Motorola's Droid Razr Maxx is a power-packed follow-up to the company's Droid Razr handset. The handset, available now from Verizon Wireless, is great for power data users.
Motorola's Droid Razr Maxx, on sale from Verizon
Wireless for $299.99 with a two-year contract, is the first smartphone that
qualifies as a power mobile data user's best friend because it has the best battery
life on an Android smartphone I've ever tested.
The Android
2.3 Gingerbread phone offers all the features of its Droid Razr predecessor.
That includes the 4.3-inch Super AMOLED (active-matrix organic LED) Advanced
screen, which is encased in kevlar fiber and Corning Gorilla Glass to withstand
drops and ward off scratches.
The handset is
also, like the Razr, powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU and supported by 1GB of
RAM for a speedy user experience when accessing applications.
Since I
reviewed the Razr in November, I'm not going to
focus on all of those features for the Razr Maxx because it would be overkill.
I will confirm that the call quality matches that of the Razr. So does the
speed. As with the Razr, Ookla's Speedtest of the Maxx showed me anywhere from
10M bps to 16M bps of download speeds, and 6M bps to 9M bps upload speeds.
What I will
discuss in detail is this device's battery life, which is roughly twice that of
the original Razr. The Droid Razr has a 1,780mAh battery, which was decent for
a 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) smartphone.
The 4G LTE
Razr Maxx handset packs a 3,300mAh power supply. Verizon said that means users
will enjoy some 21 hours of talk time on 16.5 hours of standby time. We'll see
about that, I thought.
I did two
tests with this phone,
which you can see in my hands-on here, after going through the basic features for myself last
Friday.
For the first
test, I powered the phone up and used it all day Saturday-making calls, which
were of solid sound quality; sending text messages and playing several games of
Angry Birds.
I downloaded
two dozen applications and watched a dozen YouTube videos of various lengths. I
even watched a movie on Netflix from the phone. (Okay, I just let the movie
play as I'm not ready to spend over an hour watching something on a screen this
size.)
I also played
around with one of Motorola's core new applications, Smart Actions. This application
let me define rules for whether the phone should silence the ringer while I'm
at work, and turn it on when I'm at home, tweak the Bluetooth settings, and
start playing music when headphones are plugged in.
I still had
plenty of juice at the end of the day-at least a third. I recharged the phone
overnight and turned it on Sunday morning to begin my second test for standby
battery longevity.
As I write
this, around 2 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, the Maxx is still showing
three-quarters of battery life. I haven't done a thing with it other than tap
the power button to check battery life.
Here's the
thing that really wowed me about this phone beyond the battery life. With a
battery pack of this power, I was expecting a chunky little brick of a phone.
Instead, the phone is a remarkable 8.99 mm, or 0.35 inches, thin.
Sure that's thicker
than the 7.1 mm offered by its Razr brethren, but it's around the thinness of
the Samsung Galaxy S II handsets.
It's a marvel
that Motorola packed a battery of that power into a phone this thin, and frankly
I'm not sure why anyone would buy another 4G LTE smartphone, such as the
battery-chomping HTC ThunderBolt or Samsung Droid Charge from Verizon.
You might ask
yourself whether you should buy the Razr or the Razr Maxx. First, go to a local
Verizon store or Best Buy and hold both in your hand.
Second, the
answer in my mind is simple. If thin and light is your top priority, the Razr
is the right phone for you. If battery power sits atop your list of smartphone
features, the Razr Maxx is your best bet.
Moreover, both
cost $299.99, so to me, buying the phone with the best power source is the
obvious choice: to the Maxx, totally, and for sure.
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