Motorola RAZR - A Good All-round Cellphone

The RAZR first appeared in 2004 and since then it has gone through a lot of changes, some good, some bad. The RAZR is a cellphone produced by Motorola as a competitor to other slimline phones that were coming onto the market around that time. The sleek design of the RAZR and it's extremely light weight made it a smash success. As of July 2006, Motorola had shipped 50 million units - making the RAZR the most popular cellphone worldwide.

The RAZR has a 176x220 pixel screen capable of 265,000 different colors, which means it can display photographs at good quality. It comes with a 1.23 mega pixel camera that includes a 8x digital zoom feature. It has on-board 30Mb of phone memory, of which 7Mb is available to the user. This means you can load custom ring tones, music tracks, backgrounds, or photographs and use them with the phone out of the box. The RAZR also has an expandable memory slot for a memory type originally called Transflash but which has been rechristened to MicroSD. This allows for expandable memory up to 2GB for the phone.

RAZRs originally came out as just the RAZR V3. Then Motorola began to release different models, ranging from the V3c through the latest model, the V3xx. Each model improved upon the original RAZR in many ways, including improved keyboard layout and control, a larger camera (Original RAZRs had only a 330Kb camera)

The RAZRs are GSM Quad Band compliant, with certain models being G3 while the majority are G2. Overall, the phone coverage always depends on the carrier. Not all carriers support G3, while the larger majority all support G2 in areas the RAZR is sold.

A good thing is the Motorola Tools software package for Windows and Mac that can be purchased from Motorola directly, or supplied with the phone by some carriers. This advanced tool set allows you to import an mp3 song and crop it down to becoming a ring tune. Then upload it to the phone via bluetooth or the usb interface. Once in the phone, you can then select the ring tune and have a fully customized set of sounds for your unique phone experience.

The Motorola Tools also allow you to import and photo and rescale it to the RAZRs two screens, inside and outside. This allows for really advanced customization of the look and feel of this already stylish phone.

With the addition of a microSD memory card, the RAZR can be a very good mp3 player, and is small enough to just have in a pocket and listen to tunes via corded ear buds or cordless bluetooth headset.

Motorola has also released variations on the RAZR, the most well-known being the KRZR. The KRZR is a thinner but longer version of the RAZR that includes a larger (2Mb) camera, better sound controls and overall, a different style of phone while retaining the basic functionality of the RAZR.

Having used a RAZR now for 4 months, I must say it is definitely one of the better phones out there, hands down. It is easy to use and feels good in the hand, not bulky or heavy. The phone signal is always clear and the battery gives a good long lifetime for talk and for standby. Music playback is also well supported. We loaded it up with ring tunes and then tossed some mp3 tracks on there and listened with headphones. Sound was always clear and well defined with little or no distortion apparent.

Definitely a Thumbs Up to Motorola for coming out with this cellphone - it's a great product and worth the higher than average price that it is priced at.