Razer Phone hands-on review

Camera

London is a beautiful city and it gave us an opportunity to take a bunch of great sample photos with the newly introduced Razer Phone. We used the main camera, tried HDR mode, tested the tele photo camera and snapped plenty of selfies (some of which in HDR as well). We'll break down the images by category.

Photos

The Razer Phone features a 12MP camera with a bright f/1.8 lens. We have daytime shots, indoor shots and even a few night photos. Outdoor photos offer plenty of detail, though there's a warm tint and the colors are a tad oversaturated. The colors are pleasing if not always accurate. The camera tends to underexpose the shadows when it hits the limits of its dynamic range.

Razer Phone camera samples: main camera, no HDR

HDR

That's what HDR mode is for! With its help, the camera improves the handling of the darker areas of the image quite noticeably. The noise is visibly reduced, though the image appears softer too.

The HDR mode also restored some extra detail in the highlight areas - parts of the sunlit clouds in the sky would have been lost without it. We did notice that the camera narrows the contrast of the image a bit as the whites are capped at around 94% brightness.

Razer Phone HDR test: On • Off

You can use our new comparison tool (the button to the right of the thumbnails) to check out HDR and non-HDR photos side by side.

Telephoto

The telephoto camera promises 2x zoom - a hybrid system akin to the Huawei Leica cameras. What we didn't particularly like was that the zoom slider is smooth throughout - there's no way to go to exactly 2x and avoid interpolation. Still, none of our tele shots turned out sharp, they look like they've been digitally upscaled.

Razer Phone telephoto test: Wide-angle • Telephoto

Selfies

The selfie camera has an 8MP sensor and an f/2.0 lens. The lack of autofocus means some photos came out slightly blurry, but most of them look quite fine for an 8MP shooter.

Razer Phone selfies

Since the sensor has a limited dynamic range, we resorted to our good friend the HDR mode. Again we see improvements in both shadows and highlights.

Razer Phone selfie HDR: On • Off

Video

When we have more time (and a better Internet connection), we'll take a closer look at the 4K video recording of the main camera. For now, you can feast your eyes on this short clip, but we warn you to turn the volume down - Scottish pipes are not exactly quiet.