Motorola DROID RAZR HD review: Now in HD

8MP camera could have done better

The Motorola DROID RAZR HD is equipped with an 8MP camera which takes photos with a maximum resolution of 3264x2448 pixels. It's accompanied by a single-LED flash to help out in low-light situations.

The camera UI is simple. On the right side of the viewfinder there's the virtual shutter key flanked by the front/back and photo/video toggles. On the left, there's the gallery shortcut that displays the thumbnail of the last photo taken (with a counter of remaining photos next to it) and the digital zoom slider.

Finally, there's a retractable row of shortcuts at the bottom - those include effects, scenes, shooting mode, exposure adjustment and flash control (on, off, auto).

The camera UI

From Modes, you can choose single shot, multi-shot, panorama or self-timer. Scenes offer things like Sport, Macro, HDR or an Auto mode which decides what's best without your explicit input. There's an option to geotag photos - that info can be stripped automatically when sharing photos.

There's a widescreen option that produces 16:9 photos. With it, both the viewfinder and the gallery images fit the screen aspect perfectly in full screen mode. However, the 16:9 aspect ratio means the photos turn out at roughly three quarters of the original resolution at about 6MP.

The pictures which the DROID RAZR HD captures offer very little resolved detail and high noise levels. The camera samples have the dreaded oil-painting look when looked at anything close to 100%. On the other hand - when downsized the fairly accurate (although slightly dull) colors and dynamic range make the shots pretty decent. Overall it's a below par performance for an 8MP camera.

FullHD video camera

The Motorola DROID RAZR HD shoots 1080p videos at 30fps. The user interface looks identical to that of the still camera although some options have been changed. The Scenes option from the still camera has been replaced by Audio Scenes.

You have Stereo, Wind Reduction, Concert, Balanced and Front Facing audio scenes, which use the two microphones to adapt the audio to the specific situation. You still have the effects and exposure options and you can enable video stabilization.

The camcorder interface

Videos are stored in .MP4 files with bitrate hovering at 15Mbps. The sound that goes along with the video is stereo (128Kbps bitrate, 44.1kHz sampling rate).

Videos captured by the DROID RAZR HD came out smooth, but with washed out colors. The resolved detail is only average and so is contrast. It is not the worst performance we have seen, but miles from the best too.

Here is a sample captured with the DROID.

And here goes an untouched 1080p video clip.

Connectivity has you covered

Like a proper top shelf Android smartphone, the Motorola DROID RAZR HD checks just about every box in the connectivity department. Along with the EVDO/CDMA network capacity, it offers quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and quad-band HSDPA potentially reaching speeds of up to 21 Mbps HSDPA, and 5.76 HSUPA. Sadly, the GSM capabilities are only available with Verizon's roaming outside the United States.

Naturally, Verizon's superb LTE network connectivity is also on board. Where available, it is a pleasure to use.

Verizon's LTE is consistently good

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 too.

As for wired connectivity, there's a microUSB port and microHDMI port at your service.

NFC is also on board with Android Beam preinstalled.