Motorola RAZR V3

Every now and again something comes along that’s just a little bit special. It’s obvious as soon as you see it, whether it’s Rooney on the pitch, that iPod in your pocket or a balding, overweight man in a wheelchair who’s faking a disability. It’s something that’s stands out from the crowd, that makes you sit up and realise that the envelope’s never been pushed in this direction before.

That’s what we thought when we saw the Motorola RAZR V3 upon its debut and, since that day a year and a half ago (has it really been that long? – Ed), it’s gone on to become the phone of choice for those who care about design. It really is a classic and it’s not until you feel its cool metal casing in your hand that you realise just how far ahead of the pack it is.

There’s no handset that feels as good to hold, or has that certain “je ne sais quoi” that makes you feel better just having it in the palm of your hand. While it’s not as tiny as you would have imagined, it’s thinner, at just 13mm. When you open the RAZR, its size becomes apparent; hold it to your ear and it’s the same length as an ordinary telephone. The screen is massive and the fancy keys, chemically etched from a single sheet of nickel-plated copper alloy, are nice and large for fat-fingered phone fanatics everywhere.

But you just know that sacrifices are going to have to be made with such a thin form-factor, and you wouldn't be wrong. Firstly, the phone’s performance when playing games is awful, a problem that’s due to the RAZR’s small but weak internals. Loading times are lengthy and, when you do get the action, it’s woefully slow. Some games we tried didn’t even play full-screen on the 176 x 220 resolution display, instead confining themselves to a much smaller window in the centre. There is a decent selection of titles on offer – certainly more than that other looker, the Samsung D600 – but whether you’ll have the patience to stick with any of them is another matter altogether.

The battery life is another nuisance; it’s significantly shorter than many other handsets. Tellingly, the Motorola website lists the RAZR’s talktime as “up to 200 to 430 minutes”, which means that if you’ve got the volume turned up and you haven’t got a perfectly strong signal, you’ve got just over 3 hours. Standby time is quoted as being “180 to 290” hours. Granted, mobile phone manufacturers always stretch the truth in regards to battery life, but 180 hours is pessimistic by anyone’s standards.

But, really, who cares? We don’t buy phones that look like this based on such cold, hard facts; we buy them using our hearts and eyes. And that’s where the RAZR scores; even 18 months along, we still love it. In fact, some of us at Pocket Gamer prefer it over the new Pebl. We’re not the only ones, either; Motorola’s on the cusp of releasing a revised model called the V3i, which boasts better performance, a slightly longer battery life and improved multimedia features.

If you do want something that'll fill that five minutes while you wait for your mates, though, the RAZR does fall flat. And, at the end of the day, we're running this site for a reason: we love being able to play games on our mobile phone. So, grudgingly, the RAZR is going to stay on the shelf for now.