Motorola Droid RAZR M:Latest Features

Last week, Motorola held a big event to unveil the “new Motorola,” a supposed relaunch of the company after its acquisition by Google. That event didn’t do much to show us what the new Motorola is really about, but we did get a look at the latest smartphones from the manufacturer, including the new Droid RAZR M for Verizon Wireless. Motorola and Verizon positioned the RAZR M as a mid-range smartphone, but it’s more of a spiritual successor to last year’s high-end Droid RAZR. The M comes equipped with improved hardware, a speedier processor, and a low starting price of just $99.99 on-contract.

It’s hard to see Motorola’s supposed new vision in the RAZR M, as it is really just a refined version of last year’s flagship smartphone from the company. But the original RAZR did have its merits, and if Motorola was able to address some of its faults (namely with the display and battery life) in the RAZR M, we could have a solid device on our hands — with an attractive price to boot.
The most notable difference between the RAZR M and last year’s RAZR is not the sharpness of the corners, but rather the actual size of the device. The RAZR M is small: at 2.39 inches wide, 4.82 inches tall, and 0.33 inches thick, it’s barely larger than an iPhone 4S. The RAZR M bucks the trend of massive Android smartphones and is actually a device that is comfortable to hold and use in one hand, something that can’t be said for many smartphones on the market today. But despite its lilliputian footprint, the M still features a spacious 4.3-inch display.
Like many of Motorola’s recent smartphones, the Droid RAZR M has an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash and 1080 HD video capability. The camera app features quick access to a variety of settings, including special modes like HDR and panoramic stitch (but no macro mode, oddly enough). The camera’s HDR mode is actually pretty effective at capturing a balanced exposure in high contrast scenes — more so than the average smartphone’s HDR, at least — and the panoramic feature lets you capture wide vista views in a series of shots that are automatically stitched together.
Images captured are par for the course for a mid-range smartphone these days, meaning that outdoor shots look pretty good and indoor shots look pretty lousy. Upon close inspection on a computer, the images are quite noisy, and fine detail gets easily smeared by image noise and Motorola’s efforts to hide such noise. Likewise, the 1080p video looks good if there is enough ambient light available, but frame rates can drop and it can get pretty choppy whenever light levels head south. The front-facing camera offers a bright image that is good enough for video chatting, and unlike the Photon Q 4G LTE, it’s easy to frame your face with the M’s camera.
The RAZR M ships with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (with a promised upgrade to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean "before the end of the year’) and Motorola’s ever-evolving user interface. Moto’s skin is one of the lightest ones from any major Android manufacturer, and most of the time it feels like you are using stock Android. But there are some differences, most notably in the way home screens are handled and the custom lock screen. The M features the same home screen system as the Atrix HD and Photon Q: by default there is only one screen set up, while a swipe to the right prompts you to add another blank page or one of three preset options. The M drops the little pop-up widgets that display recent activity in the stock app icons on the Atrix HD and Photon Q, but it adds a new quick-access settings menu available to the left of the primary home screen. This menu gives you toggles for Wi-Fi, ringer, Bluetooth, GPS, data, airplane mode, and lock settings, as well as jump to the main settings menu. It’s a different play on the settings shortcuts that most manufacturers put in the notification bar, and while it is novel, there is one big drawback over the other method: you can’t access any of these settings while in an app.
The Droid RAZR M is a solid smartphone: it features great build quality, snappy performance, fast data, comfortable dimensions, and a bright display, and it does so at price that doesn’t break the bank. It’s not without its faults, I would have really loved to seen a higher resolution display and better camera, but for the most part, there’s a lot to like here.
But at the end of the day, the RAZR M just doesn’t arouse the emotion that other smartphones do, which is exactly the same problem that earlier Motorola smartphones had. Its build, while solid, doesn’t match the fit and finish of the iPhone 4S or the HTC One X. The M lacks the wow factor and funky software tricks that smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S III offer, and though Motorola’s user interface isn’t intrusive, it’s not the same as the stock version of Android available on the Galaxy Nexus. If you want the best smartphone Motorola currently offers, you would do better with the Atrix HD, provided you can switch to AT&T. But if you are upgrading from a RAZR or RAZR Maxx from last year, and plan to stick with Verizon, the RAZR M offers a nicer display, faster processor, smaller size, and that all-important promise of an upgrade to Android 4.1, making it a suitable update to last year’s models.