We take a look at how the mega battery of the Motorola RAZR MAXX fairs up
The Motorola RAZR MAXX has one feature that stands out above all others, and it is a feature that not many potential users will consider as particularly important. The 3,300mAh battery is purported to offer 17.6 hours of talk time and 380 hours of standby which in comparison to other high end Android phones is very impressive.
Of course, it is easy to quote numbers and not always easy to offer real-world usage that lives up to the expectations, but in this case it seems to be a reasonable claim from Motorola. I received the phone on a Thursday and have given it some tasks to perform. I am writing this on the following Monday and have over 70% battery left. I admit that I have not pushed the phone too hard, but the numbers are still impressive compared to other phones I have used. Compared to the standard RAZR, you pay for this extra battery life with an extra 19 grams of weight and 1.8mm of depth. It really is a minimal change in terms of numbers and this phone is neither heavy nor thick so the battery advantage will be worth it for most users.
Despite the minimal depth of 8.9mm and relatively light 145 gram weight, the phone does feel quite big. It is hard to explain, but the original RAZR felt very, very slim and like a true skinny slam of technology, but the MAXX feels somewhat bulky in comparison. Let me confuse matters further by saying that it is technically not bulky at all in dimensions. It is the design that make it look and feel so. There is an industrial feel to the form and the dark chrome surrounding the screen and back come together to make a design that feels somewhat ‘put together’. The square edges are then covered with covered plating and the back adds yet another dimension to the exterior. It is confusing to look at and confusing to understand why it is designed this way because it is in marked contrast to the non-MAXXed RAZR. In the hand it also feels slightly unwieldy and not tactile enough to sit comfortably. Again, the size is similar to many other Android smartphones, but the exact form is not as hand-friendly as it should be.
The aesthetics are either important to you or not and depending on how seriously you take these things will determine how deeply you look at this phone. Get past the looks and it is a well specified unit up to a point. 1.2GHz dual-core and 8GB of internal memory are not ground breaking in 2012 and at £430 it would be reasonable to expect a little more. The camera is specified well and works amazingly for indoor shots where there is no light available. Some images I took with the flash were fantastic, but I then ironically struggled with outdoor shots and found that the focus was often out of sync. It would focus perfectly and then fall away just as I took a picture which made it tricky to use time and time again.
This phone is effectively a RAZR with a bigger battery because every other specification is the same. The RAZR is £46 cheaper and offers everything this phone does, but in a form that makes you wonder how Motorola managed to cram so much in to a small space. The MAXX doesn’t offer that sensation, but of course offers stunning battery performance.
I am left in two minds about the RAZR MAXX. The original RAZR stunned me when I tested it and I felt at home using it very quickly and so the same should be true of the MAXX. The problem is that the tiny addition of 2mm takes away the charm of the original even if it does offer the kind of battery life I have dreamed of from many other phones. It is still, however, an excellent Android smartphone which has the potential to be the ultimate workhorse, but I feel it should either be slightly cheaper or have some beefed up specifications to truly set it apart from the original.
About Shaun McGill