Sample a slice of the future

Thin as a blade and cutting-edge sharp, the Motorola RAZR phone is a lot of fun to use

The Motorola RAZR XT910 is a sleek and stylish touch-screen smart phone that performs impressively fast. You pronounce RAZR "razor", of course, and it's called that because it's only 7.1mm wide at the thinnest part.

It gets a little thicker at the top, where the camera lens, flash and speaker are housed. Still, this is a package that weighs only 127 grams.

Thin doesn't mean weak. The body is made of battle-hungry Kevlar fibre, and Corning Gorilla Glass protects the 4.3-inch bright and vibrantly colourful Super Amoled Advanced display screen.

With its high 960x540-pixel resolution, the screen is great for viewing movies, YouTube clips and photos.

The eight-megapixel rear camera can shoot 1080p video. The 1.3-megapixel front camera is for 720p video. The main camera captured good-quality photos with sharp detail and lustrous colours in our test.

The battery is sealed in to keep it waterproof, so you can't change it yourself. Even the body is protected with splash-guard coating.

The RAZR's fast performance is due to its dual-core 1.2GHz processor and a gigabyte of RAM, which combine to prevent multiple tasks from slowing it down. The Android Operating System Version 2.3.5 supports both the 850MHz and 900MHz frequency 3G networks available in Thailand.

I tested the RAZR on my TrueMove H account, which uses the 850MHz HSPA+ system, and was able to update Facebook and Twitter and sync my Gmail contacts with no problem. I took photos and uploaded them to Facebook very quickly, and just as quickly downloaded and installed several applications from the Google Android Market.

The screen and menus were quite responsive. The status pages of my social-network sites scrolled impressively fast.

You get a few useful preloaded applications, including Quickoffice for reading and editing PDF files and Microsoft Office files like Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

The Music Player worked like a charm and the phone comes with a high-quality in-ear stereo headset that reproduces the sound with good bass and tonal clarity.

There are four pre-set effects - 3D Stereo, Home Theatre, Live State and Custom.

Choose Custom for a choice of three types of surround sound - Live, Wide and Ambient. You can also select pre-set equaliser settings like extreme bass, bass punch, balanced and vocalise.

The Music Player supports Motocast, which is also preloaded with the phone.

With Motocast you can listen to music and view photos stored in folders on your computer as long your mobile has access to a data or Internet connection through 3G or Wi-Fi service.

You first need to register for a Motocast account and then download and install the server application on your computer. Next, run the application and assign music and photo folders.

Finally, log on with your Motocast ID both on the computer and on RAZR and the application will sync all the files.

To use your mobile to view the photos stored on your computer, use the Gallery application. Motocast really makes the RAZR fun to use.

The RAZR's Social Networking application allows you to integrate all of your network accounts in one place, like Facebook, Twitter, Photobucket, LinkedIn and Orkut. I synchronised my Facebook and Twitter accounts and then monitored them with this app.

The Motorola RAZR has a good battery. Just half of a single charge let me use Facebook and other apps all day.

Pick up the RAZR for about Bt18,900.

Key specs

OS: Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread

Processor: Dual Core 1.2GHz Processor

Camera: Rear 8MP with LED flash, front 1.3MP HD webcam

Bands: WCDMA 2100/850/900/1900, GSM 850/900/1800/1900; HSDPA 14.4Mbps

(Cat 10), HSUPA 5.76Mbps (Cat 6), GPRS Class12

Display: 4.3-inch qHD (960x540) Super Amoled Advanced

Memory: 1GB DDR2 SDRAM / 8GB on board, expandable with microSD card up to 32GB

Battery: 1750mAh (non-removable)

Dimensions: 69x131x7.1mm

Weight: 127g