Motorola RAZR2 V8 has a truly graceful silhouette, but the 11.9 mm of thickness get to be appreciated even more considering the clamshell form factor. Clean shape and rounded edges make the slim handset look solid, yet elegant. It does manage to impress at first sight, but more on that after the jump.

 Solid thin

With the flip closed, the large 2" external display takes possession of almost the entire outer panel. The 256K-color TFT display has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. Its size and looks truly deserve admirations, however this time all credit goes to its touch-sensitive capabilities. It is a tricky matter, as the display itself is not a touchscreen. Only visible upon very close examination, three touch sensitive keys can be spotted overlaying the external display. It is for the first time that Motorola incorporates these keys over the display, instead of placing them under it. They come with haptic feedback - meaning slight vibrations denote every keypress. However, the keys are active only in player mode, controlling basic player functions like play, pause, forward, etc. It's a pity they cannot perform other tasks. Anyway, it's a praiseworthy innovation that holds a lot of promise of expanding the possibilities of the external display.

Above the display is the 2 megapixel camera lens. With no other keys or elements on the front panel, V8 looks really cool and sleek.

Motorola RAZR2 V8 front panel

When you open the flip, there is no way for the size of the main display to go unnoticed. The TFT internal display of QVGA resolution (240 x 320 pixels) totals 256K colors on a 2.2" diagonal. Above the display is the stylish long narrow opening of the earpiece, which looks like an elegant extension of the main display. The only thing that's ruining the good impression here is that when opened the clamshell looks stunningly large - much like the impression you get when you open the Nokia N76 for the first time.

Flip open: display all over

The trademark etched keypad is really nicely done and, besides the usual navigation and alphanumeric buttons, it also has a dedicated music player key right above the call key. The large comfortable keys offer great touch orientation. The round navigation key is a pleasure to use, matching the overall user-friendliness of the whole keypad. The keypad is placed closer to the bottom of the phone, compared to other RAZRs -V3i, V3, V3xx and maxx V6. This provides better typing experience and general phone handling. Below the keypad there's a rubber stripe serving as a cushion for the flip. It also keeps the display off the keyboard in closed position, to finally get rid of the irritating keypad imprints on the screen. RAZR2 V8 is also the first phone in the family to have the flip almost equal in size with the lower body, resulting in a symmetric clamshell design. The characteristic chin is a lot subtler here, almost non-existent compared to Motorola RAZR V3i, V3, V3xx and maxx V6.

The comfortable keyboard rocks

The left side of Motorola RAZR2 V8 features the universal port for plugging the charger, headset or data cable. Alongside is the volume rocker, which also provides quick access to ringing profiles in standby. It has additional functions regarding incoming text messages, but that's to come later on. Right below the external volume keys is the side select key, also used to operate the camera when the flip is closed. This side select key can be used to select items when you operate the handset with the flip closed.

Right side view: voice dial key and neck/wrist strap eyelet

The top part of the closed clamshell is completely bare, while at the bottom of the handset the dual mouthpiece grill is to be seen only.


Top and bottom view: the top is bare • the bottom part shelters the microphone grill

A shining Motorola logo midway the back panel attracts attention immediately. The better part of the rear is the battery cover. It is made of matt metal though it looks like plastic. The rest of the rear panel is also made of metal and houses the external antenna plug, as well as the dark blue loudspeaker grill.



The matt metal back panel with shiny Motorola logo and loudspeaker grill

The standard Motorola BX40 Li-Ion battery is revealed once you remove the back cover. It has a capacity of 770 mAh and the manufacturer promises up to 330 h of standby time and up to 7 h and 30 minutes of talk time. These are quite optimistic claims, honestly. In reality, the battery lasts around 2-3 full days in a 3G network, depending on how intense the usage is. The SIM card slot is placed on the right, nothing interesting here. Oh, and don't be looking for a memory card slot - this phone has none, just like the original V3 RAZR.

Good news on Display

Generally, we are pleased with both the ergonomics of the Motorola V8 and the solid feel of the device. Its shape and dimensions make it nice to talk on, too. However, we did notice a minor flaw and it concerns opening the clamshell single-handedly. There is no recess where you can rest your finger to open the flip. Additionally, given the polished metal casing, the handset somewhat easily slips off your fingers. The folding mechanism works like a charm though: the hinge holds softly and evenly to ensure a smooth flip open.

Motorola V8 held in hand

With dual display handsets we've seen enough small external displays boasting thousands of colors but offering dismal legibility. This is definitely not the case with the outer display of Motorola V8. Calling it secondary will be quite an insult actually, as the sole difference between the two screens is 0.2 inches in diagonal. Color rendering and legibility under direct sunlight are splendid. It is important to mention that both displays have one and the same backlighting source. However, only the main display is customizable, while the external one cannot have its brightness adjusted. Additionally, the display specs claim 40% of backlighting goes to the external and 60% is marked off for the internal screen. The inner 2.2" QVGA TFT display itself is stunningly crisp and bright, offers vivid colors and is legible even at the medium brightness level. All in all, we are very pleased with the displays of Motorola V8 and think they're worth a wholehearted thumbs-up. The keyboard has even, but rather soft white backlighting, which is not of much use. One can't help frowning at the difference, comparing it to the bright main display.
Good external display • Unfolded V8 - crisp and bright internal display contrasts to the barely visible keyboard

CrystalTalk - real-like voice

CrystalTalk, a proprietary Motorola technology is here to greatly enhance quality of calls. CrystalTalk combines voice enhancement technologies like microphone noise reduction, noise adaptive speaker enhancements, and on some products - a full duplex speakerphone. All enhancements improve the clarity and intelligibility of speech in noisy environments. Striving to deliver loudness and maintain quality simultaneously, CrystalTalk adjusts the audio quality based on ambient noise conditions to provide the optimal conversational experience. Both the microphone and earpiece grill are of ample size but still look stylish.

As we managed to confirm it really does a great job. The caller voice was so clear and real, it almost felt like a face-to-face. Almost all of the background noise is suppressed. Other Motorola handsets to benefit from the CrystalTalk technology are Motorola V9, U9, W206, W213, W175, W180, W156, W160 and W510.

Earpiece above the display • microphone at the bottom

Here is how Motorola RAZR2 V8 ranks along some of the other handsets we've measured in our new speakerphone loudness test. More info on our test here.

User Interface

Motorola RAZR2 V8 runs on the Linux Java 6.5 platform, which proves to be stable and fast, a conclusion supported by our extensive testing of the phone. More and more handsets are expected to come up with the LJ platform, and this seems to be the right direction for Motorola. However there recent announcement that Motorola will be acquiring 50% of UIQ from Sony Ericsson makes us think that a good number of UIQ-based phones will be on their way, too. Don't let the Linux designation fool you since the V8 is not a fully-fledged smartphone and it only allows installing Java apps. The very fast response and seamless multitasking of the Motorola V8 had us wonder what processor it uses. Some reliable, yet uncorroborated, sources claim it is a 500 MHz chip. Enough smart talk though, let's see what's on the menu. Motorola RAZR2 V8 has a standard home screen with options on the left soft key and main menu key on the right. The Options menu grants access to several important applications and settings, such as take picture, create message, change alert style, enable airplane mode, as well as customize home and set alarm. The Customize Home submenu allows for changing themes, shortcut keys, clock style, and date visibility on the home screen.

The home screen • Options menu

The main menu can be viewed as a 3 x 3 icon grid or as a list. The sub-menus display in list view only. The main menu icons can be reordered or even moved to submenus in the Office tools or Multimedia sections. Creating a new folder in the main menu is just another handy option at your disposal. Detailed information about memory is available too. Three tabs show battery status as follows: the first tab provides a snapshot of memory usage; the second tab (phone memory) displays details about the memory used by contacts, messages, installed applications, pictures, music, videos, etc. The third tab is for the data memory and offers similar information.

The V8 offers a very nice and friendly phonebook. The maximum capacity is 1000 contacts (much like the Motorola maxx V6), which can be sorted by either first or last name. Contacts are displayed as a list or thumbnails. In thumbnail view up to 5 contacts are shown with a photo, if any, on the left. In list view, 8 contacts with no pictures display on the screen. If you have a vast list of contacts but you use certain entries more frequently, filtering with the "Most Frequent" option will be of great help. Contacts can also be filtered based on email address and category (family, friends and work are the predefined contact categories, but users can create new ones too).

When saving a contact, the user is offered five tabs for different fields. The first one is the Contact Details tab, which holds the first and last name, five different phone numbers, two emails, instant messaging ID, as well as an ICQ or Skype alias. It's this tab where contacts can be associated with a category too. The second tab stores two postal addresses with fields for town, country and postcode. The next one is the Picture ID tab, which stores a contact's photo only. In the Alert tab you can set custom notifications. An interesting option available here is the "Private Contact" checkbox. Ticking it will keep the contact in the phone only and won't get it synced with a PC. The last one is the Notes tab where - quite conveniently - a voice note is at your disposal too. The other fields are standard - company, title, manager's name, assistant's name, URL, nickname, spouse, children, birthday, event alarm, anniversary - with alarm too - and zodiac complete the tally.

Contacts: creating/editing a contact with four of the five tabs available

In the Options menu under Contacts, there is a Create tab. It lets you choose the storing location: SIM or phone. A nice surprise lies in store though. Two other resourceful options are included: Create Message list and Create Email list. Both are there to make multi mailing or multi messaging a piece of cake. When creating a message list you are prompted to set the list name, add members, as well as assign category, if necessary. The list is stored in your contacts alphabetically. For example, if you named the list "My friends" it will appear among contacts starting with the letter M.

File management and multimedia

One of the core non-phone features of the Motorola V8 is the MP3 player. It has a dedicated button on the keypad, above the call key. Although it doesn't have the lavish user interface of high-end Walkman handsets, the music player in the RAZR2 V8 offers a pretty rich palette of options. Additionally, the quality external display and touch-sensitive keys make browsing tracks and playlists a real pleasure. Most of the playlist options to look for in a music-centered phone, are available here too. Among them are recently played files, artists, albums, genres and composers. Tracks are automatically sorted based on the information from ID3 tags. Alongside the fully customizable playlists, the music player offers auto-repeat, shuffle, bass boost with seven levels and the specially developed Spatial Audio effect.

Spatial Audio gives sound considerable depth but keeping the Bass Boost at medium level is a must, otherwise frequent distortion peaks are inevitable. Spatial Audio gets most appreciated with soul music. Searching audio content is possible, thanks to the integrated search engine. Song title, artist, album, genre and composer are the search attributes you can apply when looking for a track. Listening to music in the background is as comfortable as in normal mode, with a navigation toolbar still available on the home screen when the player is minimized. You can browse the menu and use the other phone features. Pressing the end key to exit the current application takes you back to home screen with the minimized player. Alternatively, pressing the dedicated player key on the keypad will launch the music library with the now running track. Once you have finished working with the phone, the external display with touch sensitive keys takes over handling the player upon closing the flip. The Bluetooth enabled RAZR2 V8 supports the A2DP profile for using wireless stereo headsets.

Creating Playlists • toolbar for minimized player in home screen • external display in player mode with touch sensitive keys

The video player is the regular Motorola one offering standard functionality. You can fast-forward and rewind, play in fullscreen mode. The spatial audio stereo effect and bass boost are also available in the video player.

Video player • landscape mode is more comfortable


The File manager is located under Office Tools. Its default view is list with small icons. Other available views are details, thumbnail and preview pane. We find the thumbnail view very handy, indeed. Browsing your content with the file manager is just fine.

File manager with different views

There is no dedicated image gallery; the file manager is used for browsing photos. Each photo can also be set as wallpaper, screensaver, and added to a new or existing contact.

Browsing image folder contents

Editing pictures is also done here; there is no dedicated application. Rotating, cropping, resizing, styling or adding sounds are the options to use.

The available editing tools: crop, resize and zoom are on offer


Mere 2 megapixel and video


The 2 megapixel camera with no autofocus, nor flash, is more of an ornament than an important feature in Motorola V8. The camera icon itself is not in the main menu, but out-of-the-way in the Multimedia section. There you will find the video camera icon, too. Another option to start the camera is through the Options menu on the home screen. The side select key, right under the volume rocker, serves as a shutter key when the flip is closed and the camera is active.

The camera interface is quite simple • some of the available options

When shooting, you can zoom in up to 8x, but digital zoom is not of much use. You won't get more than just smudged and blurry subjects. An Auto timer with 5 or 10 second delay is one of the programmable options of the camera. Another is Multi-Shot allowing 4, 6 and 8 shots in burst mode with a 1.5-second interval. The must-have camera settings are here, including shutter tone (can be turned off), name, auto-save, as well as four image resolutions with three quality levels. A nice extra is the option to auto-send image via email, immediately after taking it. Sounds like it could inspire paparazzi-like behavior at posh get-togethers. The camera quality is really ok. Shooting landscapes or distant subjects produces slightly out-of-focus images which lack detail.

Overcast conditions


Typically, closer subjects look better and provide more detail. The same applies for pictures taken with sufficient light. The colors are spot on and some of our shots looked as good as if a polarized filter was used.

Sunny conditions

Indoor photo tests show relatively good results.

Our test posters

Video camera mode actually uses the camera interface. Apart from the option to switch off sound recording in a video clip, the video camera setup offers resolution and quality options. Video is recorded at 30fps in QCIF resolution. The video length can be unlimited but another couple of clip length settings are available: MMS short or MMS long for the impatient to send the file immediately via MMS.



And finally, the final

No doubt Motorola RAZR2 V8 is a stylish mobile phone, a high-flier in design, adequate in functionality. Motorola faithfuls will hail it, while many other unbiased users are likely to find it agreeable. The Motorola RAZR V3 was near revolutionary back in its day but three years after it was introduced, the glory has started to fade. And the RAZR2 V8 is in for an ordeal living up to its status. The major competitors Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG have a few thin, cool and loaded gadgets to offer. So, keeping the glory alive is truly a challenge. The RAZR2 V8 has what it takes in style and high-class finish but seems to lack some of the current must-have features such as 3G and an autofocus camera. We feel that if Motorola had done just a little bit better they would have had a true winner.