The DROID RAZR MAXX didn’t take too long to come our after the original DROID RAZR after its début at CES 2012 and less than three months from the originals release. The missions the RAZR MAXX has is to give you a large battery but keep the same slim and thin design and close as possible. Do they succeed in this mission?
Hardware & Design
The design is nearly identical to the first DROID RAZR with a 4.3 inch Super AMOLED Advance display with qHD resolution that’s protected behind Gorilla Glass and a Kevlar backing to keep your device well protected from damage. They also put a water-resistant coating on the internal electrical components so that if they get wet the water beads off. Internally you have a 1.2 GHz TI OMAP 4430 dual-core processor, 1 GB or RAM, 16 GB of on-board storage (11.5 available to you) with another 16 GB micro SD card included, 4G LTE data, 1.3 megapixel front facing camera and 8.0 megapixel rear facing camera with LED flash plus 1080p video capture. You can see our sample video and pictures below. The camera is good but you will get some grain in the pictures if you’re not in perfect lighting conditions.
The biggest difference in the hardware is the 3300mAH battery inside that Motorola claims that you get 21.5 hours of talk time and 380 of standby time.All this while keeping a slim 8.9mm frame. Does the RAZR MAXX live up to this claim?
Software & Usability
For software the device runs Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread with Motorola’s user interface on top. Much of the software is similar to many other Motorola devices so we will get into some of those apps later. The main feature here is the battery life. In our test we setup the device as a user would normally use it.
Battery Test Setup:
- 3 Email Accounts
- Facebook & 2 Twitter Accounts
- Google Music, Google Voice
- Netflix and YouTube streaming
- Bluetooth Streaming Audio
- 10 Phone calls (Avg 10 min/Call)
- All settings set as they were “out of the box”
The phone was unplugged and off the charger Sunday 9:30 am and after 12 hours the battery was at 50%. From there we continued the test until he battery died fully Monday 9:30pm which gives you a maximum battery life of 36 hours. This is tremendous results especially for a power user. I’m sure once you start to tweak the settings with brightness, data connections and Motorola’s Smart Actions software you can get even better results. It’s also upgradeable to Android 4.0 which will improved the battery life even more.
Also included with standard Verizon apps such as VCast, VZ Navigator, Mobile Hotspot and My Verizon there are Motorola specific apps such as MOTOACTV for fitness, MOTOPRINT for wireless print sharing and MOTOCAST which lets you stream any content from your computer anywhere over a 4G LTE connection a file manager that lets you move and manage files between the internal storage, SD card storage shared folders and MOTOCAST connection computers and mention earlier Smart Actions which the phone will automate certain tasks based on how you set them via date, time, location, app etc. A solid package of apps that make the DROID RAZR MAXX a well-rounded experience.
Overall
The Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX makes you wish that this device came out at the same time or in place of the original one. The beefed up battery is much appreciated and while doesn’t solve all the issues with Android and battery life it does help the power user out there have confidence that they will get through a whole day and not have to worry about running for a charger or changing they way they use the smartphone around. This is a recommended buy for anyone looking to grab an android device on Verizon even over the original Motorola DROID RAZR.
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