The computer hardware giant, Razer has debuted in the smartphone biz by launching an Android smartphone which is technically built to offer great gaming experience. This handset as the company calls it the “Razer Phone” was unveiled at the firm’s global launch event at London.
Razer has a great reputation in the gaming industry and is popular for its gaming mice, keyboards and laptops. If you will ever hear about the Razer Phone you would probably think that it would be extremely powerful with high-end specs and most outstanding numbers. It would be extremely expensive and well built with glowing green Razer logo and multicolored chroma system.
In reality, the Razer Phone is not as exciting as you would expect it to be. The phone at a great extent is developed by the group behind Nextbit, a design led organization that created one pretty cool phone almost a year ago know as ‘Robin’ which was later sold to ‘Razer’.
The phone lacks in the design department, it seems like the company did not even try to design the phone at all. The phone’s got no Razer vibe to it, it doesn’t have any glowing lights not even the Razer’s three head snake neon green logo, instead, the logo is in black.
It has a blocky design with no curves at all and has huge bezels. It looks like a piece of black aluminum slab. The company says that the huge bezels above and below the screen are for the sake of gaming, it will offer better grip in landscape and will prevent accidental touches.
However, the Razer Phone does have all the top notch specs under the hood, Snapdragon 835 processor which is the best available in the market powered by a giant 4000 mAh battery with whopping 8 Gigabytes of Ram and 64 Gigabytes of internal storage, it does have a micro SD card slot for expandable storage.
The Main aspect of the Razer Phone is its 5.7 inches Quad HD IGZO LCD display which is capable of displaying at 120 Hz, meaning more frame rate which is one of most important part in gaming. It is the first ever Android smartphone that is capable of doing such thing.
The Display is programmed to increase its frame rate to max while gaming, scrolling and animations, and crank the frame rate all the way down when you’re on the home screen or you are just reading. This technology helps in increasing battery life.
More frame rates provide a more fluid experience of using Android, the gaming without a doubt is the smoothest I have ever experienced in any other smartphone, the games look incredible.
Razer is a well known company and has got connections with many great game manufacturers. The company is already working on with game manufacturers of Arena of Valor and Final Fantasy to optimize their games for the Razer Phone’s specs. This would be good for all Android phones in general.
Coming on to the camera of the phone, it has 12 megapixel dual camera setup at the back which is similar to iPhone with one camera at f1.8 for wide angle and one at f2.6 for telephoto. The front shooter is an 8 megapixel with f2.0. We haven’t tested out the camera yet so we can not tell about how well it performs.
The additional bezels are not just for better grip, the phone has the front facing stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos built in with various sound modes.
The element that strikes me the most is the absence of a headphone jack which is an important aspect of gaming, as a gamer would want to connect their favorite wired gaming headphone. It does come with a THX-certified connector which will let you connect your headphones and promises 24-bit “audiophile-quality” sound, but that is a weird compromise on a device that is supposed to be all about no-compromise gaming performance.
The phone will come with Android Nougat 7.1.1 and Nova launcher Prime installed which is the best launcher available on Android. The Oreo update will be releasing sometime soon next year.
Razer Phone is meant to be for gamers but it has not got anything special that is not present in other flagship smartphones on the market except for the display. All the flagship smartphones are powered by Snapdragon 835 and some even have 8 Gigs of RAM and also a great looking built with an edge to edge design.
The device has a price tag of $699 in the United States and you can pre-order it now from Razer’s Online Store or Amazon.com, it will start shipping on November 17th.