Motorola Droid Razr HD — The Razr’s back, and it’s better than ever

Those wondering the effect Google would have on buying Moto? Apparently, it’s to make the phones much better.

While we had some reservations about the first Moto Droid Razr, the Razr HD takes all those problems and removes them to make a much slicker and well-rounded smartphone.

In the hand you’ll instantly see a lot of similarities between this and the original, with the larger build and Kevlar back taking centre stage.

But then you switch on the display, and you’ll see why this is an upgrade. It’s bigger, packs a 720p display, and doesn’t come with more bezel than an introverted iPad.

That 4.7-inch screen has been stretched to offer so much more real estate for your eyes, and the Super AMOLED HD screen really pops the second you fire it up. We were impressed from the outset, and it managed to get better.

In the hand, it’s certainly not a smaller phone – it’s something that you’ll trade off for the larger media and web experience, and in doing so will have to get used to jiggling it about in the palm to accurately hit all the buttons.

However the metallic casing and keys really feel nice, and there’s some great travel on the power key to make unlocking the device really easy.

For the media lovers out there Motorola has offered up a dedicated HDMI port – although we’re not sure why it didn’t just co-opt the microUSB port as a MHL socket, as it adds another hole on the phone.

Speaking of which, you’ll need to the dedicated tool to get into the microSIM slot, which will annoy those that love to keep moving between phones, but does facilitate the 9.3mm thickness of the Droid Razr HD.

We’re sure some people will be annoyed at the fact the Razr HD doesn’t come with a quad core processor, but – like ARM recently pointed out – there’s not always a case for that upgraded power (although we are fans).

And in our early tests, the speed of the phone wasn’t compromised by the 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor (which is proving massively popular at the moment, as it was also recently used on the Nokia Lumia 920) with the handset flipping between apps without fault.

Speaking of flipping, we’re big fans of the widgets Moto has placed on its phone – the clock and weather one, which allows you to swipe up and down to see more info is a real ‘fiddler’ that will no doubt suck your battery as you mess around with it for hours on end.

The battery on the Motorola Droid Razr HD should be able to handle that meaningless task for ages though, as it’s a 2500mAh pumping away under the hood. Sure, it’s no 3300mAh option like in the Droid Razr Maxx HD, but the lower thickness makes up for that.

Early verdict

Overall, we see no reason to fault the Motorola Droid Razr HD at all. It’s got nearly all the top specs: NFC, HD screen, Android 4.0 (and it’s ready for Android 4.0 Jelly Bean by the end of the year) and a solid design encased in Kevlar.

Would we like to have seen a quad core processor in there? Sure, but the combination of needing to run on Verizon’s 4G network and the lack of real need right now means we can see the reason for the downgrade.

It could be that the Motorola Droid Razr HD might not be as future-proofed as others, but we see no reason now not to get at least intrigued, even without a price.

Words by Gareth Beavis