Motorola RAZR V3xx

(Review) - Motorola knows how to get everything out of a successful product line, as it recently announced another RAZR, the RAZR V3xx. Honestly, hasn’t Motorola had enough? And personally, we think a lot of people are getting over the craze now. Motorola needs to let the RAZR product line die off into the oblivion instead of bringing it back over and again.

The RAZR V3xx is very similar to other RAZR phones, but there are a few striking differences that are worthy of note. Since we’ve already reviewed the RAZR series previously, we won’t go into a lot of depth. As such, we’ll limit ourselves to discussing only the new features of the V3xx.

From a physical standpoint, there aren’t a whole lot of changes that will wow you. Even though the V3xx is slightly bulkier, it’s still not too bad, and will fit snuggly in your pocket or purse. One special thing that Motorola has done is "upgraded" the internal display to support 262k colors. Unlike a few RAZR models, where Moto reverted back to 65k colors, this is a welcome surprise. Other than that, you’ll notice the minor quirks that plagued the other RAZR series phones, such as embedded keys, lack of speakerphone key and the like.

Then there are the features to talk about. Skipping on the standards, you now have Bluetooth connectivity available to you with HSDPA connection as well for super fast web browsing and audio/video streaming, thanks to Cingular/AT&T’s channels, which include NBC, ESPN, CNN, VH1 and The Weather Channel. Another channel is available for kids, and for an extra charge, you can get access to HBO as well. In addition to that, you have PC synchronization options, PC modem connectivity, instant messaging support (MSN, AOL and Yahoo! Messengers), and USB storage capability.

You can listen to music through Cingular/AT&T’s music service and work with the onboard music playback client. Motorola has interestingly integrated Opera’s mobile browser, which was a pleasure to use, especially thanks to the HSDPA connection. The audio and video streaming quality was generally better than what we had anticipated. There were very few times where the audio and video feeds were unsync’ed or pixilated (with video). But, on the whole, it was a digestible experience.

Unfortunately, though, the data settings were a pain, mainly the security ones. A lot of times, when third-party applications attempted to access certain data, we kept receiving pop-ups asking us for our permission. It’s a great feature, but Motorola needs to tone it down. There has to be a "Trust Always" functionality somewhere.

There’s a 1.3-megapixal camera, which is better than a few other models, but it could’ve been better, considering that there’s only a single lens this time around. There’s no internal lens for video conferencing or the like. The photo quality was adequate, nothing too spectacular.

For performance, we were impressed with the HSDPA option. It’s downright amazing with broadband-like speeds for web browsing, downloading, and streaming. The call quality was fairly good as well, though it was on the low side in noisy locations. That can be quite a concern if you tend to make a lot of phone calls during commute. The speakerphone wasn’t too admirable, as we had to hold it very close to our mouth for the other person to hear us adequately. Music playback, as mentioned above, was decent, though stereo speakers could’ve been better.

The total talk time is rated at three hours, which we confirmed, with the standby time at 12 days. The talk time is certainly on the low-end, and you will definitely notice it if you are planning on taking advantage of the multimedia features of the V3xx.

The V3xx is a respectable candidate, and an update to the slowly dying RAZR line. We would’ve expected Motorola to blowout the rest of the RAZR phones with the V3xx, but it clearly failed. If you are one of the few people who don’t have a RAZR, maybe this could be a fit for you, assuming you don’t tend to make too many important calls on your cell phone. For the price of $79 with a 2-year contract, it’s quite a steal.

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