Motorola Razr HD review

It's been a while since Motorola has been a cool name to drop in smartphone-centric circles. It's a shame, since following an ill-advised obsession with the ultra-slim RAZR brand which led to a variety of good-looking but so-so handsets, the US firm has recently been serving up some pretty tasty dishes, and the the Razr HD is probably the best so far.

It's on sale now for around £400. 

Design
Like previous Razrs, the HD is slim, at just a smidgeon over 8mm, but it still takes up a hefty amount of pocket space at 132x68mm and at a weighty 146g it feels like a hefty slab of tech. All of the front is covered by a single sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass surrounded by the casing rim which sits slightly proud to help protect it against accidental scratches if you happen to set it down face first. A cover on the side ejects to permit insertion of your microSIM and microSD cards (it has 16GB on board, but you can add cards up to 32GB). Charging and syncing is by the usual microUSB port and there's a micro HDMI slot too for mirroring the Razr HD's display on your TV screen.

The backplate fixed to the aluminium casing is made of tough DuPont Kevlar, which has the feel of rubberised plastic, and incorporates a distinctive chevron pattern that appears to move in the light -- we rather liked it. The casing apparently features "splash guard protection", though with no seals on the various orifices it's hard to see just how effective this is. It's certainly not in the same league as some of Sony's recent handsets like the Xperia Z, which can withstand being totally submersed in water.

Features
The 4.7-inch Super Amoled touchscreen display offers a fair-enough HD resolution of 1,280x720 pixels, which equates to around 312 pixels-per-inch (ppi) -- certainly in the same ball park as the iPhone 5's 326ppi but a step down from the recent HTC One's stupendous 468ppi. Even so, it looks beautifully sharp and colours are deliciously vibrant whether you're checking out photos online or viewing HD video. Some might prefer a slightly less OTT display, but you can always turn the brightness down a bit to give it a more "natural" look (and save the battery while you're at it).

It's running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, so just slightly behind the very latest 4.2 version, though Motorola reckons an update's on the way. The company's given the Android UI a light skim with some slightly different icons and a few original widgets, including its circle icons, which show time, weather and battery life. Flicking each circle up or down gives you additional info too, like different cities for the weather, or different clock displays. It's a nice idea -- it would be good to see some more circle widgets in future.

There are a few other tricks too, such as swiping to the right from the homepage to bring up a list of quick settings, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and mobile data so you can make some on-the-fly adjustments. There's also Motorola's SmartActions app which allows you to programme different actions, such as cutting back on background apps when your battery's low, or enabling you to set up particular functions in different locations -- like putting your phone on silent when you're at work, or enabling GPS and Bluetooth when you get in the car. You can switch your SmartActions on manually, or programme them to come on depending on where you are, what time it is, the status of your battery or other conditions.

Performance
The 1.5GHz dual-core processor is backed by a single 1GB RAM, which until recently would have looked very good, but in these days of quad-core engines backed by 2GB (take a bow, HTC One, Galaxy S4) is now starting to look just a little bit stingy. This isn't a front-rank powerhouse, and the price probably reflects that, but it does make a decent fist of fast shifting between apps and displaying data-heavy web pages. It delivered an AnTuTu performance benchmark rating of 7,690 which compares well with other dual-core handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini or the Sony Xperia T.

This puts it in the mid ranks rather than the real top-enders like the iPhone 5, HTC One or the soon-come Samsung Galaxy S4. Still, it has 4G capability if you're in an area that can make use of it, plus NFC for wireless payments.

The eight-megapixel camera comes with autofocus and an LED flash -- pretty much standard for this price point in other words. Photo modes include multi-shot (up to six), HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging which helps to balance the light and dark areas of a picture and panorama, which lets you stitch together a series of pics to form a 180-degree image.

Picture quality is decent though not exceptional, lacking a little in detail but with good colour balance that looks more accurate when you view your pics somewhere other than the Razr HD's Super Amoled screen. Video recording holds up pretty well though, and it will capture scenes in 1080p HD.

There's a sizeable 2,530mAh battery on board, bigger even that the mammoth 2,300mAh power pack on the new HTC One, and despite the power demanded by the processor, it seemed to do a pretty good job, managing comfortably more than a day of heavy use.

Conclusion
The Motorola name may not have the hip cache of Apple, Samsung or even Sony, but on the evidence of the Razr HD the US company is perfectly capable of producing a very fine Android smartphone. And we can expect more once the effects of Google's buyout of the company begin to take effect, perhaps later this year.

Despite its thinness, the Razr HD will seem on the chunky side to some, and though it has a decent spec, there's not a lot to help it stand out from the tide of mid to high-end Android handsets out there. It might be the best Razr yet, but that's not necessarily enough to guarantee success.