Customer Reviews

Motorola RAZR V3m Gray (Sprint)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Features

* Very light and slender, good build quality. This phone is a classic example of marrying reasonably good hardware to really bad software.
* Images are stored on an mini-SD card that can be read on any computer - if you can remove it. The card is a bit inaccessible. Don't lose the adapter that allows it to be read in an SD reader.
* Compact and well made quasi-USB charger. It's the same charger for Motorola bluetooth headset.
* Mini-USB connector for charge and data. It will charge with a mini-USB data cable connection if the phone's USB drivers have been installed. Otherwise you will get an "unable to charge" message. This drove me nuts as its very poorly documented. Sprint's web site has an obscure link in the support section for software downloads, if you specify XP as the OS you can find the Motorola Sprint PCS Connection Manager. Installing this introduces several USB drivers, enables charging via the computer port, provides some diagnostic software utilities, and lets the phone act as a modem! I haven't tested this to see if will work in Parallels for OS X. Motorola doesn't provide anything for OS X, but a generous Mac developer has.
* Flip phone with external clock and number information.
* Runs Google's very impressive Gmail client. Ignore the "possibly not supported" install warning, it works.
* Somewhat to my surprise, I can browse this phone using the os x bluetooth browser and extract images that way. I can also drag and drop MP3s into the music file and play them.

Issues

* quasi-USB chargers! Argggh. Appearances are deceptive. The cable is mini-USB, but the output is 5V and 550mA. The USB standards is 5V and 500 mA. Those 50 mA seem to matter. In any event I get "unable to charge" messages when I use an external USB charger. (See this thread and the footnotes below for more details [1]). Based on the seemingly authoritative post [1] it might be safe to use this charger with standard USB devices.)

* you can't search the address book. Really. Yes, you can match on the first few letters of a first name, but that's so feeble I don't consider it search. It works for 20 contacts, it fails for for 500. You can't search on the last name, the city, etc.

You can create "groups" and assign contacts to groups that are used to filter views, but I half-suspect there's no "all" view. You can do a "voice lookup", but, of course, names are not phonetic. I was able to get the voice lookup to work if I modulated my voice carefully, raised my pitch, spoke in a quiet room, used the first and last name, and pronounced the names phonetically rather than as spoken. Then I ran into the voice look phone number bug. If a contact has more than one number, you are supposed to say "mobile 1" or "work 1" to dial the right number. There are only 3 or 4 word options, so recognition should be trivial here. Wrong. You really need to use the keyboard input at this point.

* extremely annoying juvenile ring tones If you want something geriatric, you pay for it. Or choose a beep. Or record something as a voice message and save it as a ring tone. (Probably the secret here is to use the USB/minijack audio adapter and a dual minijack connector to connect directly to the output from a computer audio output and record that way.)

* no iSync support. There is an effective hack however - I can sync contacts, calendar items, and alarms. I suspect iSync will lose the "group" assignments however.

* no input for a 2.5mm jack - need Bluetooth, proprietary headset, or a $6 USB to 2.5mm adapter which is annoying to find. Dumb.

* address book is limited to about 500 entries and 2,500 numbers/emails. That's good, because the contacts functionality is SO bad that you probably only WANT 10 numbers.

* You can't use it as an external "modem" to connect a computer to the net -- OUT OF THE BOX. You need to know to locate and download Sprint/Motorola's free PCS Connection Manager software. XP only. I haven't been able to get it to work yet, but I've only tried for a few minutes.

* Using Spring 3G services drains the battery in no time. The story that the iPhone uses EDGE because of power issues is more credible to me now.

* It's very slow to hang-up. This is a surprise, I don't know why.

* mini-SD card is stored beneath battery -- essentially not removable

* weak text input by default -- the default is to disable predictive text entry from the 3 letter/key cycle entry. You can actually enable predictive text with the kb entry, but it's an obscure configuration option and it doesn't work everywhere.

* Sprint has loaded the most prized UI locations with junk, while hiding the calendar, alarm clock, voice recorder and calculator in "Tools". However, you can change the key assignments to put Tools up front.

* the games are all very limited demos. Delete them all.

* The micro-SD card is about the size of a fingernail, and not much thicker. Impressive. Push the battery downwards to lift it out. It's not obvious where the SD card goes; lay it on the metallic surface near the arrow and gently press it in.

* The "web" is a "walled garden" -- all sprint, junk, and third rate portals. (AOL? Puhlease.) Way down the 'options' menu is a 'go to url' option. I was able to navigate to Google and install the superb Gmail app on this phone. There's an obscure preferences option to change the home page and a button to revert to original. I changed to Google Mobile of course, but I kept the original as a bookmark.

* If you turn off bluetooth power, then turn it on again, you will need to power cycle the phone before it will be reachable by bluetooth.

* I enabled the 'track location' option for third parties, but so far Google doesn't seem to have picked this up. I wonder if Sprint is charging a large amount for this data. I don't know if enabling the $6/month GPS option does anything useful.

* The corresponding Motorola bluetooth headset dials the last number called if you press the single large external button. This happens very often -- by accident! I'm constantly dialing people who think I'm making obscene phone calls. The only way to prevent this is to turn off the Motorola bluetooth headset -- but the UI for that is very bad. The headset and phone together are so bad they're almost good in a hideously bad sort of way.

Reconfiguration (mostly making this a Google phone)

* Change screen settings so top is messages, left is tools, right is "content" and down is contacts
.
* Change web home page to Google Mobile and login to your personal Google HomePage. Add widgets to that Home Page that will work well with the phone. (Now I understand why these widgets are so fashionable ... duhhhh.)

* Install Google Maps and Gmail reader from Google Mobile.

* Learn to use Google SMS to request location specific information

* Configure Google apps with the locations you want (I have to learn if these can be configured via computer).

* Turn of auto-guess with the non-predictive text entry

I purchased this phone at a local Sprint store about 3 weeks ago. It was a good thing that Sprint decided to offer the Motorola phones because before that you had to sign up with Cingular or Verizon in order to get a Razr and I was just about to switch plans when I found out that Sprint started offering Razr's.

The obvious good points of the phone are that its very stylish and ultra thin and very light....you can hardly feel it in your pocket. There are also a lot of good features like speaker phone, camera, video, memory add-on slot (the phone comes with an extra memory card but you can purchase up to 2GB of additional memory), Bluetooth works seamlessly. The screen is nice and big. Overall, the phone looks great.

However, like any product there are some drawbacks to this phone. Relatively speaking they are minor issues. The first is that the camera button on the side of the phone is a bit loose and so when you move or shake the camera you can hear it rattling. When I first heard it, I thought there was a loose part inside the phone but quickly found out it was the button. Its not loud but its definitely noticeable. I went back to the store and checked the demo model and it had the same problem...the rep also went and took out a brand new phone, same model and it had the same loose button issue. So it didn't appear to be an isolated problem. The second drawback is that the volume buttons are on the left side of the phone (when its open) and the camera button is on the right side. So whenever I tried to adjust the volume with my right hand I would inadvertently press the camera button with my thumb. Not a great layout design but you eventually learn to work around it.

Other than those minor issues, the phone is very functional...and I'm happy with it just be sure to get all the discounts that you can on it because its definitely not worth spending more than say $50 for it.

I have been using this phone for a few weeks now and I am happy with it.

Pros:
It looks elegant, has clear voice and is gentle on the battery. It takes a micro SD card and comes with a media player to play mp3. The volume on the phone is pretty good.

Cons: It is hard to pull out the micro SD card and stick it back in as it is lodged in an impossible location. This will be a problem if you intend to swap out or edit cards frequently. This phone does not have the standard 3.5mm output for audio. Instead, it provides a mini-usb jack for audio which also doubles as the charging port. What this means is, you cannot charge the phone and listen to music simultanously unless you have a wireless headset. You also cannot charge the phone while streaming music through a FM Transmitter.

As I'm writing this review, I actually have the music player on my RAZR playing. I got my RAZR last week and I absolutely LOVE IT. I paid the full price because I really wanted it and the guy at the Sprint Store was extremely nice and helpful and had it all set up in about 5 minutes. My favorite thing about the phone is how thin it is and how amazing it looks.

The only negative aspect of the phone is that it froze before, but my friend that has a RAZR from Verizon said that hers did the same thing before, and I should say that at the time I had an application running and I had just reorganized all my pictures while the battery was low so I'm guessing that was the reason.

The Sprint Power Vision is also an amazing feature. I was so excited to watch TV on my phone and it didn't even use a ton of battery like I thought it would.

The interface is very easy to use and I like how everything is customizable. I have noticed that some people have said that the Sprint service isn't very good, but I have never had a problem with them and I ALWAYS have service, even in the basement of my work which is pretty amazing.

The 1.3 Megapixel camera is very nice for a camera phone and it takes very clear pictures. It doesn't seem to have any trouble with the phone moving, like my last camera phone did.

The external storage is also a very welcome feature. I liked how they supplied a 64 MB MicroSD so I didn't have to buy one myself, but I think I will be buying a 2 GB MicroSD so I can have TONS of songs on my phone.

I should also point out that the pictures online don't do the phone justice. I actually thought it looked ugly online but it actually looks really cool. The color isn't as much a dark gray as pictured, but a grayish-blue which I REALLY like.

Just like the other features I have been raving about, call quality is spectacular. I was able to hear the person I was talking to very clearly and they said that they could hear me clearly as well.

Overall, I think that this phone is amazing and if you are thinking of buying it, you DEFINATELY should.

i got my razr because my other phone broke, for free. at first i was happy because it wasn't some stupid-looking free phones without a camera and stuff.
on my other phone, i used speed dial. but the razr doensn't allow it. and they have the stupid voice recognition.. but like that really works.

BATTERY LIFE IS LITERALLY NON-EXISTANT.
my other bulky scratched up phone would last 3 days if i didn't make any calls and only several times of opening up the flip phone.if i talked on it, it would last about a day or more still.
the razr doesn't even last a few hours of talking. i made a 30-minute call to a friend and i was charging it for a whole day without any use, it was down to only one bar (out of three.)

razrs are a pain trying to text. i have long nails (most of the times) and sometimes my fingers slips and i type something else. even if i have short nails, it wouldn't be any better.
the large screen gets dirty easily too. its annoying cause my other phone wasn't this bad.
i had to get the same phone twice cause the other razr didn't let me go on the internet when i got vision. the people gave me free money for 2 months of vision, but i dont know.. i went to two different stores trying to find whats wrong, so i dont know if its on my new (stupid) razr.

i've never loved or liked the phone.
i want my other bulky phone back.

My 2 year contract was up with Sprint so I got this phone using their upgrade program. I thought it was the best looking one of the phones they offer, because I like phones small and thin and I also like them to have a good quality camera. They offer some phones with just a VGA quality camera but this one has a 1.3 megapixels camera. I'll keep this review short and just list the good and bad points about the phone.

GOOD:
* small

* thin

* you can watch cable TV channels, some LIVE, and some included free with the pictures pack. I watch CNN, FOX News, E!, etc. You can even watch The Disney Channel live and use video on demand to choose a certain episode of the show to watch from a list of episodes. This is a good feature for long car trips or bus trips if you get bored.

BAD:
* It is hard to hang up. You have to hit the end button 2 or 3 times to disconnect.

* When watching TV you better have headphones because the sound is loud and if you hit the down button it goes mute. I had to cover the speaker on the back with my thumb just so I could hear without it blasting thru my whole office.

* If you want to use headphones good luck because there is no headphone jack. You have to buy a separate mini-USB to headphone jack adapter. And you'll need one kind if you want to listen to TV or music (the stereo kind) and one kind if you want to use a phone headset (the mono kind).

* They put the volume, camera, and "action" button on the flip part of the phone, so when you go to flip open the phone you hit these buttons with your fingers. I've accidentally disconnected people before just trying to get the phone open. On the left side of the phone you have just one inch of free space to open the phone. So you have to be very careful opening it so you don't hit any of these buttons.

* No address book searching as another reviewer mentioned. You can filter by "friends", "family", etc. but theres no search feature. Happy scrolling!

* Very hard to get to the mini SD card.

* Front screen is black when not in use so you can't see the time unless you press a button or open the phone. Other phones I've had you could always see the time on the front.

This phone has given me problems since the day I bought it. Originally, it was just slow. Slow to load programs, slow to load my contact list, and there was a lag when I typed a letter for text messaging. I had thought that was a function of how many features were on this phone and let it go as a funny (though mildly annoying) qwirk in the phone's software. However, over the past month, things have gotten MUCH worse. Now, it turns itself on an off for no reason. It freezes. It gets no signal 3/4 of the time (I live in Chicago so there should be a signal everywhere). I take the battery out and reset the phone 20-30 times per day. Since Sprint only offers a 30 day warranty on the phone, I couldn't return it since I had it for 6 months. They were going to make me send it to Motorola to get it fixed which takes as long as 2 weeks. Finally, I snapped at the Sprint Customer Service rep and demanded a new phone or I'd go to Verizon for a free one. Since I'd been a customer for 8 years, I'm happy to say they sent me a Sanyo Katana and I couldn't be happier. The moral of the story: the razr is a terrible phone. Motorola is going out of business for a reason. AVOID AT ALL COSTS! (PS - I've had 2 or 3 friends who've had the same problem with this phone. This is not an isolated problem!)

My red Motorola Razr was purchased through Sprint Jan 07. As of today July 24, 2007 I have to charge it twice a day, it turns itself off while in use, and within talking for just a few minutes it starts beeping at me and gets really hot. I called Sprint and of course they are useless, telling me if it's a battery problem they will replace it, however if the phone is defective and I did not purchase insurance within 30 days of purchase (which I did not, my last phone lasted 4 years) I would have to replace the phone at my own expensive. I told the Sprint dude he was crazy and that if I bought a toaster from Target and 30 days later it stopped working they would replace it free of charge. This dude wanted to argue with me which just added fuel to the fire, get a clue buddy. Why should I replace something at my own expense that should last longer than 6 months??

This phone is completely crappy. It has a delay that keeps me from getting important calls and is always messing up when I try to access email from yahoo or google. I don't recommend this phone to anyone it's a waste of money.

After having a crappy Nokia for over two years, I was really excited to buy a new RAZR. After playing with the store model, I purchased one with a bluetooth headset (which is amazing, and has possibly even better sound quality than the phone itself). The phone comes with some nice screensavers (and some weird ones) and fun ringtones, it gets great reception, it takes very clear pictures, and unlike the other reviews I've read, it has not had severe enough problems that I have had to deal with Sprint's customer service (so I really can't comment on their speed).
However, I have found that the phone does have a few disadvantages. The main setback is the phone's speed. Often, it freezes while performing some of the simplest tasks, like hanging up from a phone call. In the most severe case, I shut down the phone, and it returned to normal upon powering up, but the problem has become more and more inconvenient over the past couple of months. Another issue is the alarm clock. According to the manual, the user can set the phone's alarm to ring no matter what the volume setting is. However, my phone alarm always sounds at whichever setting it's on. I'm really glad I tested the alarm before I actually put it to use. I don't like leaving my phone volume on during the night, since I have a few obnoxious friends, so this is an inconvenience for me. The final problem is more of a Sprint-related problem rather than RAZR-related. My phone is unable to receive transferred files via Bluetooth from any other non-Sprint phone. Although Bluetooth is amazing when I'm using the earpiece, the wireless network is otherwise pointless.