Razer Phone 2 hands-on: A glass back and RGB logo By PCWorld

Hey peace, world fans, Adam, Patrick, Murray, with Gordon, mom, hey so and here I have the razor phone too Oh nope, that's the razor phone one. This is the razor phone too. You can tell by the RGB logo all right Gordon. We got the razor phone too here there are a lot of the awesome things that are the same. I don't know, looks a square box. It looks the same, but they completely redesigned it, but you still got the same.

Awesome speakers got the dual amps got the 120 Hertz screen still 5.7 16 by 9, because that's the right way to do it with traditional content. But on the back it's different. You got. You got the glass, so the glass enables a couple of things that it enables the new QI charging dock that we have right here. Furthermore, you just place it on here, and you get a nice right.

Nice little light up RGB on them. It starts to an RGB dance. So it's charging yeah I! Guess if you get is you land the phone wrong a lot of these. If you have one of these charging phones- and you miss- it- tells you missed, and it'll start blinking red, but it looks like it's a pretty big pad here: I'm, not missing underside yeah nice so also because of the glass had enabled RGB lighting on the logo. Obviously, last year's model had the nice, the nice shiny logo.

Here, maybe you were lucky enough to get the special green one, but you've got full RGB and this is enabled by going into the new chroma app here. So you can pick between breathing static spectrum. Obviously you can change the colors, even the brightness. It actually gets pretty dim, which can help something on the on battery I'm going to flip it around you change colors prove it's RGB there Adam! That's that's proved! Let's, let's get up here in the red, let me change the brightness all the way to max that's pretty bright, yeah I'm going to change it back to green, though because we're at reason. Yeah.

Let me go down here and that's very subtle. Right yeah only and the notification get those does that change during notifications. It changes during notifications. Let's see you can set to breathing obvious RGB. You know all this fun stuff, let's go back but yeah you can have notifications turn on/off.

You can tell how much battery you want it to consume if you're worried about battery life, but I got to tell you with the same four thousand William battery is the first one I'm not too worried about the battery I think it's going to last, even with the RGB lighting, anything better yeah, so yeah I mean even though it looks the same in a lot of ways. The've changed it a lot about the internals. Once you tell me a little about the cooling, because in the original model it had the two heat pipes, I remember from jury-rigged everything's teardown that he showed those off right- and here you got a new vapor chamber same thing, you're, seeing a lot of the advanced GPUs RTX. Has it previous generations you've course had a RR. Basically says you know what we're you need.

You need to keep the SOC cool to get more performance to get more frame rates to get more clocks, so we went from dual heat pipes in the original RAZOR phone to basically a heat pipe. That's almost the entire back of the phone I keep calling you he pipes a vapor chamber, that's almost the size of the entire phone and what a vapor chamber does is. It helps wick that heat out from where the CPU is, which is sort of near where the Racer logo is across the entire flat vapor chamber and you have to remember. This is a huge engineering problem. This is not a PC.

There are no fans on her there's no way to exhaust the heat. So what the best you can do is sort of disperse it and then let it sort of build. You know, go ahead, dissipate it on its own. So by putting this vapor chamber in here over the previous heat pipes, Racer is saying they should be able to kick the ass of most other 845, probably all the other 845. That is a big difference.

Phones on them good previous razor one Snapdragon 835 new one, 8:45 well they're, saying over the 8:35 from last year, 20 to 30%, more power B, not, not only on the process, but also because of the cooling performance EO, that's pretty decent Matt wow. That's good willing, a lot of that's from that vapor chamber, and also they're, saying yeah. You can play a game for a long time in this phone and not have it start to slow down some of these phones. You know you leave it on your dashboard. Furthermore, you play a game.

POC rates drop frame rates drop so even though it's it seems like the same panel, it's actually brighter. We did some side-by-side testing and yeah. It's definitely brighter DCP yeah III, ip3 yeah. Thank you, the other big news. What oh, the Netflix HD our Dolby Digital 5.1 termination, listen, the all the content on the original phone sounded and looked great, but now it looks even better I'm not worried about the new stuff. That's happening here.

So a couple of the things that I want to talk about that. That I was a little disappointed by last year's model. The first one was the camera, so as you can see, they kind of changed the location of the camera. They switched from Samsung to Sony sensors, some new glass, even though the specs were the same. Everything under the hood has changed.

Even the camera app has been redesigned with a little nicer layout, so you got oh, is on the wide, but not on the telephoto. Unfortunately, but hopefully you know, I'll put it through its paces, but I definitely want to see how it performs, especially since last year's models dead. It's a little short fellow short. The other thing was the the vibration motor that the happy haptic feedback I had some real problems with this unit. It sounded like a like, like there was Mexican jumping beans inside it, but this one I can already say it's its an upgrade it not only.

Not only does it feel more nuanced, it's not as loud, and it's not gonna really rattle around on the mid-disk. So I'm excited about that. Once again the specs he said, the 845 chipset has been upgraded. The selectable frame rates too right. So that's actually pretty nice I.

Don't think I've seen that in most other phones, there's like a can actually basically in your game, select what clocks be you. You went to the processor too right yeah, so it's separate from the actual screen itself. Just like last year. You can go in here and depending on how you wanted battery life to work, you got 69 days and 128 different forward, but for the actual game performance you can go into the new app right here. The razor oh man, I've missed the name.

What was the name raise your cortex? That's what it is! Cortex! Oh, yeah! You know you viewed on the game. Yeah, you can change it system-wide, or you can go in here and change each game not only to the speed of the CPU, but you've got the resolution it'll play at the frame rate, and it even has more options than what's at the system level, which is nice, and then you've got anti-aliasing. Racer will recommend kind of optimal or optimal settings based on the game, but you know you can obviously just should just go full tilt. If that's your thing and I know, that's probably how I'm going to do it so yeah? We know we've got games loaded up here, I'm gonna, save these and, like you can see per game, you can even go in there and change how you want everything to be laid out. So that's pretty awesome.

I! Think it's rationale is. If you want a game, if the game doesn't really need those high clock speed, you can crank it down and get a little more battery life out of it. I'm guessing I mean I would say, even with the games that weren't optimized for the high refresh rate screen, if Is still always left it in performance mode is, because you get a benefit out of it and I mean you still feel that at the system level just set that smooth scrolling I just love to sit here and just open up the dock or open up the tray it just feels good. The original phone did. It supports micro, SD I, just bought a brand new SD card, so I want to know yeah you're.

What 414 is that gonna work in this phone? Yes, yes, and then we got the two-slit SIM trays. I mean that this thing, just like last year's version, is packed to the gills I mean it's designed for gaming. It's designed for that that cool razor look fit within the ecosystem of the laptop and the headphones and I think this new phone is definitely going to fit in right. Along with it. I am going to miss the all-metal design just because I'm butterfingers I'm worried a little about the glass, but it is still the coolest roller Glass 3 on the back Gorilla Glass 5 on the front yeah.

So I'm not I'm, not going to drop it here to test it, but it should hold up, and you know, I got used to the fingerprint reader on the side actually kind of liked it well because I, guess: I'll make sense. Because you're going to hold the phone like this right, yeah yeah, then you can draw or if it was the thumb on the right side. Yeah, that works. It's not really a's, not a's, not a bad place when all in fact it's pretty good and I, don't know I, like the glass, and you know, as a gamer RGB, you got have our G. You have to have RGB.

It makes a game faster. Furthermore, it's the clinically-proven desert Oh check this out. —, look on the dock, no price on this dock, no press on the dock, then a bummer, but hey you want to leave it flat. You can do that —, nice up there. You go so and plug it backs in it.

Whoops. Who knows so, even though, even though at first blush it doesn't look too different right. The mean from the inside out. It has been redesigned with that that meticulous razor design, language that we've come to love so around it and curve. Yeah, I'm excited to get one in and keep testing it.

So obviously you can take pre-orders today for $7.99, and then it'll launch. Sometime soon, we don't know quite yet, but uh keep it locked to PC world for more coverage on it and then definitely review them. Yeah, I'm excited to try it out, so I'm really interested in seeing if that vapor chamber holds up, take a high end. Other phone make this see, which one is running fastest after means a gaming yeah, yeah well we'll get a deep dive into thermals, we'll get your FLIR yeah yeah out for the thermal testing, so yeah that that's it that's the razor phone -. Thank you very much Gordon for checking that with me.

Well can't wait to see it alright, see you later.

Source : PCWorld