Motorola RAZR MAXX review

When the Motorola RAZR launched late last year, it had everything we wanted from an Android smartphone. It still stands up well today – six months on – though it has been surpassed by the HTC One X and looks to be trumped by the imminent Samsung Galaxy S3. Just nipping in first, Motorola has launched this variant of its handset, the new RAZR MAXX.

From the front it’s impossible to tell the MAXX from the current RAZR

The MAXX is essentially identical to the current RAZR in every respect, bar one. Motorola has upgraded the battery from a more-than-respectable 1,750mAh to a huge 3,300mAh. It’s a whopping 88% bigger, and is simply the biggest battery we’ve seen in a smartphone (and more than double the size of the current iPhone’s).

Its performance in our battery test matched up to our high expectations. For the test we run a H.264 video on a continuous loop with headphones plugged in and the screen at half brightness. The original RAZR lasted for just shy of ten hours, and the MAXX came in at nineteen hours and 23 minutes, roughly in line with the size of the larger battery.

It may have been what we expected, but it’s a still a stunning result. With a full battery charge, a RAZR MAXX would keep you entertained for the entire length of the longest scheduled flight on earth – an epic eighteen hours and 50 minutes from Newark to Singapore. Rather than set off half-way around the world, we did some more real-world testing over the weekend. Leaving work with the phone fully-charged on a Friday afternoon, the MAXX lasted a whole weekend of browsing, gaming, talking and texting. The battery was pretty much flat when we arrived back on Monday morning, but it’s the first smartphone we’ve used that can last multiple days.

It’s a little chunkier in general, but still far from bloated

Now, most of us will still insist on charging it every night. But even then this is a phone that won’t run flat from constant gaming, or when reception is poor and the handset is constantly searching for a signal.

There’s really nothing else that compares to the MAXX in terms of battery size. Most current smartphones have batteries up to 1,800mAh in size (including the HTC One X). One notable exception is the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S3, which has a big 2,100mAh battery; though even that is dwarfed by the MAXX’s, which is still 57% bigger. With both handsets using similar-sized OLED-based displays, we’d expect that differential to roughly show itself in our tests.

That bigger battery has had an impact on the svelte dimensions of the original RAZR, but not as much as you might think. The original handset was amongst the skinniest around, which is a good place to start from; it measured just 7.1mm deep for most of its width, with a bump at the very top that extended out to 10mm. The new phone has a more consistent depth, from 9mm at the bottom to 10mm at the top. It certainly feels a little chunkier than before, but it impacts more on its appearance than how it feels in your pocket or hand. Apart from a slight rise in weight, from 127g to 145g, the other dimensions remain identical.

The top-mounted ports are still great, easy to find, with a rubbery, scratch-proof surround

That statement goes for the rest of the phone as well, with the same internal components, display and operating system. The question then is, how well has the RAZR aged in the last six months comared to the competition. The OLED display, with its 960×540 resolution appears identical to that used on more recent handsets, such as the HTC One S. It provides a respectable amount of detail, but is now outdone by the 1,280×720 screens on some new handsets – including the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S3. The camera is still a good eight-megapixel snapper, but lacks the lightning fast 4fps burst mode of HTC’s recent efforts.

The processor is dual-core, rather than quad-core, but we’ve yet to be convinced of the need for those extra cores anyway. We still like the macho styling on the RAZR, and the tough feel – backed up by the Kevlar rear panel and splashguard coating – is in keeping with the new, highly-practical, larger battery.

Just as tough and cool-looking as ever, it’s an unashamedly macho smartphone

One aggravation is that Motorola hasn’t got the Android 4.0 update ready in time for the release of this handset. Original RAZR owners are still awaiting the new OS, pencilled in for the annoying vague ‘Q2’ of this year, and RAZR MAXX owners will have to wait till the same date. Having that update out for the MAXX’s release would certainly have made it feel a far fresher launch, and make it easier to compare to other current handsets.

If you want the nitty-gritty of how the RAZR feels to use, then best have a look at our full review of the original. It’s not quite the cutting edge handset it was, but it’s far from over the hill. There are better phones out there now, but if you’re looking for a new Android handset and battery life is the most important consideration, then the Motorola RAZR MAXX is undoubtedly the phone for you.