So, it's finally reached the point where I'm thinking it's time to upgrade my mobile.Reasons are, exisiting one has taken a beating and the battery cover is loose, the battery life is starting to lessen and I'd like the ability to check my mail through the web.A while back I switched to Motorola and have been quite happy with them since then. Traditionally I'd been a Nokia user and occassionaly tried Ericsson.I was down town the other day and the Motorola RAZR V6 MAXX caught my eye. Nice looking phone and it appears to have all the features I want, including audio controls on the front of the clam.So I had a look around on the web and found a mixed set of feedback from users, which is never a good sign, it was either, love this phone or hate this phone because of hardware complaints.I then stumbled acorss GSMArena, they were talking about the RAZR2 V8 & V9So I get the feeling the V6 is the "stepping stone" product between the series.The V9 sounds more like me, it uses the Motorola Synergy UI and has microSD expansion, whereas the V8 uses a new Linux/Java UI and has mixed memory sizes of 420MB & 2GB.Motorola Specs for V8Motorola specs for V9Availability is July for the V8 and Q3 for the V9.Of course, I'll be looking at the product reviews once the phones rather than just buying blindly.I've complied this picture below of the three phones together, the V8 & V9 look the same to me from the front. Images taken from GSMArena.
I've spent the last couple of days playing around with a prototype Motorola RAZR2 V8. Physically, the device is a real stunner. It feels very solidly build, is good looking, and offers most all of the flash and style of the original. The most obvious differences between the RAZR2 and the original RAZR are the massive external display and the lack of an antenna bulge, or chin, on the newer V8. The external display is interesting for more than merely its 50mm (2") diagonal measurement, though. Three electrostatic touch keys are built onto the surface of the glass that protects the display. Each button is approximately 6mm square in size, which leaves about 6mm of space between each of them. This spacing helps ensure that only one button is hit at a time. The lables for the touch buttons are drawn on the display, such as the previous, play/pause, and next keys seen when using the music player. These buttons could be drawn as something else for a different function, such as the camera, but I have not seen this used anywhere in the V8. Perhaps the best part of the buttons is the vibration feedback that the V8 offers when one of the touch keys is pressed. Thanks to this haptic feedback, you will always know when the phone has recognized your intentions. I've been very pleased with them so far. The vibration feedback is also used with the volume and smartkey controls on the left edge of the phone, as well as with the camera shutter button that is located on the right edge. I find the camera shutter button very hard to use in this pre-production unit, though. The button offers poor tactile feedback that - it feels as if the button is broken since it is somewhat loose and doesn't depress very far at all. Hopefully this is just an issue with the prototypes. One of the changes in the design of the new RAZR2 line that I didn't notice at the launch event in New York was that they use the newly defined micro-USB connector for charging, wired headsets, and, of course, USB connectivity. I've included a few photos that show the differences between the traditional mini-USB and the new micro-USB connectors. Personally, while I appreciate that the new mobile specific micro-USB port will allow for marginally thinner devices, it seems to be quite a bit more difficult to use than the larger mini-USB connector we've grown used to. My guess is that I'll build up quite a collection of micro-USB adapters over the course of the next year, since I expect we will see them on many devices from a number of the major manufacturers.
