Razer Phone review By TechRadar

Hey guys you're watching hair crater I'm Baler, and this is razors first foray into the smartphone world. It's a gaming phone front, firing speakers loads of power under the hood, but is it any good? Well, looking at the specs and price it is. It costs around six hundred, ninety-nine pounds, six hundred and ninety-nine dollars or eight hundred and ninety Australian dollars, but you can actually even pick it up on three here in the UK for as little as six hundred and five pounds, six hundred and five pounds for a phone with the snapdragon 835 processors and eight gigabytes of RAM. Yes, please, the design is very, very blocky. It's got squared off corners. It's got a lot of bezels up top and bottom going through the stereo speakers.

Book ending the screen flat sides mean that it's pretty easy to hold and that's especially true when holding it in Landscaping gaming on it, but you might find when you're holding it like a smartphone. The corners dig into your hands a little around the back. You've got a dual camera and a very prominent Racer logo. This thing's made of aluminum. When you pick it up for the first time, it's cold, it's stark, it's almost brutality in its look and feel, and that will definitely attract Racer fans, but it might not be suited to everybody as far as ports go or the base.

You've got a USB, type-c right hand, sides a power button and fingerprint scanner combination. Now the speakers are bookend, the screen have micro, drilled holes in them and, while that looks quite cool, it does attract dirt and dust. So you'll want to keep it clean if possible. There's no IP rating here either. So you'll probably want to keep the razor phone away from dunks and splashes.

When it comes to the screen, it takes center stage, 120 Hertz refresh rate, that's a first for smartphones. We've seen it on iPads, but the razor introduces it to the smartphone world, and it looks really, really good when you're scrolling through your menus, especially scrolling up Twitter everything just looks: buttery smooth only for games currently support this. So, with gaming we weren't really able to put it through its paces too much, but at least States they use is improved, but the screen isn't perfect by any means. It isn't quite as bright as some competitors out there and the fact it's an IPS TO display, as opposed to an OLED display, means that it hasn't got the depth that hasn't got the punch and pop and the saturation that other phones like the Samsung Galaxy, Note, 8 and iPhone 10. Have the razor phone has two rare cameras, both with 12 megapixels and one front camera now on paper, they're, pretty good in the sense that they've got a wide open, aperture, and you've got a second two times, zoom camera.

But the reality is it's not really the best smartphone camera around by a long stretch, and that's really unfortunate because through testing we found that a lot of that comes down to the software. Now razor has officially said that the software for the camera will improve, but there aren't that many shooting modes for it and out of the box picture quality, isn't great play about with it. Install a third party camera app, and you can eat a little more specifically I'm talking about the Google Pixel camera APK, that's been floating around the web, but I'm gonna talk about the stock camera experience. For starters, it can take a little of time for the camera application to open which may make you miss your moment. Also, dynamic range isn't too good and focus can take a little of creeping once.

It does take a picture, though, provided your hands held still in good lighting. It can get a good amount of detail in there and, if you do play about with it, you can probably eke out something possible but install the third-party app like I, said, simply point and shoot, and you can get a really, really good picture, suggesting that the hardware is more than capable it just can't do it being better optimized by Racer. Now, talking about that second camera or the two times zoom, it feels, while, frankly speaking a bit pointless the reason being, if you just take a picture with a primary camera and crop into it, you actually pull more detail than if you take a picture with the two times assume camera. As a result, I would have much rather the next bit the guys behind the hardware and indeed Racer, get the money that they've plumbed into both cameras and make one perfect camera like the Google, pixel, 2 and pixel to excel. The phone can also shoot up to 4k video and, despite there being no optical image stabilization.

The electric image stabilization does a decent job. It's not going to be mind-blowing, but it holds things relatively still and the microphones record sounds pretty well to the front. Selfie cameras also decent for portraits neither front nor rear camera 4G options like background, blurring and stuff like that. But when you want to take a picture of yourself with the front camera, it's not too sharp. So you don't see every single pore, but at the same time it still manages to get a good amount of detail, so I'd say I'm, more impressed Whitley by the front camera compared to other phones on the market than the camera around at the back.

The user interface is freely malleable. You've got Android 7 under the hood, so not the newest version by a long stretch would have loved Android 8, but razor said that it was all down to optimizing the 120 Hertz refresh rate. That is why it launched with Android 7. Still, you do get Nova Launcher run here, and that gives you a lot of flexibility, and it raises loaded up their own theme store. So you can install custom themes specific to games available for the device, so that will be down the line like this Taken theme.

I've got here. What's also noteworthy is at the moment at least. All the themes are free, Nova launches really malleable, so you can change your home screen grid sizes. You can add gesture support and things like that, and you've also obviously got all the applications available through the Google Play Store. Multimedia is also perfect on here.

The front speakers are really loud tuned by Dolby thanks accredited they just probably the best smartphone speakers that I've ever tried and trust me I've used a lot of smartphones. In addition, being Android, you've got support for all the file formats. You'll want to throw on here too, so the speakers can also double up, not just when showcasing YouTube clips and videos, but also as a music player, not gonna, replace a Bluetooth speaker don't get me wrong, but for the odd track here and there in a hotel room when you've forgotten your speaker at home, it's gonna more than it fit the bill. On top of that, the screen is nice and sharp. So while it isn't the brightest, it is in the punchiest.

If you're reading on here text will look super, super crisp. The 64 gigabytes of storage is standard, which is fair, but you can expand that by up to 2 terabytes by micro, SD card, no card storage options out of the box, but it does ship with Google photos, which obviously means you can upload your photos at a max resolution of 5 megapixels for free and have them backed up, even if not full res. Now. The last thing when it comes to multimedia on this device is the lack of 3.5 ml headphone jack and that might annoy some people, but it's great that razors shipped their phone with a 24 bit DAC Laden dongle. Now that was a mouthful, but this is really, really cool.

It makes the sound when you listen to your music that bit louder and that bit better quality than other devices. We listen to it against the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, for example, and that extra volume and roundness came through not just in pop music, with a fair bit of bass, but even with guitar strumming, songs, ? and that was verified by our audio expert, John Porter, so yeah razors, 24-bit dongle does indeed make a difference and, as a result, this is a very, very competent multimedia device with a really solid UI. Unsurprisingly, the razor phone is the best gaming phone around when it comes to her go Namath Kat, the very least flat top and bottom mean when you're holding this in landscape. It feels really comfortable the front speakers' anion impossible to cover up, and you have stacks of power under the hood. The Snapdragon 835, with 8 gigabytes of RAM benchmarks like a champ and 2t over a hundred and eighteen thousand and Geek bench, was over 6700 with the multi-core score.

So the games out of the box are only four, and they're the four that take advantage of the hundred and twenty Hertz refresh rate. There will be more down the line: you're going to get Taken, you're going to get Final, Fantasy, 15, Pocket Edition and a few others would have really liked to have seen more and specifically would have loved to have seen razor centralize these games into a razor store or something like that. The theme stores nice but would have. Rather it just is a general razor store with themes and optimized games. That said, even if the third-party games don't use that hundred and twenty Hertz technology, they do still look a bit smoother.

Why? Because it's all been tuned, have a variable refresh rate so that it can optimize games that make them look better than they're actually intended to. It does pay off when you're playing on this thing, I played injustice 2 on this a lot and Marvel huge bite. A little and I didn't find the AI in Marvel. Future fight slowed things down as much as on other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 for, and I found that I really enjoyed injustice to the frames dropped was so, so few and far between and that's a game. That's pretty choppy on.

Most phones I play on so with excellent gaming credentials, you're also on excellent battery life right and, unfortunately, in spite of having a whopping 4000 Williams. Under the hood of this thing, whether it's 120 Hertz for a fresh ray or just the fact. It's not an OLED display, and it's an exile, I P s, display it isn't as good as I wanted it to be the comparable size, mate, 10 Pro lasted two days. This you'll be lucky if you're gaming on it to get the full day, if you're using it regularly, then a full day's super realistic. But this is a racer phone, guys, I want a game or day and potentially perhaps the juice left over for some nighttime gaming as well and unfortunately, I didn't so the razor phone.

In a nutshell, the design. It makes a statement, it's old, its angular and I, for one, liked it, but it definitely won't be for everyone, fingerprint scanner on the sides, nice and responsive, and it fails and looks very, very solid. The screen is good. It isn't the best out there when it comes to punchlines when it comes to brightness, but that 120 Hertz refresh rate is noticeable from browsing the UI right through to those only for admittedly optimized games, but I really liked it. It felt a little special where razor could have maybe done a little.

More was optimizing. The app experience around that 120 Hertz refresh rate to make it all feel a little more cohesive, but you do get some razor tweaks in addition to the Nova Launcher Latin, Android, 7, you've also got a theme, saw that lets you customize your themes readily on the top of that the front speakers are super, super loud. The screen is very sharp and despite there being no headphone jack, you do have a 24 bit DAC dongle. That makes some music from this thing sound a very, very good indeed. As for the cameras, definitely not best-in-class the hardware's there and you can get some decent pictures, but in order to do so, you'll probably be best off installing a third-party camera launcher takes good videos, though, and the selfie camera is more than up to the task.

Internal storage, 64 gigabytes is plenty, and you can supplement it with a two terabyte SD card and with a four thousand William battery under the hood, it should last a full day, but unfortunately, if you're a heavy gamer, it will probably fall short about 120 Hertz, refresh rate screen takes its toll on battery. Ultimately, it's a really, really solid, first attempt from razor and second attempt from next bit. But the final point to consider is the 605 pounds on three pay-as-you-go, and that includes ten pounds top-up. It is excellent value for money for the specs that you're getting here. If you're a gamer I could probably recommend it in a heartbeat.

But if you're not, you may want to look around to read all the words associated with this review check out, John's, full written review. Tech radar. Com hope you enjoyed this video thanks for watching you.

Source : TechRadar