Razer Phone 2 Unboxing and Review By James Wylie

Okay my review of the razor phone ? so just took this thing out of the box. I've been using it for a little, but it's sort of give you that unboxing experience here, you know nicely displayed a little letter from Racer about you, know, kicking ass and games and so on and so forth. It was a couple. You know, nice accessories, USB see the USB cable. It's obviously got the adapter because it does not have a headphone jack and power adapter, which puts out pretty decent amperage Woofer quick charge in here. We've got, you know, manual, a bunch of stuff that nobody's ever really going to go through.

So that's that so putting the box off to the side. Here. This is the actual phone itself. Now this is a razor phone to review, but in all honesty there is very little different between this phone and the razor phone. One I initially bought the razor phone one a few weeks ago to see if I wanted to dip my toe into the very expensive razor phone, ? and I liked it so much that I went for the whatever was eight hundred dollar purchase, because I wanted the wireless charging ip67 dust and waterproof and a notification LED on the back.

But in all reality that's all. That's really different about this phone I mean there is. You know, they've moved the camera over here to the center, improve the software a little. What else have they done? It's obviously got the snapdragon 845 versus the 835, but at all reality you're not going to notice a speed difference while using this phone between the two. Both of these phones are incredibly, incredibly snappy, so highly advisable performance, wise so getting into the phone itself.

One of my favorite things about this phone. As you can see, even though it is an LCD, it has an ambient display on it, which is a great feature: I hate when phones don't have a useful, always-on or ambient display I, actually prefer an AME and display, because I find myself continually just checking and always on display. You know, while I'm out for dinner or at the bar or whatever versus an ambient display, turns on when you get a notification and stays off, otherwise, so very nice kudos to razor for including that you know it's, it's a part of stock Android, so it's not like they had to go crazy with any sort of software writing or anything along those lines, but kudos nonetheless, so fingerprint sensor on the left here. This is something a little reminiscent of like the Motor, the Motor, z3 and I. Think some of the Sony's had that on the left at the beginning, I prefer obviously I would rather the fingerprint sensor be right here, especially with these huge bezels on here.

There's kind of no reason not to, but I do prefer it to be on the side whoops versus being on the back, because I love to use my phone like this, and I can double tap the screen to turn it on. If there was a fingerprint sensor here, I would be pressing that to unlock the phone, but since there is not luckily, if I can press on the side here theoretically and unlock the phone, so I don't have to lift it up from the table, which is very annoying to use that rear fingerprint sensor. So I appreciate it that they put it on the side versus on the back good call like I said if it was on the front, even better I mean again, you know, there are loads of bezel here to work with so a bit silly that they didn't. But it's fine. It's just fine on the side, so press the power button to unlock with your fingerprint and there you have a picture of me and my lovely wife.

So now this is the phone. So one of the things that I sort of love about this phone is the screen. It is not an 18 to 9 or greater sorts of tall ratio. It is a sort of old school. If you will, whereas old school is all of you know, two or three years ago, sixteen by nine phone, the screen is not only that is it 16 by 9, which gives you more room left to right, but it's also a very pretty screen.

You know, I think the colors come out on it fantastically there's, not a lot of sort of that L LCD, sort of glow or sort of washing out of darker colors, and you I, don't know if you can really see that, but I'm wearing a black shirt there and it- and it looks very nice, so I really like the screen on this phone, so good job on that, even though it's done oh LED panel, so another thing sort of as far as this phone goes, it feels great. You know what I mean. It is definitely a masculine sort of phone. It's kind of, like you know like we're like a big bulky, Citizen Watch, or something like that. Furthermore, it's got a little of heft to it.

Furthermore, it's black, it's a Fanta, fantastic sort of shiny, finish on the back and then sort of matte finish on the side. Furthermore, it's angular I think it looks really cool I, get sort of I got a lot of I, wouldn't say, compliments but interest in it when I was sort of showing it off with some friends a couple of weekends ago. Furthermore, it's very cool. Looking feels good. You know, obviously, if you've got smaller hands, it's going to be difficult to use, but I love the size of it and one of my favorite things about the size of it is having a little more width to it is that I can use it.

Two handed very easily, and I find that I am able to type much quicker when I am able to use two hands versus just using one hand swipe or something along those lines. So I like that a lot. So then, as far as the software goes, you know there's a couple. A couple pre-installed apps, but you're, really looking at stock Android on this thing. You know they they they sort of skinned it a little in that they change the colors of this stuff up here and if we go into settings you can see that they change those colors a little too.

They just made it sort of black and white, but it really is just stock Android. There are, you know a couple additions that you'll see in here. Obviously you can see right out of the gate. There is this there's a chroma app and that is for that rear led there. So I usually leave that off, because I find that.

So it's got a few battery settings here, so you can have it on high, which means that it will basically always be on, and that is high battery usage. That's what they're sort of indicating there that, no matter whether the screen is on or off this thing's going to breathe or whatever effect you so choose, and it's going to chew up the battery, so I. Actually, while it is cool, you know to sort of have that on and have people sort of see that and maybe comment on it for the battery loss. That's not really worth it and there is a noticeable battery loss. You know maybe five ten percent per day something along those lines and that's just not really worth it for me.

So I turn that sometimes off I'll put it on the medium battery sort of usage setting where it's only on while the screen is on so my screens on right now, but if I turn off the screen, it turns right off. So that's kind of cool, but I generally just have it at the off setting which let's get back there low. So what it will still do in the low setting is breathed for notifications, which is very nice, even though it has an ambient display. Sometimes you just want to put your phone face down and attempt to ignore it, and you're able to do that with this. So obviously, I don't have any notifications right now, so it's not doing that, but if something were to come in it attempts to take the app color and make that color appear on that LED.

It does a decent job. You know I've, seen blue of seeing yellow for Snapchat I've seen green for hangouts, so it does alright with it. It's definitely cool I like it, and it's its sort of a talking piece, and you know with these phones with this sort of gaming phones. The point of them is to be kind of fun. You know what I mean so that that is sort of a cool fun thing they get to play around with, so I just leave that at low for now turn on for notifications, one thing that I did notice with this phone, and it took me a little while to figure out was you have to have the sound on? You cannot be in do not disturb mode and get those notifications which does kind of make sense, but it's not really the behavior of other Android phones, usually if I, the first thing I do when I set up these phones is I.

Put them in do not disturb mode because I don't want the sounds. Furthermore, you know I just like to check my phone when I check it um, but I did notice that, if you are in do not disturb mode on this particular phone, you know. Hopefully you can see that I'm turning the volume down there, yeah I did not get notifications on my galaxy. Wear watch and I did not get notifications on that rear LED. So that was a bit weird.

So basically, what I do on this is I leave it at the lowest volume at all times. Hopefully you can see that yeah right there. It barely makes any noise there's my ROG walking into the room, one of them anyway, and that's just fine. So that's the chrome app, which is literally just for this guy here and then there is the game. Booster app.

So I'm not entirely sure what this does. My guess is it overclock, the or well it doesn't overclock, but maybe it keeps the cores at a higher speed or something along those lines, or maybe a clears' memory more aggressively or something like that. There are three settings, so there's custom where you can add games where you want it to go into performance mode. There's power, save mode which presumably just never switches from the sort of standard running mode versus performance mode where it will like I, said I think it clears batter the memory more, and I think it keeps the cores running at a higher speed, but not really sure. I know that this is not an overclocked Snapdragon 845 like the DOG phone, so that's my best guess and I did notice a decent jump in an tutu scores when I kept it up at performance.

I think the best I was able to get out of this thing was about a 285,000 which is pretty solid. You know it's its it's not it's not blowing away. You know the 20:18 phones, it's right there in the pack, but it does fine. Now again with that said that Snapdragon 845 is so fast that you really don't have to worry about the performance I mean you don't need this thing to get the best. The absolute best performance in an ? to score I mean this thing is so quick, as was the previous generation one you're, only ever going to notice that new APIs stamp dragon 845 processors, when you're playing games being able to raise the French for second a little or raise the graphics settings.

So another thing with this phone is it has a 120 Hertz display the DOG phone? Has a 90 Hurst display this one goes up to 120, and again you cannot see it on YouTube videos, it is really nice. I mean the biggest jump for me is when you go from 60 to 90. So that's typically, where I leave it. But transitions are so incredibly smooth on this thing and I never thought that I would notice that sort of thing, but it's so, so smooth I mean this has to be the smoothest running phone I've ever used. It's its really incredible.

Ads was the razor phone one I mean they did a really, really good job at just leaving this as bare-bones Android and there's zero, zero, zero, zero lag and scrolling is fantastic, smooth and lovely, really, really cool. So I typically leave that at 90 Hertz, the higher you set that the more battery is going to drain, so I like to leave it around 90. If I really wanted to say you know, get the most get the most out of the battery I would drop, you could drop the refresh rate down to 60, and then I can also go in and drop the res down to I think it said, let's see here, yeah 1080, so I'll leave it at 1440 and 90 Hertz. You know just for typical day-to-day stuff. The battery lasts more than enough to get you through the day easily.

You know I'm getting its I'm, not getting amazing battery life. Out of this thing, I mean for four hours, easy screen on you know over a couple of days. You know if you're doing just one day, I'm sure you could probably get six or seven screens a screen on time. Out of this thing, it's more so the passive battery drain that I've noted noticing the most you know it's just stock Oreo, so it doesn't have any sort of watchROG for to kill processes and things like that- and you know it does all right, but stock battery drain is not fantastic on this thing, so, let's just sort of go through all the settings here. This won't go away, set a night like schedule, even though I did it and whatever turn it on turn it off, etc.

I, don't like night late, I think it's annoying, so I don't turn it on, but it just they refuse to get rid of that. I can dismiss it, but it'll come back and whatever no big deal so typical, very typical stock Android stuff here, you're not going to see anything particularly different from you know, any other stocky Android. You know phone picks old Nexus, you name it so battery again, very typical stuff. It does have the option for the ambient display and lift awake, which is very nice. You know what that is.

You put your phone down pick it up boom on comes that ambient display to show you whatever might be sitting there and waiting for you also it'll wake four new notifications, so I like that, a lot of kudos, let's see here sound, so it's got Dolby Atmos, which is configurable through here I, haven't noticed a huge difference. I mean it's kind of like fiddling with the equalizer on your car. You know, I, think it just sort of changed, treble and bass, and so on and so forth. But it's its nice I mean I, leave it on dynamic. The speakers are incredibly good on this.

Maybe I can attempt to play some tunes for you here. Let's see what I can find no I, don't think I have anything downloaded. Let's try this so not they're really going to get an impression through this, but it is very, very loud I'm having to speak up quite a bit now, and then I can go in here and fiddle around with you know: I noticed a little of a change, but it's good. You know the speakers are perfect on it, I know, as they should be they're enormous, so they're very good. Obviously, speakers are housed in these left and right sides here, and you do get stereo sound out of them for playing games and things like that which is really nice.

If you don't want to wear headphones, you know some games, particularly the online competitive games. You need that stereo sound. So that's really nice! So, let's see here, storage I got the. Where did I get I got the 64 gig one, which is always plenty for me, and you know nothing particularly interesting in here? We've got the storage manager which will remove old photos and videos after 90 days, cool fine tells you it tells you know. What's taken up what so it's fine I mean.

This is just stock Oreo, stuff, nothing too different their game. Booster I mean really that's sort of it. Would this thing you know it's. It's basic, there's not a lot of like crazy functionality that you can't get on another phone, really you're buying this thing for the hardware now I think that this phone, if you are looking to buy this phone as a gamer and I, am NOT a huge gamer. Yet I still really like this phone I think this phone itself standalone is better for gaming than the other gaming phones, the black shark or the DOG phone, and the reason for that being is these massive bezels I mean I? Can I can use the phone I can hold it like this, and I've got these nice speakers here that are facing me, bigger screen, you know taller anyway, so I think it's really nice to use in this fashion? Now, of course, the one problem with this phone, if you're buying it to game on, is that it doesn't have a lot of accessories.

I mean you're getting the phone and that's sort of it. I mean versus the KG phone, which just has a pile of accessories right out of the gate, one of which, being that gaming dock, which is absolutely fantastic. So that's tough, but if you didn't plan on making those investments, I think for a gaming phone. This is really a bit better. I mean the screen on paper is smaller.

It's a 5.7, seven-inch screen I believe, but it's a 16 by 9 ratio. So you really, even though it is quote-unquote diagonally, shorter, you're, getting more screen real estate on this screen, which I really like it's you know, a sixteen by nine screens is absolutely excellent for viewing websites really doing anything that you normally do on your computer. You know I, think that's 16 by 9. It's definitely the way to go with these phones, but you know people seem to be moving away from it. I'm not sure, not quite sure why, but I really like it.

So really. To sum up, this thing: I mean you know, like I said it's its stock Android, but they do a perfect job of it. The hardware is really, really cool. I mean I really just like holding it. You know it's its it's its just a very cool piece of hardware: I love the screen.

I love, love, love the screen on it. I love the width of it, so I can type two-handed. The speakers are fantastic. I love the screen height. You know, I do actually I'm one of those people that still uses my phone in landscape mode from time to time, and you could actually do that on this versus the sixteen or eighteen by nine phones and taller where, as soon as you go landscape- and you want to type something out, your keyboard is going to take up the entire screen where it does not on this.

So this phone's definitely a major go for me to quote philosophy, Carter and I, really like it. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to put them in the comment section, I sort of I will try and answer anything I can about this phone again. If you're. Looking at one of these, you know this is the razor phone ?, which again has that glass back LED notifier on the back, an ip67 dust and water prevention. But if you're, it's really the same exact phone as the razor phone one as far as software goes and as far as sort of size and and and build, so maybe you're looking to get one of these phones who are a little less money, the razor phone one is a great Buy I think if I think you could get one damn near in the 300s.

By now and I tell you user experience wise, even though it has that older processor that 835, it is a really, really nice user. Experience on that phone and obviously same goes for this with the upgraded Snapdragon 845 I, really like these phones, so that that's sort of it yeah any questions or comments feel free to ask away all right. Thank you.

Source : James Wylie