Digital Trends

Motorola RAZR V3c

December 20th, 2005 | by Stewart Wolpin

Performance

Like a supermodel, the RAZR really doesn't have to do much but look good. But the V3c does improve on the original in one way -- video viewing. Cell phones are plagued by portrait-oriented view screens, which is the wrong shape for any video. But Verizon lets you blow the video up and view it in landscape mode by turning the phone horizontally, resulting in a screen nearly as large as the Video iPod.

Unfortunately, the speaker placement at the bottom of the phone actually works against the RAZR's widescreen video capabilities. Music and especially words emanate from so far away from the screen (around five inches) that you lose the perception of synchronized sound and vision. Motorola's speech recognition for voice dialing works as advertised, but we found that simply scrolling through the contact list far easier.

All of Verizon's data and V CAST clips load quickly, usually in less than 15 seconds. On screen text, even the smallest fonts, is crisp and easily readable. Colors are bright and sharp and video and images offer plenty of contrast. But as you enlarge images or video you'll notice more color splotches and pixelization.

Verizon's signal quality has always been exemplary, and the RAZR delivers both a clean signal with very few dropouts and near landline quality sound. Full duplex (meaning both you and your co-conversationalist can talk over each other) speakerphone quality also is above average, and improves once you drop the flap down.

Image and camcorder quality is average, meaning shots are as grainy and blurry as any other cell phone camera expect in bright sunlight and especially since there's no flash to provide even a hint of help for indoor shots. Addressing, attaching and sending images via picture messaging or email is a bit less unnecessarily convoluted compared to other phones, which means you'll likely mess up only once or twice per transmission rather than be completely frustrated.

Both the LCD screen and the backlighting eat up battery power, rated at 3 hours of talk and 200 hours of standby. To achieve these figures, the LCD screen and dial pad backlighting dim relatively quickly. You can turn the power saving feature off, however, keeping the screen and dial pad bright. You'll just have to remember to recharge every night.