Razer Phone 2 Review: Best Features for Streaming & Gaming By Cord Cutting Report

So everyone's talking about gaming phones this year, but with the razor foam ? it's more than just a gaming phone. It's also the first flagship smartphone, that's optimized for streaming and washing live TV in this video I'm going to go over all the features of the razor phone ? like picture and picture while using Netflix and playing a wide variety of video games, including ones from my Steam account. There is phone. ? has 5.7-inch screen that has HDR support and Dolby Atmos support. It's basically I got mini entertainment center that you can make phone calls on I watched a lot more TV. Now my smartphone.

Let's change that began a little over two years ago, as I delved deeper into cord cutting and hooked up. My first HD home run tuner to an antenna. My gaming habits have changed to raise from 2 as unique specs for both those things. It has more horsepower than most people probably need in a phone, but that's kind of what makes it a really fun device to own as well I stuck with Circuit. As my cell provider, the razor phone ? works mainly with GSM networks.

That means AT&T T-Mobile and some of its subsidiaries right away, I've loaded up with a lot of different streaming, apps like Netflix, Hulu, Plex, Amazon, Prime, video movies, anywhere YouTube, TV and, of course, HD home run app. So I can watch things off. My antenna. I've played a lot of games on this I've downloaded about 16 so far, including ones recommended by the Racer cortex app, but I also hunted down some old favorites from the Google Play Store, like grand theft, auto vice city I played using the touchscreen and I also played a number of games with this Bluetooth game pad that I bought it's a matter comm game pad that you can find for about 17 dollars on Amazon I'll leave a link for that in the comments below. So this gaming phone is a follow-up to the original RAZOR phone that came out about a year ago, that was the first gaming phone in the industry, and it's sort of set off this new trend for gaming phones, there's about four or five different ones in the market.

Right now, you know. Gaming is certainly a big feature with this phone, and it's very well optimized for that. But it's really perfect for watching a lot of your streaming. Apps to one of my first experiences using this phone was during game for the World Series. As I watched, the game.

I was just blown away by the sound, the roar, the crowd coming over the Dolby Apple speakers, just kind of floored me in it. It almost sounded, like you know, like a mini TV. A mini theater I've never had that kind of experience on a smartphone before also the picture. Quality R in the game was very smooth and whenever you know there was a pitch thrown or there was, you know, sudden camera jerk to the outfield. It just looked really great, so I didn't record any of that, but uh here's some football from NFL again.

This is coming off my antenna. This is on Fox off an antenna. Still the picture is really crisp and smooth. So there's a lot of features to talk about on this phone, but I've narrowed it down to five. That I think are the most important ones, the first being the display is 120 Hertz, which is typically twice the speed of even a lot of better televisions that are out there.

I mean this is not an OLED screen the display and be mind-numbingly fast. When you start scrolling, it's not something you can really see in a video I can tell you it's fast enough that once in a while I, even dial it down to 90 Hertz or 60 Hertz, when I'm not playing a game, I think it's pretty safe to say that must result of this phone. You're gonna start seeing a lot more phones coming out with a 120 Hertz display, because smartphone manufacturers are going to want to claim that they have the most responsive user interface. The second thing that really impressed me was the picture-in-picture support for Netflix YouTube on YouTube, TV I tested a wide variety of streaming apps on the razor phone ? I only found these three ? have pictured and picture support. So essentially what that means.

Let's say: you're watching YouTube TV you're, watching a baseball or a football game. You got a buddy who starts texting. You talking smack about your fantasy team. Furthermore, you can minimize the screen. Furthermore, you can have a little screen in the corner, and you could text your friend back while still watching the game or if you want to look something up, you could scroll through your web browser punch, something in look that out, so I thought that was pretty cool.

Furthermore, you that the fact you're able to do two things at once in I thought it was pretty cool that you didn't have to quote-unquote turn off the TV to shoot off a quick text or send an email or look something up on the web. So, let's face it when you're sitting in front of a TV at home, I mean how many times are you sitting there with your phone in front of your kind of doing the same thing, sending somebody a text or an email or looking something up so with the phone. You can do the same thing without the TV. The third thing that I thought was really cool was just having the Dolby Atmos support and the settings you can change the equalizer around or just set it back to where you had it in one click, there's also a bass enhancement feature which you can turn on and off. I haven't really left mine off for any reason at all, because I think the bass sounds perfect.

Having equalizer system on your smartphone is probably one of the unique and useful things that I've seen you know. Most smartphones don't even have speakers that are good enough to warn a control panel. You can see here on the Dolby Atmos panel. You can switch between four modes, dynamic, movie, music and custom and, like I said you can return the settings to zero by hitting one button. Fourth-coolest feature was definitely a fingerprint and encode security.

I've never been a huge fan of using a fingerprint unlock falling. It's always seemed kind of cumbersome and a bit of a pain. You have to use your thumb and scroll adjust right. There are phones who really changed that for me by putting the scanner on a button along the right side of the edge of the phone, it's the exact spot, where you would naturally hold a phone of this size, and it doesn't matter if you happen to pick it up when your right hand or your left hand, because you can scan in a number of fingerprints to cover any way you handle the phone as a backup if things aren't working for some reason, the razor from ? also prompts you for a four digit passcode. So you're not stuffed with a phone me.

For some reason your fingerprints aren't getting the job done. Maybe you have gloves on or something like that. Oh v, really cool feature is a nightlight mode under settings. You can set up a schedule of when your screen turns to this amber shade and the nightlight mode makes your screen easier to look at or read in dim light razor says the color change may help. You fall asleep more easily.

I do try to stay away from the phone when it starts getting real late, but I'm pretty terrible at it. So I definitely noticed that my eyes felt better not having that typical aftermath of foam glare when I finally show my eyes at the end of the night, by the way the operating system Nova Launcher, prime, it's a program, that's available for all Android phones only cost a few dollars, but on the Razor phone ? it really makes fine-tuning the phone's appearance and how you want to respond to incoming text. Emails videos just really easy. As far as the phone specs, it's the only phone officially certified by Netflix for HDR video and Dolby Surround 5.1 audio I ended up upgrading my Netflix account, so I could get 4k HDR a picture looks great. The one problem that I've found with it is with certain shows, like stranger things.

Where you see a lot of scenes happening at night and so forth. They can be a little harder to see if you're standing outside on a sunny day, and you're watching something on your phone. Razor has said that they are working on a software update to address this issue, so if you're buying this phone in the meantime you're just using a regular Netflix you're, not going to notice. This issue at all everything's gonna, look clear and bright streaming on Hulu looked really great. The sound is just very impressive, with pretty much any show or movie that you watch.

The processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, and this is the same processor that you can find in the Samsung Galaxy s 9 and the S 9 plus. The screen is LCD with a display resolution of 1440 by 2560 displays wide color gamut and, of course, the 120 Hertz refresh rate. The phone comes with eight gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigabytes of internal storage. There is a SD slot card, I'm buying a 128 gig card. Some people feel that the internal memory that it comes worth isn't enough.

I can understand why people feel that way, but frankly, I think 64. Gigs is enough, because if Racer ends up adding more internal memory, that's only gonna drive up the price, so I'd just much rather buy my own micros card. The phone can take up to one terabyte in memory. The back of the phone is made with Corning Gorilla Glass 5, it's designed to protect against drops. It also enables a wireless charging razor cells, a wireless charger that looks really cool costs, an extra hundred bucks so, though I didn't spring for it, I've just been using the cord that comes with the phone, and it's a USB-C port.

The phone charges up very quickly. One of the other big selling points for me is that the phone is ip67 certified for water resistance. My old Samsung Galaxy s5 that I replaced was more or less waterproof as well. Hopefully, I never dropped my phone of water, but if I do at least I have a little of protection there. The razor phone 2 is currently running on Android 8.1. There is a software update, that's anticipated in the near future.

Some people aren't crazy about the phone not coming with Android Pi, but frankly, I'd rather wait for the update to be sort of done and stable before they throw it on my phone, so I'm, usually not into design that much. But it's worth mentioning look at the razor phone, it's long and black and square. It's definitely a slick, look and I. Think Racer deserves a lot of credit for telling this to buck against this sort of curvy sports car design of just about every other flagship phone out. There's no notch on the display, so we have nothing but screen which I think's a real compliment.

Any gaming phone there's no headphone jack. Instead, the phone has a short USB, C audio adapter, and you plug it into the same port that you use for your charging cable. As far as the gaming chops, you can play quick satisfying, arcade-style games like Taken or longer sandbox games, including grand theft, auto vice city. I think the attraction for a lot of people will be to try games that optimized for the 120 Hertz, the cortex app on the phone has already a number that was picked out. These games are aggregated from the Google Play Store.

One of those games, I played was the zombie themed unskilled, and it had some pretty decent action, but I was actually more impressed with graphics. Heavy games like darkness Rises, which feels more like a console game. The only downside is that the game didn't have any game pad support, but it was still a lot of fun using the touch screen and not a deal-breaker at all, I already mentioned GTA a couple of times: I've been able to play Vice City again was very cool. It had the same feel and graphics and action as it did on the PlayStation 2. It was just basically on a smaller screen with GTA I was able to use the game pad, and it was that mat com Bluetooth controller.

That I told you about that. Cost me about 17 bucks. Racer has published a list of optimized games for the racer phone too, and they've suggested them or on the way, but look you're not restricted to just Android games, or one suggested by the company. I played some fortnight, which I'm not very good at it, was a lot of fun to play, and it was super smooth on the racer phone playing games will run down your battery faster, so keep your charger handy I also downloaded the steam link app, so I could stream games from my laptop to play on the razor phone to Racer doesn't promote using steam link and the app is still in beta, but it's definitely worth trying out, if you already own the library of steam games and want some flexibility with how you can play them. So the performance of steam link was mixed with arcade style games it performed very well or with more graphics.

Heavy games like Mortal, Combat 10. The game would freeze on the razor phone too, but continue playing on my laptop based on my testing. This freezing problem seems to be an issue with the steam link app, so I'm, hoping it'll only be improved upon as the app emerges from beta steam link really adds a lot of value to a gaming phone like the razor phone too. Even with the performance issues, it's still really exciting to play the games. You want on mobile as far as improvements or what could be better too bad.

The camera on the razor phone 2 isn't just a little better after shooting in a variety of settings. I can say that the camera can take excellent pictures, but you may need more of a try, especially if you're in a tricky lighting situation. Sometimes the camera struggles in low-light settings, or even just with balancing overall light, most cameras on flagship smartphones say like the latest iPhones or Google Pixel, make taking great photos really a mindless exercise, so the razor phone ? is almost there, but not quite razor says there are software updates underway to improve the camera and other features on the phone overall. This isn't a problem that I'm really worried about because fairly convinced that this phone is going to have great support in the months ahead. There's two rear facing cameras that are 12 megapixels, including one that is telephoto.

There's a dual LED flash that works really well doesn't drown out your subjects and the video is up to a 4k with stereo audio I was pretty happy with the clarity and the brightness of the video that I shot in a couple of the recordings. The audio seemed a little dimmer than it should have. It's almost like the microphones weren't in the right place. There's three different hue settings: there's also a panorama option on the phone that was pretty cool. I thought the zoom feature was really great, while shooting a video of my daughter from a distance I was able to quickly snap to the x ? setting instead of having to do a scrolling zoom.

This is probably one of the best features on the camera. I thought the beauty feature was kind of useless. I have no interest in a feature like this, and it's kind of a waste when a more practical feature could have been added. You know, after seeing some cooler stuff like panorama or being able to snap to a certain zoom setting I'm sure they can come up with something else. That's better, so my final takeaway is it worth seven hundred ninety-nine dollars? For me, the answer is yes.

The razor from ? is a lot of fun, and it's kind of practical, considering how I use my phone now, which includes watching a lot of TV, whether it's just catching up on the news or whether real, quick, something on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video I'm also real happy, because I'm able to play video games a little easier now. I, don't always need to be around one of my gaming consoles to squeeze in a quick, arcade game or even a longer form game. I think this phone will especially be ideal for traveling. Once you get used to having the 120 Hertz display, HDR and doll support, it's going to make going back to another phone, a lot less appealing, even though this probably a niche phone right. Now, it's a glimpse into the future of what's gonna, be standard features that the average person is going to expect from a flagship smartphone.

So it really comes down to a matter of whether you want these features right now. Would you rather wait for it like everyone else, so those are all the best things that I liked about the phone, so I'm sure there's couple things in this video that I didn't talk about I hope, I've covered everything comprehensively? If you want to know more about the phone, you can click on my full written review. That's in the link below you can find that at cord cutting report, com feel free to leave a question or comment below and tell me what you think of the razor phone ? thanks for checking out the video, and I'll see you next time.

Source : Cord Cutting Report