Motorola's RAZR series of super-slim clamshell handsets dominated the mobile phone market for years - especially in the US - with around 200 million handsets sold in total. The company today rebooted the brand in Europe with the launch of the all-new Motorola RAZR.
Despite the name, it's hardly a surprise that the clamshell design has been retired - after all who needs keys these days? Instead Motorola has concentrated on the super-slim element of the original, producing a phone that's an astounding 7.2mm thick, which should make it the thinnest smartphone ever.
There's just one snag, the RAZR isn't actually that slim from head-to-tail, and the very top edge of the phone mushrooms outwards. It's very tastefully done, and gives you something to hold onto when fishing it out of your pocket, or to stop it slipping out of your hand. We didn't have a ruler to hand but we'd estimate it to be about 10mm.
Whether or not you think that bulge disqualifies the RAZR from the 'thinnest handset' title, it's certainly an incredibly compact device. It measures just 131x69x7.1mm and weighs just 116g - that’s 11g more than the Samsung Galaxy S2, although we couldn’t notice the difference. One thing that both phones share is a 4.3in Super AMOLED display with a quarter-HD 960x540 resolution. Motorola couldn’t have chosen better in this regard, as the Samsung-made display is easily our favourite on any handset – we’d take AMOLED’s superior contrast and vibrant colours over the iPhone 4S’s extra resolution.
The handset we played with was a pre-production model, but we were assured it was essentially identical to the final thing. It feels very well made, oozing class and build quality. Despite its thinness, there’s barely any flex in the handset, thanks to a stainless steel core. The back plate is formed of laser-cut Kevlar fibres, which give it a carbon-fibre style appearance as well as excellent scratch resistantance. The front is covered by the now-common Gorilla Glass to make it equally tough.
The whole phone, both exterior and interior is covered with a nano-coating that resists water, making the handset splash-proof. Motorola didn’t demonstrate using one of its pre-production models, but did demo a tissue covered in the same coating. Water poured onto that rolled off in globules leaving the tissue completely dry.
On the back of the phone is an eight-megapixel camera, which can also shoot 1080p video. We took a couple of test shots, but weren’t overly impressed with the results. Lighting was low in the testing area, so we won’t pass judgement yet, but it could be a weak spot in what looks like an impressive handset.
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