Motorola RAZR XT910 review: Through thick and thin

Premium connectivity

The Motorola RAZR comes with a full connectivity set. It offers quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and quad-band HSDPA potentially reaching speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 HSUPA.

The local wireless connectivity features include dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n (with DLNA support) and Bluetooth 4.0 with LE. The mobile hotspot functionality is enabled on the RAZR too.

As for wired connectivity, there's a microUSB port and a microHDMI port. Using an appropriate HDMI cable (not included in the retail box), you can hook up the RAZR to an HDTV. The microHDMI port also comes into play with the docks, but more on that later.

The Motorola RAZR comes with a MOTOPRINT app that makes it easy to connect to a printer on the local Wi-Fi network and print all sorts of Office docs, PDFs, emails, calendar entries and contact info. All you have to do is find the printer (there is an automatic search, manual search, search in the homegroup and other options).

The MOTOPRINT app makes printing documents from your phone very simple.

The Motorola RAZR can act as a Wi-Fi hotspot too - you can choose the network name (or disable SSID broadcast), choose the security type and password, plus advanced settings like the network channel and DHCP server settings. There's an option that turns off the hotspot functionality after a given period of inactivity to preserve the battery.

The RAZR can easily be set up as a Wi-Fi hotspot

Motorola have included an extra application - MotoCast. It allows you to access files stored on your computer (you can choose which folders) over the Internet. That means that everywhere you have a data connection, you can grab a file from your computer. It also allows you to access the files through any web browser by navigating it to MyMotoCast.com. That's a good app for the forgetful type.

MotoCast running on the Motorola RAZR and browsing shared files on a computer

The Lapdock and HD dock options

The laptop dock for the Motorola Atrix caused a lot of excitement, but now the RAZR is here to top that.

The Lapdock 500 Pro turns the RAZR into a 14" Android running netbook with a full-size QWERTY keyboard and a big touchpad. It features a video call camera above the screen, an Ethernet port (you read that right), a VGA port to connect to projectors, two USB host ports and an SD card slot (that's SD, not microSD).

Motorola RAZR with the Lapdock 500 Pro

And that's not all - the Webtop app provides an interface much better suited to the laptop form-factor than the standard Android UI. It uses windows to make it more familiar, an app shortcut dock at the bottom (a lot like a Mac) and a desktop-grade Firefox browser (not the mobile version).

Webtop gives you a more familiar laptop experience than vanilla Android UI can offer

There are two more docks - the HD Station and the HD Dock. They both charge your phone, give you a convenient way to hook up external speakers, connect your HDTV (or monitor with a HDMI port) and use the desktop Firefox app.

The difference is that the HD Station also features 3 USB ports, which you can use to hook up a keyboard and mouse and external storage too.

HD Station for the RAZR

Great web browser with Flash

The browser interface is pretty minimalist - all you have on the screen, apart from the webpage is the address bar, bookmark and share icons. When you scroll down even they disappear, leaving the entire 4.3" screen to the web page (well, almost - the notification area is still visible).

If you hit the menu key, six new virtual buttons pop up. You can open a new tab, view bookmarks (this one seems redundant), switch tabs, refresh the page, and go forward. The last button reveals even more options (text copying, find on page, etc.).

Browsing on the RAZR

The RAZR supports two zoom methods in the browser: double tap and the multi-touch pinch zooming. Both seem fluid and fast. Text reflow is also available to make sure that text always fits the screen width.

The browser supports Flash and thanks to all that computing power inside you can even watch embedded 720p videos straight within the web browser. 1080p Flash videos, however, prove too much for it. Anyway, playing Flash games is great too.

Watching 720p video in the browser • Playing a touch-optimized Flash game