vB Easy Archive - Motorola RAZR MAXX V6 Review

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Motorola RAZR MAXX V6 Review
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Posted by: Riverman

Last week I bought a RAZR MAXX V6 and have some time to play around with it, so here's my review of it. My previous phones have been a Sharp 902, Nokia 6131, and a BenQ-Siemens EF81, all great phones, but they all lose out to this one!

Construction: The V6 is very well-made phone. The body seems to be entirely, or almost entirely, metal, even the battery cover. All outside surfaces are covered in a soft-touch paint, except for the front, which is glass. There are no squeaks, creaks, or groans, and all pieces fit very well. The flip does have a small amount of side to side play when closed, but it still feels very solid. Like most Motorolas I've used, the flip springs open and shut, but not with quite the force of the original RAZR. Overall it makes the EF81 feel like a kit car and about equals the build quality of the Sharp, but with higher quality materials.

Appearance: This is a very austere looking phone, but stylish. It's all black, inside and out, but I think it's a nice change from the silver phones everyone has now. Even the glass over the front and the camera lens has a tinted look to it. This hides the glowing strips on either side of the front when they're off. They're not nearly as visible as they were in early press photos. The Motorola logo on the front is etched into the glass and glows when a call comes in. It has no sharp corners and is comfortable in the hand. The displays are top notch. The inside is as good as the EF81's, which I thought nearly equaled the Sharp 902's. It's much better than the 16.7 million color display on the Nokia 6131, even though it's not rated for as many colors. The outside display is extremely good for a Motorola, or any phone for that matter. It's not quite as bright as the EF81's (the best external display I've ever seen), but it's just as sharp, displays colors well, and is bright enough. The 6131's external display is much worse. Inside the phone looks like a RAZR. The keypad looks like the etched metal one on the old RAZR, but strangely enough seems to be made out of plastic, but I could be wrong. It's attractive, has a nice click to the buttons, but doesn't have the fancy look of the original RAZR's or the EF81's metal keypad. It does have the smooth blue electroluminescent lighting, at least. On the right side is the camera button and a strap loop. On the left side is the mini USB port, volume rocker, and Smart button. On the back there isn't much, but you can see the VGA video calling camera when the phone is closed, a nice metal Motorola logo, two round screw covers, and the two slots for the speaker down at the bottom.

Features: I'm sure most of you know the basic features: 2MP camera, microSD slot, QVGA display, tri-band with EDGE and UMTS (no UMTS or 3G in the US, though). The SD card slot is under the battery cover. It can be removed without taking out the battery or the SIM card. The external controls are pretty slick. The right side of the flip has a dedicated camera button. The left side has a volume rocker and a "Smart button", which launches the music player when closed. The touch-sensitive music player buttons glow bright blue when the Smart button is pressed. If you're going to use these, you'll be wiping the phone on your shirt a lot because it shows a lot of fingerprints!

Music Player: I like the music player. It's fairly basic with just an adjustable bass boost and a "Spatial Audio" function, but lets you search by artist, album, genre, composer, and song title, and it can play MP3, AAC, and apparently WMA files, but I haven't tested WMA playback yet. It even displays album artwork if it's in your music files. Most importantly for me is that it plays AAC files taken out of iTunes with their native .mp4 extension. it also supports the A2DP profile with a simple "Listen via Bluetooth" command in the options menu. A wired stereo headset was included, and has good audio quality.

Camera: The camera's decent. It's very fast and lets you turn the shutter sound off it you want. It has options for lighting conditions, exposure, and various color options (B&W, blue/green/red tint, sepia, antique, negative, etc.) You can use the internal or external displays as viewfinders, and switch between the 2MP camera or the VGA video call camera. Pictures are sharp and well exposed indoors, but a little noisy. Outdoor shots look good, even in grey overcast Seattle. They're probably not all that much worse than what the 902 is capable of, but without the autofocus and optical zoom. The LED flash (more of a light, actually, since it doesn't flash) is better than nothing, but not all that bright. I think the 902's was a little brighter, and could double as an incoming call alert, which the MAXX can't do.

Other Features: I have to say that this phone didn't come with much of anything. It has one game: Soduko, and one application: a Chinese-English dictionary. Extras are limited to a calculator, calendar, and alarm clock. Not much at all compared to the business phrase translator, Word/Excel/PDF viewer, weather and news applications, and good games the EF81 came with. It also doesn't seem to have any extra themes or much in the way of ringtones. Luckily things can always be downloaded, but Motorola should put something else on the phone to appeal to business users or the younger crowd.

Menus: The menus are attractive and very snappy. Everything loads very quickly or instantly, and things are pretty easy to find in the menu structure. I've read that some Motorolas have two music players, and some options are buried very deep in the menus, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. It's much better than a friend's Motorola V710. The look of the menus and icons almost borders on gaudy with a lot of green and red, but they're pretty well rendered and smoothly animated, considerably better than the Nokia 6131's and the 902's, but not half as polished or classy as what Siemens did on the EF81. The MAXX also dumps all Java applications into the games folder. The EF81 had separate games and applications folders, which I thought was much nicer.

Phone: I'm using this phone on T-Mobile, for what that's worth. Call quality is loud and clear, vibration is good without feeling like the phone's going to rattle itself apart, and the outside lights can pulse or flash when a call comes in. This one has the voicemail bug, but I'm hoping to fix that with a seem edit this next week.

That's about it for the RAZR MAXX review! it's good looking, well made, and has lots of features. This is the first Motorola phone I've owned, or even seriously considered, since I had a StarTac years ago, and it's good to see them making something great again.

Posted by: STRazr

The keyboard is the same construction found on higher Moto's since the V3i. It's the original etched nickel alloy, but a second polycarbonate layer is put on top to reduce fingerprints. It doesn't work 100%, but anyone with a V3 or V3c knows that the keypad was one of the worst finger print magnets on the phone.

Posted by: mark0341

Awesome review thanks for taking the time to show us the new Moto MAXX.

I love this phone and can't wait for it to come to CDMA.

Does anyone know when the MAXX will go CDMA? Hopefully soon.

Posted by: dsigma6

Is that the same screen size as the V3?

Posted by: josue68684

Nice hot sexy fone!!!
But It looks similar to the razr, Im getting sick of the razrs!!!!! But its ok!

Posted by: Riverman

Quote:

Originally Posted by dsigma6

Is that the same screen size as the V3?

It's about the same physical size, but the resolution is much better. The MAXX's screen is 240x320 vs. only 176x220 for the regular RAZR.

I did manage to fix the voicemail indicator yesterday. Apparently this phone doesn't work with any of the easier to use SEEM edit programs, so I had to use Radiocomm, but it was still pretty simple since the instructions are in the RAZR MAXX superthread on page 76.

Posted by: Baldilocks

Quote:

Originally Posted by dsigma6

Is that the same screen size as the V3?

Yeah the screen on the MAXX is 2.25" diagonal, compared to the 2.2" on the V3's.

Posted by: grmorrow04

Nice review, and great closeup shots. Does the MAXX have the earpiece volume issue that the regular RAZR's have had (V3, V3i, etc)?

Posted by: Riverman

Quote:

Originally Posted by grmorrow04

Nice review, and great closeup shots. Does the MAXX have the earpiece volume issue that the regular RAZR's have had (V3, V3i, etc)?

Thanks! The digital zoom feature on Canon cameras is amazing for these kinds of close-ups. This is my first RAZR (and first Motorola since my old StarTac), but the earpiece volume is pretty loud and doesn't have a big "sweet spot" problem like some of my old phones did, if that helps to answer your question.

Posted by: adeltaY

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riverman

. I think the 902's was a little brighter, and could double as an incoming call alert, which the MAXX can't do.

Actually my friend Riverman, it can! Just put these files into a/mobile/system and choose "Hyperactive" in the funlight menu on the maxx!

Watch this to see what it does http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR5R6TK9Y1E

Enjoy!

Posted by: riversc

very nice comprehensive review. thanks for sharing!