Razer Phone 2 - First Impressions! By Hardware Canucks

Hello good people Ever here with Hardware Canucks, and this is the racer phone 2 now at first glance, you're not going to notice a major difference between this, and it's a previous or predecessor, the racer phone, because from a design standpoint, it's pretty much the exact same thing, except for a few minor increments in terms of features, and let's talk about that right after message from our sponsor the new master keys, MK 750 keyboard comes with a comfortable magnetic wrist rest, beautiful RGB, light bar on the perimeter and perky lighting control, with a variety of Cherry, MX switches and the bottom type-c connection. Cooler master doing it right check it out below okay. So what's really new with the racer phone -? Well, let's start off with the design, and to be honest, it's not that different from the original racer phone I think we noticeably difference that you'll see compared to the original phone is that the rear side of the device has been replaced with Gorilla Glass 5 instead of the traditional matte black aluminum finish. This adds support for wireless charging. But, given that this is a glass back, you can definitely expect scratches and it being a slippery eventually over time, because it's obviously a surface that picks up grease and fingerprints quicker than aluminum surfaces. So that's again something to keep note of now, given that it's 2018, we had to expect some sort of RGB lighting on a smartphone of this caliber, and that's exactly what's going on here, so the logo hidden underneath the Gorilla Glass 5 back, is RGB LED, and it's controlled through Racers chroma, app pre-installed on the device.

There are three learning effects that you can play around with, so there's spectrum, cycling, breathing and static effect, and you can customize the colors — up to sixteen point: seven million colors, which is certainly a nice touch. So if you're looking for a smartphone with RGB lighting, this is certainly the one to get apart from the rate of part from the DOG phone, then is that I still have no idea on availability or launch so yeah RGB where's, our phone — they've, also added ip67 water-resistant rating, which is a welcoming update from the original RACER phone. It's certainly on IP 68 certified, but you've got to front-facing speakers. Racer actually had to redesign the speaker the system to accommodate that certification. So it's certainly and welcoming and refreshing update from the original RAZOR phone.

But aside from that from a design standpoint, it's again very much identical to the original RACER phone, all right, so spec, wise you're, getting a snapdragon, 845 processors, a gigabyte of RAM, 64, gigabytes of storage and a four thousand William hour battery again. The only incremental upgrade internally is that processor bump you're still getting the same amount of RAM compared to the original RACER phone you're, also getting the same battery capacity. So again, not a significant upgrade on that department as well. But what they have included is a new vapor cooling chamber design internally, so it actually dissipates the heat a lot better. So that's again something to be validated in the full review.

The next thing to talk about is the display, and just as expected, it's not a significant update from the original RACER phone, so you're getting the same 5.7 inch, HD plus display with the 120 Hertz refresh rate and my god. It looks amazing in person if you're someone who's used to a traditional smartphone, especially like myself, who has never actually used the original RACER phone I was certainly I. Just fell in love with this display right away, because the fluidity and the experience that you get just browsing through the Android operating system and, of course gaming for the most part, is just fantastic. I didn't get some hands-on time with that gaming as well, and it's again a breathtaking experience. You really have to feel it by yourself in person, because the hundred twenty Hertz display is just quite amazing, especially on a mobile device, and it's really hard for me to go back to a smartphone that uses a traditional 60 Hertz display because the phone feels slower, and it just doesn't complete that experience now.

Racer did increase the brightness of this display by 50 percent, so you're, looking at 580, nits or just 318, it's on the original RACER phone. So that's certainly again an incremental upgrade, but certainly refreshing to see on the second generation racer phone software wise. This phone is rocking Android, 8.1 Oreo out of the box, which is kind of disappointing, because I was expecting Android Pi and you know for phone, that's launching at the end of 2018. It just doesn't make any sense for it to ship with 8.1, but Racer is promising Android Pi sooner than later, not just for the racer phone too, but also for the racer phone one. So, let's just hope that happens, but other than that you are getting a pretty close to stock Android experiences without any bloatware.

So that's awesome. There are no third-party skins or anything like that. In fact, racer gives you full customization options, so it is rocking nova launcher by default. But most specifically, you do have a theme store. So if you want to play around with different themes, that's there, but there's also Racer cortex, which is in a dedicated application.

That makes you switch between different modes, particularly for you know it balanced a performance mode that lets you just conserve battery life for longer usage, or if you want absolute best performance, you can go for the max performance mode, which will give you the highest frame rates, but that's definitely going to take a little of hit on battery life. Now, one of the major drawbacks of the original racer phone was the camera performance because it just wasn't up to the standards, especially when compared to the flagships from last year and racer is trying to address that with the racer phone too, because they've implemented dual 12 megapixel cameras, you've got a standard lens and a telephoto lens with a different aperture variants, but they do come with optical image stabilization, but most specifically you'd also get you know extra features like PO'trait mode, better low-light performance and there's also a beauty mode integrated on this device. So again, those are some of the things that I'll have to validate, for the full review. So definitely stay tuned for that. But I'm going to keep my expectations neutral because from my initial testing, or with my initial hands-on with this device, I just wasn't impressed with the camera performance.

So let's just wait and see. I'm just going to spend some time with the camera on the racer phone to give my full thoughts on that, and perhaps I'll be able to compare it to the note 9 and the pixel 2. So again definitely stay tuned for that. So guys, that's pretty much a story with the racer phone 2 and honestly, it's an incremental upgrade over the original racer phone just to quickly run over the updates you're, getting a new finish on the back its now Gorilla Glass 5 with the RGB lat logo, and it supports wireless charging slightly improved cameras. It also comes with eyepieces own water-resistant rating, a private display slightly better sounding speakers, and that's about it and of course it's going to be priced a little higher.

So the original RACER phone retailed for $6.99 for the base model, the racer phone 2, is gonna, be starting at $7.99 for the base model, which is certainly an expensive investment. But if you look at the smartphone market in general, I think it's priced competitively, especially when you compare to the pixel of 3 the Galaxy Note: 9, p, LG, v 40. So again it's a smartphone, specifically targeted towards a certain market, if you're a gamer and if you're looking for an all-in-one entertainment device. This is certainly something to look into, because that one in 20 Hertz display is certainly something that I just can't, I can't take my eyes off said I will be spending some time with this device, just like my other devices, especially like the note 9 just to see what the experience is like and if I really like it, particularly the cameras. Those are some of the things that I really want to test to see if it's actually worth the $7.99 price tag. So certainly stay tuned for the review on eBay with Hydra connects.

Thank you so much for watching make sure to check out some relevant content over here, subscribe to a new boot sequence channel for the latest tech news and rumors I'm. Signing off, and I'll see you guys in the next one the phone just dropped. This is the problem with having phones with glass backs because they slip.

Source : Hardware Canucks