The Razer Phone: A Strong All-Around Gaming Handheld with a Few Disappointments

I have to say, I was really impressed with the Razer Phone when I first got it. The 4000 milliamp hour battery and near stock Android experience were a nice surprise, especially considering it's a gaming handheld with a lot of power under the hood. However, as I've used it more and more, I've come to realize that there are some significant drawbacks that make me question whether this phone is truly worth it.

One of the things that really stood out to me when I first started using the Razer Phone was its battery life. I had expected that a phone with so much power would have relatively short battery life, but that's not been the case at all. With screen on time of 5:5 and 6 hours, and extra battery left over at the end of the day, I've found myself hardly having to worry about recharging my phone throughout the day. And to be honest, I've only tried one other mode, which is the lower frame rate caps set around 90 Hz, because I just haven't needed them yet.

Overall, I think this is a major selling point of the Razer Phone. It's clear that Razer has put a lot of thought into what gamers and handheld users need from a phone, and they've gotten it mostly right. However, there are one or two things that have really stood out to me as being disappointing.

One of those things is the camera. I had expected the camera on this phone to be decent, but unfortunately, it's not even close. The dual cameras that come with the phone don't do much at all, and everything I've taken with them has been soft, poorly exposed, and just generally lacking in quality. Even the front-facing camera is a disappointment.

I have to say, I was a bit surprised by how much I was looking forward to using this camera. As someone who's interested in taking photos on their phone, I had thought that the Razer Phone would be a good option. But after using it for a few days, I've come to realize that it's just not up to par.

But again, I have to say that I'm really impressed with almost everything else about this phone. The display is beautiful, the performance is lightning-fast, and the build quality is top-notch. It's clear that Razer has put a lot of thought into what gamers and handheld users need from a phone, and they've gotten it mostly right.

One thing that did strike me as being a bit odd, though, was how much Razer seemed to be catering towards the enthusiast crowd. I mean, this is definitely not going to be a flagship device for anyone who doesn't care about gaming or handheld use. But at the same time, I think Razer could have easily made a phone that catered more to that crowd and still managed to keep some of the features that make it great.

For example, I would have loved to see the headphone jack stay on this phone. It's become such an expected feature in smartphones over the past few years, and yet Razer seems to be moving away from it. And while I get that not everyone wants a headphone jack anymore, I think it's definitely something that enthusiasts would appreciate.

The vibration motor is also a bit of a disappointment, though. From the moment I started using this phone, I could hear the motor sounding like it was broken. It's a bit surprising that Razer didn't seem to test this thing as thoroughly as they should have.

Overall, I think there are some significant drawbacks to the Razer Phone, but there are also plenty of things that make it great. While the camera is definitely a disappointment, and the lack of headphone jack and poor vibration motor are definite negatives, there's still so much that makes this phone a strong contender in its class.

The Razer Phone may not be perfect, but it's clear that Razer has put a lot of thought into what gamers and handheld users need from a phone. And with screen on time of 5:5 and 6 hours, I can confidently say that this is one phone that will get the job done - even if its camera isn't quite up to par.

Finally, while we're on the subject of the camera, it's worth noting that there are some other things that make me wish I could use this phone more. For example, the white balance was pretty inconsistent and I constantly saw color casts which is unusual uh dynamic range was just poor just weak af exposure was hit or miss depending on if hdr wanted to kick in or not uh taking a picture and actually focusing itself was also pretty slow and everything every photo and video you take is just soft soft. The front facing camera same thing clearly.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what is up guys mkbhd here and this is that razer phone so this thing kind of came out of nowhere it was born from that razer acquisition of next bit a couple months ago it happened didn't really expect much from it and then boom suddenly this new phone and it's impressed me a lot i gotta say now if you caught that first impressions video i was very positive about it back then i've been using it since then and i gotta tell you it's been pretty damn good a lot of the things i originally was impressed with i still like a lot the build quality the industrial design choices and just overall how unique it is i actually love it now razer is a gaming company and they say this is a phone built for gaming but when you build for gaming a lot of things end up also being great as a result so on the outside this thing might as well be the opposite of the iphone 10 where all these modern phones now are shooting for this sleek curvy modern pebble look razer phone is more of the boxy squared off brick and i kind of dig it there's only one color and razer told me it's the same matte black that they use on their laptops and that makes sense here and it's been surprisingly good at not catching fingerprints as you can see we all know matte black can catch a lot of them so that was a pleasant surprise the one thing about the back is this logo i wish it wasn't in this little cutout it might be laser etched but because they put it in the cutout it feels like it's like this sticker that i could accidentally scrape off if i'm not too careful it feels cheaper i wish they just put the laser etching right on the outside of the metal everything else about the outside of this phone though is prime i'm telling you huge front-facing speakers quad hd ips display clean lines everywhere obviously well hidden antenna lines and at this point no other phone looks like it next bit robin obviously you can't really get any more but that was smaller and way more flimsy and plastic this is that all metal beast but the buttons are terrible though i wish they ditched those buttons from the robin but you still have these tiny but more importantly really mushy buttons i've been trying to give them a chance since i first got them but i'm really not a fan the power button also being the fingerprint reader you know that's cool with the placement the combo makes sense for unlocking your phone without thinking about it but it's not very tactile or clicky so stuff like double tapping to open the camera feels mushy so i just stopped doing it taking a screenshot etc i just don't enjoy pressing these buttons and the volume buttons are just lame i wish they were bigger clickier just a lot better good thing you don't have to press those buttons very often though because we're going to be spending all your time is that display that 5.7 inch quad hd 120 hertz ips display i am so glad they did this i'm so glad somebody finally decided to do this ever since we saw the pro motion displays and the new ipads the high refresh rate i've been thinking about it on phones i thought maybe the new iphone 10 might have it it didn't obviously and obviously these high refresh rate displays aren't new but it's just something different about it being at the touch of your finger that's what makes a difference razer says they did this for gaming and i get that gamers are obsessed with frame rates and games always feel more immersive at higher frame rates but this is a 120 hertz display also through scrolling through the ui and messing with android and with your apps multitasking etc so it's all twice as smooth as any other android phone ever has been it actually makes me not mind scrolling as much like i was cool with spreading out my shortcuts across more home screens and leaving stuff in dumb out of the way places because i didn't mind scrolling to them because it was so smooth long lists are actually fun on this phone it sounds weird it's kind of hard to explain and it's impossible to even show in this video on youtube but you gotta see it in person or trust me on this one and the actual display panel itself is pretty good looking as well despite not being oled which doesn't exist at 120 hertz at this time it has some solid color and contrast some have said it doesn't get bright enough i disagree it gets bright enough for me to read outside it's just that there's not a huge range of brightness so it doesn't feel like you have much to play with when you try to turn it up and also auto brightness is a bit wonky and inconsistent but that can be fixed with software pretty easily and speaking of software the razer phone runs pretty close to stock android now right now it is on top of android 7.1.1 fingers crossed it'll be on 8.0 oreo sooner than later hopefully by the beginning of next year but it is pretty clean and it essentially takes the oneplus approach of just adding a couple features here and there where it's useful and the phone is already a great performer with the snapdragon 835 and the fully ridiculous 8 gigs of ram and gliding through your settings you can see there's not a whole ton of extra stuff there's some display settings to cap the max adaptable frame rate some management of the expandable storage and there's a game booster and while i didn't find i needed to use it to get great performance i did find the do not disturb while gaming mode pretty useful that just straight up stops any and all notifications from getting through and interrupting while you're in a full screen gaming session nice but basically the biggest customization that came on this phone came from their decision to use nova launcher prime as the stock launcher out the box which is awesome nova has a ton of customization and plenty of android users know that already i think that was a great move so then on top of all that if all that didn't have you convinced razer phone also happens to have the best speakers ever in any phone that i've ever heard so there's that these are separate stereo front-facing speakers independently amplified and tuned specifically to blow your mind now these are great basically they are so loud i stopped connecting to my google home at home to use as a speaker i just toss the phone on a table wherever i'm at in the middle of a room and that is the personal jukebox instead of the google home it's kind of amazing also pro tip the alarm clock volume in the settings on this phone is all the way maxed out by default uh so if you don't adjust that then the first day you wake up after buying the razer phone you will be absolutely shook my decision okay battery life uh turns out it's also amazing i mean i guess we shouldn't be surprised by a phone with a 4 000 milliamp hour battery and near stock android but it's true this thing killed it i originally thought when i got this that they built the lower frame rate caps under 120 hertz to save on battery i think they kind of knew that 120 hertz that would kind of kill the battery they set it by default to 90 hertz but this thing has had the longest battery life of any phone i've used this year at 120 hertz i set it to 120 hertz when i got it and haven't even tried the other modes because i've had such great battery life the last couple days i've had five five and a half and six hours of screen on time with extra battery at the end of the day to go so i'm not really concerned and i haven't even bothered trying the lower frame rate caps because i don't think i'll need them all right so this one has a lot going for it so i think at this point it's time to talk about the one thing that'll probably let you down about this phone and that is the cameras this uh this this camera isn't good and i i kind of had a feeling going in i mean it's not a big focus of this phone anyway you know you're building you're building something for gamers does a gamer really even need a camera at all not really so you know they threw in your typical dual cameras that you kind of are required to have as a 2017 flagship phone but don't expect this to do anything above the bare minimum of just capturing a subject if you really want a more detailed explanation white balance was pretty inconsistent and i constantly saw color casts which is unusual uh dynamic range was just poor just weak af exposure was hit or miss depending on if hdr wanted to kick in or not uh taking a picture and actually focusing itself was also pretty slow and everything every photo and video you take is just soft soft the front facing camera same thing clearly i don't have a lot of good things to say about this camera but uh you're not buying it for the camera let's just put it that way now it could always change and miraculously get a software update that brings it from a d plus to a c plus that is acceptable maybe but i doubt it honestly this is an actual deal breaker for me and it's the only reason i can't keep using it as my daily driver and while we're at it uh no headphone jack and it's 2017 so i get it that's been the trend but i think razer kind of miss out on an opportunity to be another one of those phones and manufacturers that listens to the enthusiast and gives them what they want right now i think that go-to enthusiast phone is the oneplus 5 or the oneplus 5t and that's because oneplus listens to their fans and they know that they want to keep the headphone jack around i think that's a missed opportunity for razer i think they could have easily kept the headphone jack around on this phone and not have had a problem and been again one of those enthusiast type phones also the vibration motor in this phone trash straight trash i'm gonna call myself so you can hear this it sounds broken like it's but it sounded that way out the box since day one so that is the razer phone i gotta say it's a really strong all-around gaming handheld wrapped in a metal jacket plus the sim card that turned it into a smartphone but really the only reason i can't keep using this phone as my daily driver is because the camera is that bad and the pixel 2's camera is that much better but i just don't want to leave 120 hertz this really is the definition of a deal breaker and i know a lot of people throw that term around a lot you know oh this phone isn't water resistant that's a deal breaker to me but like is it really though like unless you're constantly dunking your phone or constantly walking around with the threat of mist or water you'll probably be fine without that water resistance or like you know it doesn't have wireless charging that's a deal breaker no headphone jack deal breaker there are annoyances for a lot of people but this camera is an actual deal breaker for me to the point where i literally can't keep using this phone so i won't be i'll be switching back to the pixel despite that though the rest of this package is the real deal and i'm super impressed with this being their first try how well considered and well executed this actually is and i can't wait to see more 120 hertz displays coming up in phones even if i have to wait till the next razer phone to see it so that's been it thanks for watching talk to you guys the next one peace\n"