Can you really use this for two years?
Edited: Nov 25, 2020, 3:25 PMPhone owned for less than 3 months
The decision to buy the Razr really comes down to how much you want the form factor.
As stated, it is no flagship device. The price is all due to the technology and form factor required to make this work. The original "new" razr had an issue with the folding mechanism that made it super easy to break. That is no longer the case, so you can own and use this device without it breaking in the first three months. The question then becomes, do you want to? If you are spending far too much time on your phone, this phone makes way more sense than a Palm phone (which they are still advertising for some reason) or another mobile detox device. You will only want to use it in portrait, so many of those landscape time killers become a thing of the past. In portrait mode, especially in bed, it will become a chore to use, making you want to put it down as well. If you are the type of person who loves using your cell phone and doesn't want it to change, this is a mere novelty. I found that the novelty wears off after 17 days, about two days too long to return the device. I do like talking on the phone, which is what I use my phone for the most. Text entry with the stock keyboard is a chore, and switching to swiftkey will disable your ability to type with the screen closed. Even with swiftkey screen accuracy and touch response is a reoccurring and annoying issue to live with. You will likely respond less to messages and be less engaged via text than with an iPhone or something with accurate touch screen calibration to type on.
Lets talk about stability, this processor is no screamer, apps sometimes take a second to get their stuff together, and coming from an iPhone 11, this seems way slower. There are bugs since the device is so new, most of them are connectivity bugs. I think the device heating issue is from the design and is just another sacrafice you have to live with on the device.
At this point you are probably wondering, why the rating of the seven then? Sounds like this phone isnt that great? Well as a daily driver, if you are a cell phone addict, which lets face it, you're reading this review, I'm probably describing you. This is the first phone I have had that has actually felt like a new idea, a new device. Everything else has been so incremental in the update cycle that my note 10 didn't really feel like that big of a difference to my last samsung. I guess the near perfection took away the fun and without a need to adapt to something new felt like more of the same. The razr definitely breaks away from that mold, but I think it does prove that the clamshell was a great novelty when we used our phones for speech, but as the world transitions away from talking and into typing it really misses the mark there. However as an aggregate of all the factors phone arena uses for ratings the average was 7.1, there are just low marks in critical usability segments that would make it a pass for most.
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