Gadget review: Motorola walks the new RAZR’s edge

The RAZR is a very familiar and popular name among mobile-phone enthusiasts. With its iconic design featuring a flip form factor and a slim body, it became a household name, bringing the Motorola device to many a pocket. The Droid has been Motorola's more recent offering, which features the Android operating system and has seen some mixed success.

Motorola is looking to change that with the Droid RAZR — an Android-powered smartphone with the slim RAZR profile of old.

For starters, the phone is extremely slim, at only 7.1mm for the most part, with the thickness going slightly higher just behind the camera. The slim profile results in a lighter phone as well, with the device coming in at just 127g.

All black in the front, the device is familiar in terms of design, with a large 4.3-inch screen, front camera (1.3MP) and four touch-sensitive buttons at the bottom. The top has the audio jack, micro USB port and mini HDMI connectivity to hook it to your TV or monitor. On the side is a flap that you will need to pull to reveal the SIM and SD card slots. The back has a full HD camera with a smooth pattern finish.

The screen on the Droid RAZR is gorgeous. Featuring a resolution of 960x540 pixels, the display packs a lot of them in a 4.3-inch display, making the display extremely crisp. Rendering a display of that size requires power, and that comes with the 1.2GHz processor and 1GB RAM.

The camera is where the Droid RAZR really shines. Featuring an 8MP sensor that shoots video at Full HD (1,080p), this device certainly has one of the better cameras on the market. Picture quality during daylight is very impressive, but indoor and low light saw a bit of a quality drop, though still beyond acceptable. The video shot at full HD was of great quality — sharp, great colours and a little blur.

Of course, battery life is a concern, but the Droid RAZR features a 1,780mAh battery to keep it chugging through the day.

The Android version on the device is Gingerbread 2.3.5. A device of such specs deserves the newest operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich — ICS) and the hope is that the upgrade will come out sooner rather than later. The Motorola RAZR Droid (Dh2,599) does justice to both the RAZR and Droid names and brings Motorola back into the field.

Bhavishya Kanjhan is a digital marketing professional and an early adopter of all things digital. Follow his tweets on @bhavishya