move around I found that playing driving games. The Riptide series Need for Speed. It was definitely more responsive than even other high-end phones, and we're talking about gyroscopically and as well as goals or touch control. Absolutely looks like we have another question happen: that's the battery life. The battery life is perfect.

There's a gigantic battery in here, yeah and I got eight more than eight minutes of straight video playback, while streaming over LTE with the screen on max brightness, I mean more than eight hours or eight hours, definitely also more than eight hours, and that marks perfect battery life for an Android phone, and you can see it's not that thick. It is a little heavy, but yeah the battery life is terrific, and that is in part, because this is a gaming phone, and they really want you to pump it now. Is this going to be in another real-world type scenario, where you're gaming on the subway or bus to work? Is it going to be able to last for your whole commute while you're playing about 120 Hertz? Definitely, definitely, let's take another question and then I want to get to the biggest downside of this phone. Definitely do you know if they have intention of going the way of Nvidia shield where they have a specific to you. This device only so I've talked to them about that.

It doesn't sound like they're going to have games that are specific to the razor phone. What they are going to have is games that take advantage of the razor phones 120 for its capabilities, and they there are already a couple of them. Let's see, I have the list here. It's a gear club racing, Riptide, GP, titan fall and warfare, and there are more coming, but these are going to be general games that anyone can download from the Google Play Store right, but on the razor phone they will take advantage of the high frame rate screen and those are going to be the same. So that's just seamlessly Optima I mean you're going to download if you've already bought that you can download it on your radio run the update and now let me talk about what I found to be one of the big downsides for this phone, and this is important, because this is a really important feature, and it's the cameras.

So now the razor phone has two 12 megapixel cameras, okay, 1x and 2x off to a good start off to a good start, sounds a lot like the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. Actually right, which is, you know, one of the best cameras out there and far more expensive. Yes, the problem is, as we found on the essential phone ph1. Something is really screwy about the camera firmware in here, and it was consistently misjudging exposure, and this is something that razor could, in theory, fix through firmware updates. Okay, but when we were reviewing it, we were finding that, for one thing the HDR is very slow via here is slow like an HDR phone from two years ago.

What are you in by slow? Does it mean? Do you mean that it's slow, but this picture yeah there's a noticeable delay when okay, but also when we were when we were testing very often it would, you know it would judge it? It would judge photos so that you know some areas were way too dark, or some areas were way too bright. The exposure judgement was just way off just like when we first reviewed the essential phone. Okay, well, yeah, that's gonna, say basically they've taken the next bit. You know engineering and so it's possible that that's a holdover from from from issues that they hadn't had before it looks like we have another question: does it have any power management system? I mean all phones have power management systems, not quite sure what you mean by that one? No I mean there are battery settings, and you can change, and you can change the phone settings for you know different kind of food to optimize for battery absolutely right, so I'm not really sure what that quest well, I mean on the wind on Windows they're. Moving to the model of you know a scale between better performance and better battery life.

Oh yeah, the Android phones can do that. Well, actually yeah, but- and let me show you in the settings here: if you go into the game booster and go into a specific game, you see you can go for more battery to higher performance yeah. So someone game, Windows, okay, okay, okay, so, okay, so the cameras I mean I hold out hope that they will improve the software yeah when we were reviewing it. The software was not great, I mean that that sounds like it could be a growing pain issue, especially since, if it really is just limited to firmware that that's easily fix well, not easily fixable, it's its easier fixable than waiting till the next razor phone to come out. So, to recap, to recap: strengths and weaknesses of the razor phone strengths of great battery terrific gaming performance.

They really bring home this gaming phone idea, amazing front facing speakers, yeah and I got I, would add to that price because razor in almost all other categories, razor your what you're paying a premium, and here they are competitive. You have a Snapdragon 835 phone, which it's $6.99, and you know the Galaxy S8 is 720. The Motor z2 is 720. You know 720 750, so it is competitive in that way, now downsides a not great call quality, not great modem trouble with the camera. So you see like it's funny.

Because, like all the parts that are razor are great. They're hearts that are phone are not the best, so great gaming machine as a razor hood be tested. Okay phone yeah takes another question. Okay, we're good, okay, so uh so yeah, so the razor phone we rated it I rated it three and a half stars for that balance between you know great razor, okay phone: it is, it is out on the market. Now you can read my full review at PC Mag calm, and we will be back tomorrow at 10 a.

m. Eastern Time if you're still looking for more tech deals after Cyber Monday. This has been one cool thing with the razor phone thanks very much for watching, and we'll see you back tomorrow at 10 a. m. Eastern.

You.

Source : PCMag