Motorola RAZR2 V9x Phone, Black (AT&T)

Perfect flip phone October 16, 2008

Reviewer:  M. Kimbrough "Texas_proud"  (huntsville) -

I purchased this phone shortly after it became available and LOVED it...until I got it wet and fried the thing. My fault I know. Anyway, the point is...this phone had a GREAT viewing screen, phone buttons weren't too small and the camera was very clear. Internet access was great! I loved this phone so much that even with everything else on the market...I am getting another one!!!

NO 3.5mm adapter included.(Amazon now admits and reflects its NOT included in purchase, notice the ad now). 8gb sdhc does work. October 23, 2008

Reviewer:  Suzanne St Pierre  (Southwest) -

The Good.
The promotional price. I paid 49.99. NEW INFO. I was refunded 10.00 so I could purchase the adapter, thank you Amazon.
Its a lovely phone.
The 8gb micro sdhc card does work, I have one in mine.
The brightness and large screens and sound are good.
All kinds of features included.
I like the option to print pictures. I havent tried it yet, but I like its included!
The paper tab to help instal and uninstall the battery. Keep it flat though or the battery cover will not go back on correctly.
The speaker phone option works good too.

Shipping was superfast AFTER they finally got the phone in stock.
Having a Razr previously with ATT and it was very durable, so hoping this one will be also. The glass is suppose to be chemically enhanced to help strengthen it.

The Bad.
Well I just discovered as with my old V3, I loose reception when entering a building right away, as my friends keep talking away on their phone. I can hear better I cant hear longer. Along with bad talk time and difficult battery door and tightness of the charger connection. Im not satisfied with this purchase.
Depending on when you purchase it, the price keeps changing.
The Paper Thin batter cover is hard to remove and put back on.
The micro usb battery connection is very hard to use, I hope it doesnt dislodge inside the phone. Espcially since the phone needs to be recharged constantly, the battery life is as little as reviews state.

The memory card slot being under the paper thin battery door, that is very hard to remove and reinstall.
Battery life for talk time is not good at all, standby is fine. I have to charge it every other day on average.
The front screen buttons and smart side buttons are difficult to use, but at least you will not connect to the internet without trying to intentionally.
The phone seems heavier than my Razr3, itll take time I guess to get use to it.
I did not enjoy not recieving the 3.5mm headphone adapter and being told to return the phone to try and get it. UPDATE, Amazon is refunding enough to purchase this item, issue resolved after alot of contact with them, but the issue is resolved.
Games, I cannot find any games that you can purchase just yet. Support for this new phone is hard to find also since it is new.
The attitude of email replies from customer service cellphone support. Their just plain rude. I think they are overworked and under trained.

The one thing to point out in purchasing, until you get the Congradulations ATT approved you, you can get emails stating shipping dates etc, and they mean nothing until the congradulations email is recieved. Also, hard as they are to follow, the instructions to activate the phone are totally here on Amazon, dont waste your time going to the ATT office, that is not the correct way to activate this phone, and they havent a clue whats going on. I found this out the hard way. Just use Amazon and read their emails and links.
IN the end, I got a good deal for the price. I now see in another review a feature not working, sync with calender, I wonder if other features are not included. ATT should provide Amazon the proper advertising for the product. I do not feel Amazon is responsible for the problems, ATT is.
I would recommend purchasing a phone from Amazon.com for ATT though as the prince is cheaper.

Great phone, missing key items November 12, 2008

Reviewer:  Andrew Mendelsohn  (Sunnyvale, CA USA) -

This is a great flip-phone, beautiful bright screen, great call quality.
However, I found out after buying it with a 2year AT+T contract that AT+T disables the SyncML application on the phone so there's no way to sync the phone's calendar with whatever calendar you use. Which makes the calendar pretty worthless and significantly detracts from the phone's usefulness.

My wife wanted a flip phone... March 17, 2009

Reviewer:  lightstream 

I got this for my wife who wanted a "simple" phone and was used to the flip style. I was surprised by how solid and nicely finished the phone is. It has a quality feel to it that is like a fine automobile. I got a Samsung Eternity for myself and although I wanted all the features I almost felt like exchanging for another one of these Motorola phones. Her Razr2 gets better reception than my Samsung and even pulls in a 3G connection sometimes when mine can't. The comparison of construction between the two is like comparing a plastic model car to a real Aston Martin. The phone features of the Motorola are also light years ahead of Samsung, voice-dial, one-touch dialing, searching the address book, volume and sound quality, the clarity of the ringtones and the volume you can adjust them to. Everything about the Razr2-V9X as a "phone" is outstanding.

I can't comment on the internet or navigation features. We had them blocked so she wouldn't accidentally subscribe to something. It's too easy to hit the MediaNet or CV buttons, plus a lot of other pay functions are lurking just a misplaced fingertip away. This allows her to use it purely as a phone (although I did sign her up for a text messaging plan since I intend to send her messages).

So far she has no complaints about the heft or size (it is heavy and a bit large to accommodate the awesome inner screen). I know there are a lot of alternatives that would have made more sense for a simple phone-only usage but since this was available at the time for only a penny it's nice to have the incredible quality and potential for expansion if she ever decides to try some more features. The slightly larger size of the phone actually makes it more comfortable to talk on than the older, smaller razr's.

We live in a semi-rural area and our previous provider gave us only one bar of signal strength. Inside the house our phones usually didn't work at all unless we stood in a particular spot in the front of the house. Now, looking at their coverage map I can see why. Since our contract was over we switched to AT&T because their coverage map showed us being in the strongest signal area they have and only 100 yards or so away from 3G. It turned out to be true and now we can use the phones at home instead of having to drive two miles away to be able to make a long distance call using the cellphone's free long distance. I'm very happy with the Samsung phone too but must admit the Motorola is in a class by itself in terms of design and construction quality. It is a masterpiece of industrial engineering, design and craftsmanship.

Solid phone January 25, 2009

Reviewer:  Robert A. Curcio 

Good
===========
Moto can make better phones than the Koreans
Huge Screen
2 Bright Screens
Very slim
3G speed is fast
low profile charger
outer screen is a touch screen
camera takes fast photos
microsd memory card slot
call quality is great
comes with 1 USB adapter to the razr plug adapter

Bad
===========
Motorola is loosing market share to Iphone
heavier than the old RAZR
can't use old RAZR chargers because the USB plug is different
must buy newer version of Motorola Phonetools
If you get 2, you can only can get redeem 1 rebate per plan

good not great October 21, 2008

Reviewer:  Moon  (Oberlin, OH United States) -

Wow, I've had an interesting experience with this phone, to say the least.

First of all, when I was trying to figure out which microSD card to purchase, I made the MISTAKE of emailing motorola.com support. They basically told me that the phone did NOT support 8gb (though everywhere else says it does), only 2gb. I emailed them back twice after that for clarification and confirmation - and they were adamant about the phone only supporting 2gb - SO I WAS PISSED. Turns out they were WRONG. The phone works fine with a sandisk 8gb microSDHC card.

Secondly, the phone does NOT come with the headphone adapter, as stated in the ad - so I had to purchase one separately for about $10ish.

Finally, though this may not be important to most people - this phone is NOT supported by Motorola's MPT (Mobile Phone Tools) software. I've had this software now for a few years - it allows you to connect to you computer and organize contacts, music, graphics, ringtones, etc. Anyway, it's helped me back-up my info and transfer it when I get new phones. Doesn't work with this phone. Oh well.

Though this phone is supposedly a big improvement over the original razr v3, I feel like the interface is clunky and stupid. Maybe I'll get used to it in time.

Overall, I've been disappointed, but I suppose it's an ok phone, just not the *upgrade* I had hoped for.

UPDATE:
After a few months, there are some other things I've noticed about this phone that kind of annoy or disappoint me...

1) The touch screen, even when locked - activates every time you accidentally touch it, to tell you that it is locked! Stupid.

2) Not nearly as solidly built as my former Razr V3. I feel like I have to be super careful with it all the time.

3) Though it is supposed to be an MP3 player - a main reason I got this phone, not having a built-in headphone jack is really annoying. Buying a mini usb to headphone jack adapter only to find that it is extremely fragile and easily lost is a nuisance.

4) My BIGGEST pet peeve with this phone may seem trivial, but to me - is a big deal....

With my old Razr V3, I could easily plug it in to it's charger in the dark. It would only fit one way, and slid right in every time.

On this new phone, the connection is so small, and hard to make, it's almost impossible to do in the dark. Why?

I guess in my opinoion, newer models should improve on features, or leave them alone. This phone may have bigger screens, more memory and the ability to play MP3's, it is just simply not an improvement in design on my 3 year old V3. It should be.

I want to change my rating from 3 to 2 stars, but it won't let me.

I had the earlier razr; had difficulty customizing the new one January 21, 2009

Reviewer:  Paul "review king"  (Texas, USA) -

Prior to buying the razr2 v9xx, I had an older model razr3xx. On the positive side (1.) in the new phone the camera was upgraded to 2 megapixels, (2.) apparently the sound is clearer (according to reviewers -- I'm not sure I noticed the difference). (3.) Also, the hinge looks sturdier.

I wasn't able to use some of the accessories I already had. This phone is a little bigger than the razr3xx so it didn't quite fit in the case I already had. And they have changed the usb port to a "mini" or "micro" or something - so the earlier version's recharger isn't compatible with the newer one.

I had customized my prior razr3xx to my liking. For example, I had put the calendar icon directly onto the desktop. In the razr2 v9 Motorola continues its annoying practice of making you wade through several levels of files to get what you want. Because of the incomplete documentation it took me quite a while to figure out how to achieve some of the customizations I wanted (such as getting my calendar shortcut onto the desktop). Since I finally figured out (by trial and error) how to set things up, I've been happy. Don't ask me to do it again! Because I've forgotten how I did it now!

One one occasion my SMS instant messages were not showing up in the inbox in the order that they were received, but randomly jumbled, which was annoying. I went to the AT&T store and the salesperson tried resetting the phone, and then decided there must be a defect in the phone and that I should take advantage of the warranty to get a new one. I decided to wait on that. I came back later and spoke to another sales person, who figured out that there is a setting, which got accidentally activated, that sorts the messages by subject instead of time. Again, no documentation of this feature. You have to play around and search all the menus and submenus.

These features are nice, but if you prefer finding the answer in a manual rather than trial and error exploring of the phone, you will be frustrated. As I mentioned, even some of the salespeople did not understand all the features.

I owned Motorola Phone Tools which I'd purchased with my older razr3xx, but it took several months for it to be updated to be compatible with the new razr2 v9 Why there was such a delay? I don't understand! It meant I was unable to backup my phone's data for several months.

You'll want Motorola Phone Tools if you want to back up your phone numbers, photos and videos to your computer. Phone Tools seems to be the best software for doing this with the razr. Other software companies said their generic phone software was compatible, but I didn't find that to be true.

I also own an iPhone which is great in many ways, especially for browsing and reading emails, but had inferior phone signal reception (until they upgraded the towers in my area to 3G) and a speaker whose volume was too low for noisy conditions. Why is it so hard to create the ideal phone?

Motorola Razr2 v9x Review November 18, 2008

Reviewer:  Anneonemous 

Sound quality is very good, the voice activated commands work very well even for someone with an accent.

Phone has a metal chassis so feels solid, but is heavy. It's fairly large, so the earpiece and microphone are well positioned; but folded the phone isn't as comfortable in a jeans pocket as a smaller model.

Both screens are large and bright. I covered the outer display with a screen protector, so cannot say whether or not the glass scratches easily.

Battery life is okay, but not great.

The dedicated keys for internet access & cellular video are either side of the navigation pad and cannot be disabled or reconfigured; they're easy to accidentally press. {Edit #1} If you don't have a data plan, these keys can be locked using the security feature (thanks to the commentor for the suggestion, I had skipped that section of the manual).

The charging and headphone jack is micro-USB. {Edit #2} The box contains a mini-USB to micro-USB adapter.

Best Phone I have ever owned! October 22, 2008

Reviewer:  Bryan Wright 

First of all, I want to point out that this phone does in fact support MicroSDHC cards. I have a 4GB card that the phone recognized immediately. I filled the card up with music and all of it is recognized. I don't have an 8GB card to test but I'm sure it works just as well as my 4GB.

As far as the phone itself, I am exstatic! My previous 2 phones were a V551 and an L6 and both left much to be desired. This phone has crystal clear screens which are bright and vibrant. The form factor is perfect for me, but it still has some weight, which makes it feel very well built. Music player is fantastic, even though ATT doesnt include a 3.5mm adapter. The camera isn't the greatest on the market, but it works well enough for me. Call quality is much improved over my old phone, which means a lot. Overall, an absolutely fantastic phone.

Back Cover February 14, 2009

Reviewer:  Dayna  (Brandon, MS) -

Motorola RAZR2 V9x Phone, Black (AT&T)

This is an excellent phone! It's bright, clear, has great reception and I think the shiny black color is attractive. I'm very pleased with the camera quality. It is incredibly easy to text on. Probably the best one for texting I've ever had. I like the outside screen but find nothing exceptional about it. You have to unlock the screen on the outside to read messages. That can be either annoying or good. The lock on the outside does keep you from accessing things too easily or hinders you from accessing messages quickly. Matter of opinion. Haven''t used the GPS yet, it costs extra.. The only thing I don't like is the fact that the back cover plate is thin and comes off very easily. And it is a little heavy but not so much that it would keep me from recommending it.