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Motorola keeps exploiting the succes achieved with the RAZR V3 with the new RAZR V3x.The Motorola RAZR V3x won the Best 3GSM Handset 2006 Award at the 3GSM World Congress.When the model was put on the market in some countries, the model was discussed very actively. And the major part of this interest is caused by the functional component of the phone, as it is the first Motorola's 2MP cameraphone. And technically the handset is very meaningful for the company also. That was the first time when hardware and software transfer to phones with higher resolutions was committed (later this process will be automated more and thus will not cause problems), and a new Nvidia's graphical accelerator was tested. It is the first representative of the GoForce family, a low-end solution with low productivity, and the RAZR employs an ATI's accelerator with a similar performance. Thus a user is unlikely to notice any difference in either games or phone's behaviour.Considering the model's positioning, we can certainly say that the expected life cycle is much less that of the original RAZR. The device is mainly targeted at 3G operators, and is supposed to become one of the cheapest clamshell solutions with a formal set of characteristics

On the right side of the phone you'll find the small camera launcher button and the voice dialing button, which enables you to dial people in the phone book by speaking their name or number, and also listen to voicemail. You can also launch the camera using your voice ("lights camera action!"). The left side of the phone has a button to launch the camera in video shooting mode and a volume/ring tone control.The head features are a camera, mp3 player, memory card, large screen and so on.The dimensions form 99x53x19.8 mm, which is typical for the majority of modern phones. The handset is higher and thicker than the RAZR V3.The camera module and a light diode flash can be seen on the front panel. The CMOS camera coincides with the latest Motorola's devices, however provides with a higher photo resolution. The camera software improved due to the presence of GoForce 4200 chip, and now the photo quality is better.The integrated flash can be effectively used when shooting in the dark, as it is very bright and works in the distance of 2 meters. In fact, its lighting quality is even higher than in Sony Ericsson K750i, Sony Ericsson W900i, and Nokia N71. But unfortunately the developers provided with no "flash as a lamp" work mode.

A VGA camera is placed to the left of the toddler. It serves for video conferencing, and also you can get photos with it (that it quite enough for a portrait, as no high resolution is required).

UA standard miniUSB connector is a little below, and it serves for connecting a charger. A camera button and access to voice functions are on the right side (in particular, it activates voice dial or makes dictaphone records by holding the button). A strap hole is on the top end.This model is equipped with an external screen, which is capable of 65K colours and has the resolution of 96x80 pixels (21.1x17.8 mm). The screen quality is medium, and we can't call this STN matrix the best. The display fades in the sun and you will hardly make the picture out. When you receive a call, the assigned image is shown not full-screen, the photo or the image is rectangular and takes only a part of the display, which adds no comfort for a user.The RAZR V3x comes with a dual-ear stereo headset which performs well, a mini USB port for your connectivity requirements and wireless stereo options that enable a compatible Bluetooth audio device, supporting the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP), to work with the on-board multimedia player (this supports MP3, AAC+, WMV, WMA and Real video/audio files).

The internal phone's screen is made by Sharp, which means it is one of the best in its class. High picture clearance, well processed details are peculiarities of the display. It is TFT and shows 262K. The screen resolution is 240x320 pixels (33.84x45.12 mm), which allows 7 text lines and tips for soft-keys use. The dot size forms 0.141 mm. From 16 to 24 characters can be placed on a single line.

The key block matches the RAZR style,so Motorola V3x has rubber insertions between the buttons, which rise above the keys and divide them.The key orange backlighting is well seen in various conditions.The keys are comfortable to work with, and the key area is big, which makes them very pleasant. A keypad indicator activates the backlighting only at complete darkness or in poor light.

On the back panel you can find the main loudspeaker.The body construction allows the sound of this loudspeaker to go to the fore panel. If you open the device, you will see a loudspeaker's gap on the top. That is a big slot. When the handset is closed, the sound gets to the body lug and is reflected up (and that is the front panel). You should understand that these loudspeakers are different in power, but this solution allows carrying the phone wherever you like.The battery compartment and a memory slot are behind the cover.The integrated battery is 820 mAh,the manufacturer claims, it is capable of up to 200 hours of work in the standby mode and up to 4 hours of talks.64MB of memory is built in and there is a slot under the battery for microSD (TransFlash) card -- adding up to 512MB of storage. The microSD is the same kind of media format used for previous Motorola 3G models (A100, C975, E1000) and is plenty for most users.An executable Java file is restricted to 1MB(the size of a JAR-file) in size while the HEAP can reach 2MB.

More than 700 names can be saved in the phone's memory and for each entry you can save a Name, a Surname (two fields), Nickname, phone number(select its type of a list - home, work, mobile, fax and so on, available for videocalls or not).Finally, about 7 numbers can be kept for one name, which is enough for the majority of users.Besides numbers you can enter e-mail addresses (up to 2), URL, a postal address (two fields for a street, city, state, area code, country). Also we should mention a text note, a personal call melody, users' groups (unlimited number, and each one can have a personal melody), and a birth date.Automatically the zodiac sign is calculated from the birth date and a corresponding entry appears when you view the name.You can record voice entries, which contains no differences from previous phones. Though recognition works acceptably, it still fails in noisy places. Like other phones each name can have a photo or a graphical image assigned.

Messages: The memory capacity allows you to store up to 100 SMS.EMS/MMS/SMS, e-mail and instant messaging are all included, as well as MIDI-based polyphonic and digital music tones support. In the connectivity basket, the phone is equipped with high speed GPRS (2.5G) and W-CDMA (3G) network data connectivity and there is a built-in WAP browser.Sending a MMS doesn't bring any inconvenience,everything is simple and user-friendly.The messages can be attached with pictures made by the built-in camera, sound files. The ten predefined templates are really great.The phone has POP3/IMAP4 e-mail client, it allows watching the headers of the incoming mail and download their body as well. Only graphical files, video, mp3 that do not exceed a certain size limit can be sent. In case you want to store some of the e-mails, you will have to use the dynamically spread memory, just like in case with MMS.

WAP:The phone has WAP-browser v2.0 and its possibilities are standard so nothing special can be said. GPRS (class 10) is present, the settings are rather simple, just follow your operator's instructions

Games and applications : The phone supports Java MIDP 2.0, all applications that are located in this menu item are based on this technology. The number of games and their title depends on where the phone was bought. The most often to find are Rebels (a space shooter), AspaltUrbanGT (races), BlockBreaker Deluxe (one of the best archaniods), Solitaire (patience), Flee (game for children).Applications now allow using the Safe program - once you set a password, and then can store confidential data about you bank account, passwords, addresses and so on. It resembles the ones in Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens.

Multimedia:The phone supports themes. It's a set of wallpapers, color schemes for the menu, sounds and ring tone types. You can change the outlook of your phone almost instantly.

The skins number changed and they are quite different. They not only change a colour menu representation but interface windows, the whole interface of the phone changes.
Sounds: Information about all sound files located in the phone's memory is stored here. You can check out their size, info and even listen to them. The players is similar to other Motorola's phones, everything is clear and easy to understand. The great advantage of this very player is playing back mp3's in background. You can form you own play lists by the way.

Settings: Here you can setup all Display settings including the color schemes .Ring tone type and notification mode (mixed mode, when the vibrating alert works at the same time with the ring tone is present) is here as well.Bluetooth settings were slightly changed; the device is seen for 3 minutes now. Now the Print option is available, printing is possible for a message, an organizer note or a phonebook entry.

Camera

With an integrated 2MP CMOS sensor you can take photos of four resolutions - Large (2MP), Medium (1.2 MP), Small (480x640), X-Small (240x320). Other settings allow turning off the shutter sound, from 02 to +2 exposition, selecting a lighting type (auto, sunny, cloudy, indoors, office).You will get the best results at bright sun light and in other cases colour saturation is not enough. A pleasant peculiarity is a photo is shown full-screen when working with the camera, and tips are semitransparent. You can change lighting settings by vertical movement with a navi button, as well as select various effects (colour, black and white, blue, old-like, red, green, and negative). A digital up to x8 zoom is at your disposal.

Pictures taken with the Motorola RAZR V3X

(click to enlarge )

You can select the quality for video - good, better, the best. The maximum clip duration reaches 10 minutes. And it is curious that a camera interface differs from the video camera and represents another menu item. You can change the settings quickly, however the picture then takes only a part of the screen, which is caused by the clip resolution (low - 128x96 pixels, high - 176x144 pixels). Video quality is middling, you can record it without sound. And the frequency is 15 fps.
Synchronization with your PC: A complete version of Mobile Phone Tools version 4.x is included into the package. The program capabilities cover the needs of the majority of users; they include synchronization with MS Outlook, making reserve copies on a PC, copying photos, melodies, writing messages on the PC.

The model has no problems with the connection quality being a typical modern device. Musical component is on the triplet's level, mp3 play back is present and limitations are not as strict. Signal volume is higher than average, Midi-files are played in the 64-tones polyphony that sound well also. The vibra is average or a bit more powerful. The loudspeaker volume is enough during a conversation almost always.Overall, we found the user interface a bit troublesome. For those familiar only with Nokia phones, there seemed to be a lot of sub menus and searching for options was a chore without logic or fluidity in some cases. Without the help of the large, user friendly keypad, we think we might have shut the shell and given up a lot sooner.

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