The Motorola Razr V3 cell phone is both very distinctive and also very attractive.
Combining its classy and stylish appearance with quadband GSM service, super-strength Bluetooth, color displays on both sides of the flip, long battery life, and a camera, it seems to have everything anyone would want..
Capabilities and Specifications:
The manual which comes with the phone is surprisingly silent about the phone’s technical specifications, and some of the other reviews on the Internet quote incorrect data. I’m basing my facts and figures on the material on Motorola’s own site, except where it too is wrong.
The V3 measures 3.5″ x 2.1″ x 0.55″ when folded closed and weighs 3.4 ounces. This makes it moderately - but not very - compact in terms of length and breadth; its most notable feature being how thin it is.
The phone came with four different manuals - a warranty brochure, a quick start guide, a service guide, and the main user manual. Interestingly the main user manual was very much shorter than the V600 manual - a mere 104 pages compared to 268 for the V600.
The V3 can accept a wide range of different types of downloadable ringtones, and has 24 voice polyphony to give great sound. It also has some pre-loaded games and more games can be downloaded to the phone, too, supporting the J2ME standard.
The Razr takes about the same 22 seconds to power on as does the V600. Unlike most phones, you don’t need to push and hold the power on button for a second or two to turn the phone on - the slightest tap will turn the phone on.
Its internal phone book can hold up to 1000 names and phone numbers, although the SIM is limited to ‘only’ 250 contacts on the SIM. Motorola’s phone book/contact manager is more clunky and less elegant than most other phone manufacturers - Motorola has tried to keep more compatibility with the very limited features that the SIM itself supports; this is helpful when copying numbers to or from the SIM, but not so helpful if you’re trying to set up a sophisticated contact management system with multiple phone numbers for each person in your phone book.
The Razr looks great. The shell is made from tough aircraft-grade aluminum, which is supposedly the reason for its 97g lightness. When closed, the phone is only 1.4 cm thick, which is really slim. At a height of 9.8 cm and a width of 5.3 cm wide, which doesn’t really come across as small, but nevertheless it fits fine into your jeans pocket. When you hold it in your hand, however, it doesn’t feel most compact. When open, the phone seems huge at a whopping 17 cm tall. It’s something you have to see to believe!
It may be aircraft-grade aluminum, but that didn’t prevent casual chipping as you can probably see from the pictures - look towards the bottom right corner and the lower left side of the phone…
The keypad is supposedly chemically etched and nickel plated. The keys are not cut buttons like most phones, but look like a feather touch key panel. But it only looks like that because the keys have to be pressed just like buttons when they are to be used. The keys are wide enough and placed at proportionate distances from each other. All the keys are perfectly usable and don’t require any nail-typing. This is one of the most comfortable keypads I’ve used. The backlight also looks fabulous at night.
Battery Life and Related Issues:
Reviews commonly seem to quote battery life of as much as 200 hours of standby time or three hours of talk time. Another source (Amazon) claims 6.67 hours of talk time or 250 hours of standby time. Motorola itself says Talk Time: Up to 200 to 430 minutes Standby Time: Up to 180 to 290 hours Standard Battery: 680 mAh Li-ion Motorola’s reference to a 680-mAh battery is rather surprising. Although I’d assumed that Motorola’s own website would be the best source of official data, the fact is I have never seen a 680 mAh battery. Out of perhaps 50 V3s that I’ve inspected, all have had a 710-mAh battery. Some other reviewers have even referred to a 750-mAh battery, but I’ve never seen one of those, either.
Limitations:
The phone is very attractive, and in some respects (eg quad-band and color) full featured. So what are the limitations that you might encounter and be frustrated by.
It has no removable memory card. It has just over 5MB of internal memory that is shared between the phone book, ring tunes, pictures and video clips, and downloaded files and programs. This can quickly fill to overflowing. In contrast, I have a removable 128MB memory card in my ‘old’ Nokia 3650 (released in mid 2003) so it never runs out of capacity.
A basic fixed focus low resolution camera - 0.3 Megapixels, inadequate these days when other cameras offer 1 MP and some offer 2MP.No video recording
A closed proprietary operating system (albeit with a Java overlay) that limits the range of third party applications that can be added to the phone.
Reasonably large in terms of length and breadth, although definitely very thin Basic and clutzy phone book/contact manager Proprietary iTap rather than industry standard T9 text entry meaning you have to learn a whole new interface for efficient text messaging
No IR port and data connectivity is usually sold as an extra rather than as an included feature No high speed data capability such as EDGE Can’t add an external antenna How best to buy a Motorola Razr V3
Possibly-related Articles: (auto-generated)
