Razer Phone Review: How Much Of A Razer Fan Are You? By Alex Hong

Hey there, Alex here. As you would expect from a company focused on gaming, the Razer phone is all about mobile gaming. From the design of the phone, to the hardware decisions, everything has a gaming-first approach. Take the design of the phone. It’s an unassuming chunky block of aluminium with a stealthy matte black finish. Just like a lot of other Razer products.

It’s also not hard to see the resemblance to the Nextbit Robin. The boxy design, the round volume buttons, and the side mounted fingerprint sensor, which works remarkably well by the way. There is really no need to embellish it with a unique design, curved edge display, or shiny glass back panel. Because the focus is on gaming, and when you’re gaming on your phone, the only thing you’ll be looking at, is the display. It’s a 5.7” IGZO LCD panel with Quad HD resolution, and wide colour gamut. Pretty typical stuff.

It’s pleasing to look at for the most part. The unique thing about this display, is that it’s capable of a 120Hz refresh rate. By default it’s actually set at 90Hz because it probably consumes a bit more power, but even at 90Hz looks impressive enough. They’re not the first to implement this on a phone, but it’s really the perfect fit for a phone made for gaming. Let me quickly explain why.

When I’m scrolling through this list for example, the screen is constantly redrawing itself and changing the positions of the items on screen. A typical display is 60Hz, which mean it’s capable of redrawing itself 60 times a second. So imagine if you double that, what you get is a much smoother transition. This higher refresh rate makes everything on the phone feels smoother. Right now, there are only a handful of games that supports it, so not all games will look that great just yet.

But for just the general day to day stuff, you can definitely tell the difference. Sadly, this awesome looking display has a serious weakness, sunlight. The brightness of the panel is a little lower than I would have liked. It's still usable for the most part, but just not an enjoyable experience at all. Instead of embracing the trend of smaller bezels, Razer went with huge top and bottom bezels with a more traditional 16:9 display.

This is for good reasons too. First of all, very few games can actually take advantage of the wider displays we see these days. Most games are still using a 16:9 aspect ratio. So instead of stretching the display wider, the bezels are put to other uses. Such as a pair of really great sounding stereo speakers with dedicated amps.

They’re one of the best speakers I’ve heard on a smartphone to date, and really adds to the gaming experience. Another advantage of those bezels, are the added grip that they provide. It’s a little more comfortable to have a bit of bezels to hold onto when you’re gaming. Being a gaming oriented phone, the specifications of the phone are pretty much top of the line. The latest processor, 8GB of RAM to go along with it, and a huge battery.

That excessive amount of RAM is really just there to ensure that even when switching around a bunch of other apps, you can still continue where you left off in a game without missing a beat. In my time with the phone though, the battery life isn’t really that great. With some gaming thrown in, it lasted me till around evening with around 4 hours of screen on time. This is with the display running the highest refresh rate and resolution though. I was able to get it to last a day when I ran it at 90Hz and 1080p.

The phone also supports the latest Quick Charge 4.0+. I was able to get from 10% to 42% in just 30 minutes which isn’t really that quick, but the phone didn’t warm up much during charging. So that’s a consolation at least. The software has a few tweaks to enhance the gaming experience too, like game performance management, and a do not disturb mode. But for the most part, it’s a pretty barebone Android experience other than the use of Nova Launcher, and a few Razer design touches.

This is actually a really smart move as Razer doesn't have as much time and experience compared to say a company like OnePlus. So using a solid off the shelf solution allows them to quickly get their product out the door. It’s not an ideal solution, but it’s better than nothing at all. Better than nothing at all is also how I would describe the cameras on the Razer phone. You get a dual camera setup with a secondary telephoto camera.

Image quality is just about average looking. Images taken in good lighting looks decent for the most part, but dynamic range could be better. I think there is some sort of auto-HDR processing, but I’m not really that sure. Since most of the time I still have to manually turn it on to get the results I want. In low light, it’s a hit or miss.

Some shots can still look decent, but sometimes you get camera shake, or just a lot of noise and grain. But the worst part is really the camera app itself. It uses spot metering which I’m not a huge fan of, and changing the metering manually feels like I’m constantly fighting the camera app. Sometimes it will just refocus and reset the metering again while I’m adjusting it. The camera app is also really basic with practically no additional features at all, and it somehow still manages to be a little sluggish at times.

To round it all off, there isn’t any stabilisation for 4K recording, and the front facing camera is pretty underwhelming too. To me the main thing is really just the sub-par camera app, and the inconsistent performance. I’m sure software updates could improve the situation like it did for the Essential Phone, but for now, if care about the camera experience at all, you should probably look elsewhere. So yeah, the Razer phone is a pretty good phone for gaming and multimedia consumption. With the fast display refresh rate, awesome speakers, and top end specs.

Those happens to be what makes for a good smartphone experience too, because this is still a smartphone first and foremost. But these days, having a great camera is pretty much table stakes for a flagship phone too, and it’s something that the Razer phone is sorely lacking. It’s also lacking things like water resistance, and the outdoor visibility of the display could be a lot better. I know some of you would probably remind me of the headphone jack too, but I still don’t think it’s a deal breaker. Razer does include a pretty good sounding adapter in the box, or bluetooth works really well too.

In the end it all comes down to one question. How much of a Razer fan are you? Because at 1068 singapore dollar, it’s not exactly a cheap phone. Especially when you consider some of its shortcomings. I do like the phone, and have enjoyed using it for the most part. But unless you’re all in with Team Razer, I think there are better alternatives out there at more reasonable prices.

Thanks for watching my review of the Razer phone. If you liked it be sure to give me a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. Thanks, and see you guys on the next one.

Source : Alex Hong