Motorola Razr V3m (Sprint)

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Motorola Razr V3m (Sprint)

After the Motorola Razr made its debut and found fame in almost every carrier's lineup, Sprint remained the lone holdout. As competitors capitalized on the Razr mania, Sprint struck its own path by introducing Razr alternatives such as the equally slim (and better) Samsung MM-A900. But now it appears Sprint's Samsung loyalty hasn't been great for business; analysts recently attributed a bad 2006 to the carrier's Razr phobia. So a full two years after Moto launched its trendsetting handset, Sprint now offers the Motorola Razr in gray and in a special-edition red version. Sprint's V3m is largely similar to its Verizon Wireless counterpart, save for a few look-and-feel differences. At full price, it's a wallet-stretching $289, but you should be able to get it for as low as $89 with service.

From the exterior, the Sprint Razr V3m is nearly identical to Verizon's Razr V3m and to previous incarnations of the phone. It has the thin profile that sparked a cell phone design revolution but also the same boxy appearance when viewed from the front. Of course, Razr devotees will know that at 3.9x2.1x0.6 inches and 3.5 ounces it shares the same dimensions as the Razr V3c, which makes it marginally larger and heavier than the original Razr V3. The other exterior features are unchanged form the Verizon model as well. You get the same 65,000-color external display with the camera lens just above. The camera shortcut sits on the right spine, while the voice recording button and the volume rocker sit on the right spine. We're still not in love with the placement of these controls on the front flap instead of the rear, but we're used to it by now.

Inside the phone is the familiar 2.25-inch internal display. We still can't understand why the Razr V3m and the Razr V3c use a 65,000-color display (the Razr V3's screen shows 262,000 colors), but it's perfectly serviceable for viewing most features. In a welcome move, Sprint ditched Moto's stodgy menu interface in favor on its own design that is becoming somewhat standard on most of its handsets. The animated icons are much more appealing than Moto's menu design and light years beyond Verizon's tedious interface. And in another change, the Sprint yellow is all over the phone. On the downside, only the screen's backlighting time is changeable.

We don't like the location of the Razr V3m's memory card slot

Unfortunately, Sprint's Razr V3m inherits the Verizon phone's awkward placement of the Micro SD card slot. You have to remove both the battery cover and the battery to pry it out, and even then, you'd better ready your fingernails. We realize there aren't a lot of places you can stash a memory card slot on a thin phone like the Razr, but surely Moto could have done better.

The navigation array shows a few changes from the Verizon Razr V3m. Instead of a dedicated camera shutter control on the left side of the four-way toggle, Sprint chose to feature a dedicated speakerphone button instead. It's a nice change, as you can still use the spine-mounted camera button when the phone is open. Also, the button to the right of the toggle is labeled Back rather than Clear. Both controls do just about the same thing. Otherwise, the overall design and functionality of the toggle, soft keys, and keypad buttons is unchanged. It's worth saying again that we like the increased texture the V3m has between the individual rows of buttons.

The Sprint V3m's feature set is slightly different. There's a 1,000-contact phone book with room in each entry for five phone numbers, an e-mail address, a Web address, and notes. You can save contacts to groups and pair them with a photo and one of 20 (73-chord) polyphonic ring tones. Other features include a vibrate mode, voice dialing and commands, text and multimedia messaging, a voice recorder, a calendar, an alarm clock, a calculator, and a world clock. There's no notepad (at least on our review phone), but that's not a huge deal. As for high-end offerings, there's the aforementioned speakerphone, e-mail, PC syncing, and USB cable support.

The camera on the Sprint Razr V3m doesn't offer a flash.

The 1.3-megapixel camera lets you take pictures in three resolutions (Verizon's Razr V3m had five choices); you also can choose from three color effects, a digital zoom, three quality settings, brightness and white balance controls, a self-timer, three fun frames, and six shutter sounds (plus a silent option). The camcorder records 30-second videos with sound while offering a similar set of editing options. You can save your work to the phone's 23MBof shared memory but we suggest using a Micro SD card (our review phone came with a 64MB card). Like the Verizon model, the Sprint Razr V3m took decent photos. Colors and object outlines were clear, though images overall were slightly washed out

The Sprint Razr V3m took acceptable photos.

As an EV-DO phone, the Sprint Razr V3m is compatible with the carrier's Power Vision streaming video service and its Sprint Music store for music downloads to the onboard digital music player. Further, you get Sprint's On Demand service for access to a host of information such as news headlines, sports scores, and weather updates personalized for your zip code. Generally, we're more partial to Sprint's EV-DO offerings than to Verizon's, and this phone is no exception.

You can personalize the Sprint Razr V3m with a variety of screensavers, color themes, and sounds. You can always buy more options and more ring tones from Sprint with the WAP 2 wireless Web browser. The phone comes with demo versions only of four Java (J2ME) games (Zuma, Midnight Bowling, Pac-Man, and Tetris). You'll have to buy the full versions for extended play.

We tested the dual-band (CDMA 800/1900; EV-DO) Razr V3m in San Francisco using Sprint's service. Call quality was satisfactory and comparable to the Verizon Razr V3m. There was a trace more static in the background, but it wasn't enough to lose the phone points. As with most members of the Razr family, the sound could be louder, but the volume level is improved over the Razr V3. On their end, callers said we sounded natural and that they could hear us plainly without any interference. The Razr speakerphones aren't the greatest in our opinion, and the Razr V3m suffers from the same scratchy quality. We had to speak close to the phone in order to be heard, but we enjoyed decent volume on our end.

Sprint coverage in our area was quite good, and we never had a problem getting a signal. EV-DO coverage also was strong, even in buildings, but it diminished when we tested to the fringes of the urban area. Overall, the streaming video quality was decent, and the videos looked good on the phone's display. There was a fair amount of pixelation during quick fades and fast onscreen movement, but we had a better experience than on the Samsung SPH-M500 and the Sanyo SCP-8300, two of Sprint's most recent EV-DO handsets. On the other hand, sound quality wasn't spectacular. Though voices matched the speakers' mouths, the audio was somewhat harsh. Music quality was about the same, though it seemed a bit louder and is perfectly serviceable for such stints. Yet it's worth noting that instead of stereo sound, the Sprint Razr V3m uses a single speaker on the back of the phone. A stereo headset was an improvement, but keep in mind that like all Razrs, Sprint's phone uses a proprietary jack.

Due to the EV-DO capability, we enjoyed fast downloads and Web browsing. But the phone itself was somewhat sluggish when opening and closing between applications. It was common to have to wait a few seconds when opening and navigating through the menus

The Motorola Razr V3m for Sprint has a rated talk time of 3.2 hours and a rated standby time of 8.3 days. We tested it and our results were a talk time of 3 hours and 11 minutes. According to FCC radiation tests, the Sprint Razr V3m has a digital SAR rating of 1.41 watts per kilogram.