Motorola Droid RAZR Review - A Better Clad Bionic
by Brian Klug on December 16, 2011 2:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Droid
- LTE
- 4G
- Motorola
- Android
- Mobile
- Droid RAZR
- motorola droid RAZR
Performance
The RAZR is the first time we’ve seen TI’s OMAP 4430 SoC with a 1.2 GHz CPU clock, other devices run OMAP 4430 at 1.0 GHz. As a refresher, OMAP4430 consists of two ARM Cortex A9 CPUs with the optional NEON SIMD unit for each core, alongside a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU and the usual accoutrements like the Cortex M3 image subsystem and TI’s encoder/decoder. We’ve gone over the details inside the Bionic piece and Droid 3 before, and I’d encourage you to check those out if you’re curious.
On the browser performance side, the RAZR is no slouch at all. In fact, I wager that part of Blur 6.x included some browser optimizations that dramatically improve scrolling behavior over the Bionic or other Motorola devices. It isn't quite buttery smooth like Android 4.0's stock browser or Samsung's, but it's much improved over the stock experience. This shows in the Vellamo total score more than anything.
Again, one look at those performance differences between the Bionic and RAZR and it's immediately obvious that something more than a simple 20% boost in CPU clock is at play here. Since I've been working on the Galaxy Nexus at the tail end of the RAZR review, I also tossed those numbers in here, and you can get a feeling for the JavaScript performance delta between Android 2.3.x and Android 4.0.1 right now. In the flash department (CraftyMindFlash) we're basically against Vsync in the test we use and will be using another test with more challenging assets soon.
In the synthetics, we see first that Linpack behaves as expected and reflects a 20% boost in CPU clocks over the Bionic. It's in the GPU department that things get a bit interesting, and I again included Galaxy Nexus results that we have on hand from that forthcoming review. The two perform very closely because, from what I can tell, the Galaxy Nexus' OMAP4460 SGX 540 clock is set at 307 MHz (even though OMAP4460 can clock its 540 at up to 384 MHz), very close to the RAZR's OMAP4430 which sets its SGX 540 clock at a maximum of 304 MHz. We'll investigate this further soon in the Galaxy Nexus review as well, but for now know that the RAZR and Galaxy Nexus are pretty evenly matched in the benchmarks.
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jjj - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
It's not like you can buy any ICS devices yet ( the lack of SD on the Galaxy Nexus makes it a phone i wouldn't used if they payed me).The sad part is that it's not Krait or at least Tegra 3.As for when they'll get iCS and further updates,we'll see but it's doubtfull that any other manufacturer will be able to have faster updates that Googlerola.
zelachang - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
How frequently do people really change out their SD cards? I have an OG Droid with 16 GB SD card from 2009 and I still haven't used up half the space. I wouldn't even consider multiple SD cards because I lose enough SD cards for my cameras, microSD cards would just fall in the couch or get eaten by my cats or something. When I first got my phone I thought I would end up swapping out cards a lot but for some reason I've never found a reason to.doobydoo - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - link
Exactly, and even if you do run out of space you can simply plug it into a PC for 10 seconds, save all the documents, and continue.Or you could use Dropbox (on Android) or iCloud (on iOS) to completely negate the need for multiple SD cards unless you have unusual requirements.
Cali3350 - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
I love your reviews, and I appreciate how in depth you guys go, but your reviews are getting increasingly more and more late and as a result less and less useful. This phone is over a month old at this point.I would love to see a Nexus review, but am assuming that cant occur until after Christmas, and that is not that helpful.
jeremyshaw - Saturday, December 17, 2011 - link
Quality. Anandtech beats all known in depth and thoroughness.doobydoo - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - link
I actually agree with Cali3350, there is a point at which the quality becomes redundant if the phone was released so long ago. When a new phone is released, people don't want to wait over a month for a review, however high the quality - the most sales of any handset happen within that first month.I noticed the same thing happened with the iPhone 4S review, and made a comment to that effect at the time.
Quality is clearly excellent here, and this is definitely the best tech site - but by the time the reviews come out the article has already lost much of its value.
TrackSmart - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
The Droid Charge review says the phone loses charge, even when plugged in, if using it as a hotspot. Same for navigating. This is a serious concern for me, especially when on-the-road.Are any of these LTE phones able to stay charged (when plugged in) while actively navigating or being used as a hotspot? I'm hoping you guys can weigh in.
I don't mind plugging in, while driving, but if I'm still going to have the phone die before my destination - that's bad news... Same regarding tethering over USB.
secretmanofagent - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
I had the Bionic (swapped it out with a RAZR with all the data issues I was having), and I didn't have issues like I did with the original Droid. The original Droid would overheat and stop charging. I didn't have drain issues with the Bionic, haven't tried the RAZR yet.Brian Klug - Saturday, December 17, 2011 - link
The RAZR hasn't done the discharge-while-plugged-in dance the same as a bunch of other LTE phones. Navigation and hotspot use is fine on it, it'll charge while doing those activities if you use a charger that implements charging spec properly and has enough current.-Brian
TrackSmart - Saturday, December 17, 2011 - link
Thank you for the reply! This is comforting to hear. The Droid Charge article on Anandtech mentioned this problem and Engadget reported similarly on the Verizon version of the Galxy Nexus. That had me worried that this would be a more widespread problem.