Motorola RAZR V3 - an elite phone

We all have a dream. We eagerly aspire to make it come true, and once we achieve it we suddenly realize that either the goal was not high enough or we have surpassed ourselves in chase of the dream.

Can a nice thing be a dream? Perhaps, young maximalists would furiously deny that. Pragmatics will say that even a kid with pure thoughts may dream of a bike, and there is nothing shameful about that.

Once appeared before the eyes of mobile phone fanciers, Motorola RAZR V3 immediately proved a bright star. Many users have seen their dream for real. Even smatterers understand the public has seen a phone that will go down in the history of mobile communications. The device has all it takes - the fantastic design and functionality up to the mark. Many still can't forget the price of the mobile. Have you often come across cellular phones priced at $800? Try going deep into your memory to recall. Is that hard? Let's get round to exploring the wonderful cellular device which fascinated us immediately at first presentation.

Who is the phone aimed at - men or women? Motorola RAZR V3 is designed in a way to win the hearts of both halves of humankind. On the one hand, the device offers quite a classical design - grey color, smooth lines, but behind the strict style you can detect a well-hidden luxury, something aristocratic. This telephone is delicate, strict and slightly exquisite. I dare say, with all the austerity of design the device is able embellishing any hand. But you can't stick a "women's" or "men's" label Motorola RAZR V3. The handset will be as fine by the ear of a fine tiny girl or in the hands of a man who all his life has struggled obesity at a dining table. Therefore, we have got a sure masterpiece which can't leave cold anyone who is able seeing the beautiful in everyday life.

It would be curious to take a look at this cellular in a black housing. Actually, the designers restricted to the grey-color make. The external screen offers 96x80 pixels operating resolution and displays 4 thousand colors. The designers have placed it straight in the middle of the upper leaf. No recession or eminence. The screen and the panel are practically as a unit. Another compliment to the designers is that there are no useless "snags". The camera like a screen without "pedestals and eye-sockets" looks at us with the external display. Such a planting of the lens will have you be neat or buy a soft cover. But those who buy Motorola RAZR V3 should not dress their phones in "outfits" - a diamond like that has got to be in sight and accentuate the status of the owner.

On the cheeks of the upper leaf, there are three chrome-plated keys which interflow the housing but at the same time are easy to press. There are no other buttons on. The sockets for battery charger and data transmission is on the left side. No cap is provided for it. The socket is small, so you don't have to worry about it.

When closed, the device is 13.9 mm thick. That is not so little, but the phone looks slim. Why so? The thing is, the phone looks like a squab, it is 98 mm long and 53 mm wide. You see a phone with 2:1 sides, and if you are into designing you may remember that such a ration makes the thing look "wider" and completely removes the "depth" perception. In our view, the part was played very well.

The design of the open device is also beyond all praise. The upper leaf houses a huge display, the lower one is an unusual keyboard which we are talking about in what follows. Motorola RAZR V3 opens us by almost 180 degrees. When unfolded , the device becomes weightless. The lower step under the keyboard does a perfect job of a microphone. At that, we stop exploring the design - it's high time we went off to describing the phone's features. Will we still be having a festive mood that we got from the exterior presentation? We'll see.

Motorola RAZR V3 under the magnifying lens

For most users, the modern cellular phone starts with screens, polyphony and camera, with all the remaining brought to the background. What can be said about the screens? The external screen is a STN panel of 4 thousand colors and 96x80 pixels resolutions. Standard, simple and neat. The display brings in all the best of the STN family in itself. The picture reads well in bright light and even under lateral look no inconvenience issues were found, although at the extreme angles some shortcomings of the STN technology come up. The inner display is 34.8 x 43.5 mm, with the thin outline frame making it look bigger. The user gets a panel of 176 x 220 pixels resolution. That is a TFT screen of 262 thousand tints. The picture is complemented by support of the Graphic Accelerator which won't leave you bored while using applications with quick-changing images. e.g. games. The image on the inner display is peerless - we've had only a few phones with such a bright and rich picture in our test lab. We can safely give it a 10/10 mark.

The polyphonic tunes proved another surprise to us. Running ahead, note that the phone hasn't proved a disappointment to us in any part. It offers 24-tone 124-instrument 22 kHz polyphonic tunes. What to say about that? Fantastic! The speaker produces a clear sound, no rattling or crunching even at the top volume. Music just flows out of the device and fills in the whole space around. You simply can't miss a call. Wherever you are - on a transport or in a noise office - the polyphonic magic of Motorola RAZR V3 will not distract but please you taking away to the world of beauty. There are 32 tunes preset. It is nice to realize the developer has spent time to make a good collection of compositions. If you wish to download your own melody - it can't be easier, all is simple and standard. For music gourmands, there is an integrated editor (sequencer) of melodies: MotoMixer. The developer recommends loading MP3 melodies of no more than 100K in size into the phone (the recommended Bit Rate and Sampling Frequency for MP3: 64 Kbps/44.1 KHz or 40 Kbps/24 KHz, or 32 Kbps/16 KHz).

Quivering, we switched on the vibro call. Unfortunately. many developers are into powerful vibro call functions, so it turn out to be too loud. That is why we were glad to experience another masterpiece by Motorola engineers. Although powerful enough, the vibro is quiet and produces no sound. Actually, few can feel the phone in the jacket pocket. Anyway, it's not going to be another rock breaker. Another nice point - the vibro call offers 6 operating modes.

The menu is practically standard for Motorola phones. You can customize it to look the way you like. The navigation is done via a joystick. All is convenient, so we are not spending your precious time for describing the menu items.

SMS fanciers are in for a surprise. The phone supports partitioning and consolidation of SMS (SAR) and text formats USASCII, UTF-8 (Unicode), UTF-16 with Explicit Byte Order Mark. The fast-time text entry (iTAP method) makes messaging a simple game. Of course, EMS and MMS of version 5.0 are supported. All the data is stored in the embedded memory of 5.5 MB capacity.

The phone-book is strict and very convenient. It can be linked to the organizer which in its turn is integrated into the phone but doesn't bring you joy. I believe the company who creates an entirely new organizer is in for a big success. All the existing designs are absolutely inconvenient and require too much user attention. The take more time rather than help saving it.

The digital camera of Motorola RAZR V3 is a handy and integral complement to the phone. There is a special menu item that covers multimedia features. First, a few words on the formats supported by the Motorola RAZR V3 system. The manufacturer has integrated a processor that is able understanding WBMP, GIF87/89A, JPEG, and PNG image files; MIDI, SP-MIDI, WAV, MP3, AMR, and iMelody audio files; MPEG4 + AMR, and H.263 + AMR (for download only) video files.

Motorola RAZR V3 offers a digital camera with a sensor 0.3 MP. It supports three resolutions: high 640x480 (VGA), middle 320x240 (QVGA) and low 160x120 (QQVGA). The camera is able taking pictures and shooting video reels. Do you like video reels made with a phone? On the one hand, that is funny of course. On the other hand, how long can we shoot poor-quality video any more? The potential buyer for Motorola RAZR V3 is a person of exquisite tastes. Video shot with the telephone is in another plane of his/her life. The optical efficiency of the camera is 1:2.6. The focal distance is 100 mm. The focusing is automatic and operates within 30 cm to infinity. It is nice that the exposure can be set manually, but if you don't want to, here you are – put a check-mark in the "Auto" position. The 4x digital zoom is almost of no demand, since the sensor lacks operating elements. The field of vision angle is 55. The viewfinder runs in the 176 x 144 resolution (landscape mode). That is quite enough for shooting, and the picture moves without any twitching even if the camera is quickly switched between objects. The 5 illumination modes (sun, clouds, night, premises (incandescent lamp) and in the premises (luminous tube)) help making good pictures. The pictures are saved as JPEG, BMP, GIF, and EXIF files. There is one thing to add. The photosensitivity ( ISO units) is 50. 500 K of memory is allocated for each picture. It is equivalent to 100 QQVGA pictures. The satisfaction by the picture-taking is guaranteed.

Motorola RAZR V3 usability

Use of Motorola RAZR V3 brings only joy. At that we could have placed a big dot. But I feel you are bursting with curiosity. So we are to satisfy it.

The phone has an all-metal keyboard. It looks quite unusual: all the plate is cut through with tiny slits. It's hard to say if they are functional or decorative, but they are simple nice to touch. Feeling a mixture of tremor and an anticipated disappointment, we started pressing them. That's a miracle! Very handy. Using a keyboard of this type proved simply fantastic. The key presses are elastic and light. Dialing each digit is a separate motion, but numbers are generated fast and offhandedly. No time take for getting used to. Surprisingly, the side of your finger does not matter at all. The joystick may be more handy to manipulate with a nail, but that is a matter of habit. The soft illumination of the keyboard due to its recession is visible even in the daylight. Very nice and stylish. Although not customary, the keyboard is quite comfortable.

Navigation around the phone takes no effort. All the manipulations are intuitive.

Extra notes on using Motorola RAZR V3

The phone demonstrates consistent reception even in areas where other phones don't work. That is a sign of a very thorough attitude of the developers towards work at the transmitter. Actually, it would be naive to assume that a phone of such a price could be a nuisance to the owner. Motorola RAZR V3 does its major job - communication - faultlessly.

The device is equipped with a standard Li-Ion battery of 750 mA*hr capacity. It takes 2 hours for a complete charging (with the nominal charger). The developer has announced 6.5 hours of operation in the continuous conversation mode and 250 hours in the standby mode. In fact, one charge of the battery is enough for 4-5 days with 15-20 minutes daily conversation. The charging process can be accelerated with a digital camera and games.
The phone comes bundled with the following items: the phone, a 750 mA*ht Li-Ion battery, a 220V charger, a user's manual, a guarantee coupon, a headset, a strap, a CD of 100 MB software, all put into a luxurious package.

Performance

In our test lab, we decided to test cellular phones with a popular benchmark. We chose Jbenchmark for that. This application does a fair job of loading the embedded operating systems of modern mobile phones. Based on the results produced, you can make a conclusion as to which games will run successfully on the phone or which applications make sense in loading into the phone.

At Jbenchmark2, Motorola RAZR V3 showed 52 score points. That's a middle-level performance. For details of the test results for other phones, read http://www.jbenchmark.com. Further on, we'll be keeping a database of results which could help you in choosing a mobile phone.

Final words

Motorola RAZR V3 has left the brightest impression. No doubt, it is the most spectacular phone to date. Not only will owner get a joy of using it, but will accentuate own status. The phone offers a very convenient design which makes it amenable for carrying it anywhere around - from jeans pocket to a vanity case. The case material is so durable that you may not worry about the exterior for many years to come. Most important is that Motorola RAZR V3 can't be a phone for a time, its style is at least a lifetime style. If you are ready for luxury, don't stop yourselves.