Motorola RAZR M reviewed: the “M” is for “Mini”

Performance

Following on from the RAZR name, the M is like its HD brother, with similar specs, similar design, and similar, well, everything.

Pick it up and you’ll see how close the two are, with the front looking like a smaller version of its high definition brother, the back still adorned with that almost rubberised Kevlar, a black frame encasing everything else.

The buttons are noticeably different, still sitting in a similar configuration – both on the left, power button above a volume rocker – though unlike its HD sibling, the buttons lack texture, and are undistinguished unless looked at, different only in length and colour.

This means you might find yourself squeezing the wrong button when picking it up out of your pocket, a minor thing as it is.

Motorola’s choice of screen is different too, with a 4.3 inch Super AMOLED display supporting last year’s high resolution of 960×540. There’s nothing wrong with the screen here, as it’s bright, and the viewing angles are good, with almost 178 degrees from any angle.

Over on the operating system front, this is, once again, the same mostly stock system we saw on the RAZR HD XT925. Google owns Motorola, so we’re not surprised, and you can expect the interface to be as Google envisioned it, complete with soft buttons at the bottom of the screen taking up 72 pixels in height, and reducing the total screen resolution to 888×540.

This can make some apps and games appear slightly off, stretched to a slightly unorthodox resolution.

Motorola has a few changes here, still nothing different from the RAZR HD, so expect the oh so convenient quick settings screen on the left most home screen, and the ability to quickly create more homescreens from templates or a blank canvas.

A special widget with flicked rotating circles informing you of missed calls, messages, the weather, and the time, while Smart Actions will let you program your own scheduled instructions as well as switch off things like your data connection to conserve battery life.

One of the more important features of the phone is, of course, access to Telstra’s own 4G network powered by Long-Term Evolution technology. Without a doubt, this is one of the fastest 4.3 inch handsets we’ve ever felt, with speeds as high as 63Mbps down and 25Mbps up experienced in Sydney’s CBD on the Motorola RAZR M.

You certainly shouldn’t have any problems with data speeds here, and over in the system performance area, it’s much the same.

With a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, the speed is pretty much bang-on with the RAZR HD, punching out the same benchmark with a result higher than the Tegra 3-powered HTC One X. Synthetic benchmarks don’t really prove much, mind you, so it’s worth noting that we had no problems jumping to and from apps in playing with the RAZR M.