The Motorola RAZR has been a huge success, becoming the most popular cellphone in the world and when it launched, was priced at over $600 dollars but is now available for $39 or even free after rebate. If you’re looking for a new phone you may want to take a look at the new RAZR2, since it packs a whole load of features.

The RAZR2 is much slimmer than the first generation RAZR, and although it feels a bit bigger, it is very comfortable to hold in your hand. On the front is a large 2-inch touch display for accessing the Sprint Music Store, SprintTV, and the 2 megapixel camera. Compared to the RAZR, fonts were large, easy to read, and with much more vibrant colors. When using the touch controls at the bottom of the display, you will have hold them down and wait for the application to launch which we found somewhat annoying though we got used to it.

Navigation controls on both sides of the phone were easy to find unlike the RAZR’s thin and small buttons, since they also provide vibrating tactile feedback. On the inside is a 2.2-inch display with 262,000 colors, animations were smooth and fonts were easy to read though that may have been due to the low resolution. The keypad hasn’t changed much, still the flat-keyed type with the same raised edges to separate the rows of numbers and navigation controls.

Since it is a multimedia-oriented phone, it offers Bluetooth with the stereo profile for listening to music on devices such as the MOTOROKR S9 Bluetooth Headphones we reviewed a couple weeks ago. Music downloads from the Sprint Music Store were fast over the EVDO connection, downloading a song within 20 to 30 seconds. You’ll also have plenty of space to store songs on, since the RAZR2 can take up to a 2GB MicroSD card if the included 256MB doesn’t do it for you.

The 2-megapixel camera in the RAZR2 was definitely an improvement over the VGA-quality camera in the original RAZR, and offers good image quality provided you have a decent amount of lighting. The SprintTV service included with the phone offers live TV on the go, but viewing the content on both the internal and external display seemed hard since there is no ability to view it in a full screen mode. On the messaging side, it was nice to be able to view text messages on the external display instead of having to open the flip.

Call quality was excellent and both the internal volume and speakerphone was plenty loud for us. Talk time was above the rated time of approx. 3 hours, and instead around 4 hours.

Sprint is selling the V9m today for $249.99 after a $150 instant rebate, but you can find it on Amazon for just under $100.

Pros

• Loud speakerphone and excellent call quality.
• Slimmer than previous RAZR.
• Fast music downloads over EVDO connection.
• Good camera quality.
• Ability to view text messages on external display.
• Touch controls with tactile feedback.

Cons

• SprintTV too small to look at.
• Low resolution internal display.

Final Verdict
4.5 out of 5 stars.