Get the sharp edge with Razer Phone

Razer phone

Razer makes gaming gear. It follows that the Razer Phone is for gamers. Why should they have all the fun?

Razer phoneThe Razer Phone (Australian website here) starts with the screen.

A 120Hz refresh on a 5.7” 2560 x 1440, 16:9, IGZO LCD with Gorilla Glass 3 (better for scratch protection). It supports HDR and Adobe Wide Colour Gamut that is a wider range than sRGB or Adobe RGB colour spaces. It has a 72.7% screen-to-body-ratio with larger bezels to ‘hang-on’ to the phone. You need somewhere to put the speakers.

Next the processor. It uses last year’s flagship Qualcomm 835. While it would be awesome to have the latest 845 processor the differences are not so much in performance but battery life. It has a game boost setting to manage thermal issues for long gameplay. Other phones using the 835 include Moto Z2 Force, Nokia 8, Google Pixel 2 XL and LG G6/V30.

It has 8GB LPDDR4, 1866 RAM and 64GB UFS storage. It can support microSD to 512GB and up to 2TB of external OTG storage.

Sound receives dual stereo front-firing speakers powered by dual amplifiers and a THX certified 24-bit/192kHz audio DAC. It supports Dolby Atmos on external headphones and amplifiers. Independent tests give the speakers 70dB for voice and 75dB for music – excellent clear and crisp audio.

Read camera is a dual 12MP setup with a standard 25mm f/1.75 and telephoto f/2.6 with 2X zoom. It has dual sensor PADF and dual tone/LED flash. The selfie is 8MP. Competent but not the real purpose of this device.

The battery is an oversized 4,000mAg with Qualcomm Fast Charge 4.0 charger included for 0-70% in 30 minutes. It uses USB-C 1.0.

You could call it a bit of a beast at 158.5 x 77.7 x 8 mm x 197g with a black matte metal finish. It runs Android 8.1 with minimal bloatware.

GadgetGuy’s take – Razer Phone will sell to enthusiasts

Mobile gaming is a growing market. Razer Phone is a serious first attempt to address that market. Anything branded Razer will sell to gamer enthusiasts. From what we can see non-gamers need not covet it and stick with other more fully featured flagship phones.

At $1099 it’s probably good for gamers and not so good for everyone else.