Razer Phone – The Best AND the Worst
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,538 words · ~7 min read
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what is a phone for gamers exactly is it
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a no compromises mobile experience for
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the most discerning of consumers or is it a mediocre expensive product
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that hides its flaws behind flashy marketing and an eye-catching industrial
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design maybe
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just maybe it can be a little bit of both
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today's video is brought to you by sennheiser their pxc 550 wireless
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the razer phone both on paper and in practice is one of the fastest mobile
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devices on the market with high light specifications including a
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totally insane snapdragon 835 processor
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truly insane performance and insane eight gigabytes of RAM and an adreno 540
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GPU that i think could only be described as
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insane all right uh
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okay razer so back on earth none of those things would
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actually get you strapped into a straitjacket and in fact all of them can
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be found on the cheaper oneplus 5t so
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i guess it's my job then to help the average consumer differentiate between
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your phone's totally normal features and
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its standout ones that's fine the first thing they did
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well was cooling razer is a long way away from being able to design and or
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fabricate its own mobile processors like giants apple and samsung do so to
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differentiate from competitors all they can really do is get the most out of the
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generally available parts on the market and they did just that the performance
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difference between the razer phone and another phone is totally sane insane
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performance but it's also measurable i wouldn't personally notice this kind of
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a bump in day-to-day usage but i would never say no to free performance
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the second thing they did well is the battery
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in spite of razer's choice of an impressive but neither insane nor
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unprecedented 4 000 milliamp hour battery they've actually taken some
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flack over benchmarks like screen on time
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but as someone who relies on a more anecdotal approach to phone battery
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longevity i had no problems with it at
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all and even with the screen configured to 120 hertz the razer phone lasted me
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through even the most demanding days with lots of gps navigation and video
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watching leading us to the third thing that razer
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did well and not as well the screen
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the good is that the 2560 by 1440 120
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hertz panel from sharp is a total
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game changer i already experienced this kind of
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fluidity with the ipad pro but a high
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refresh rate display when used with variable refresh rate technology to keep
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unnecessary screen updates from sucking back battery while you're just staring
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at a static screen not doing anything is a pure
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no compromises solution it's insane for real this time other
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than some stutters now and then that i hope razer can continue to tune in
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future firmware updates animations and scrolling are so much smoother that
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because of the additional responsiveness you would swear that the device is more
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than just marginally faster thanks to a beefy
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cooling solution the bad though is that other than the
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refresh rate nothing about the screen stands out
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compared to an OLED we do lose the burn-in concerns but it can't display a
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clock or notifications all the time by illuminating only the necessary pixels
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compared to a more color focused lcd it's not especially bright and this is
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actually a big one for me compared to some of the ultra wide aspect ratio
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displays that are out there now the razer phone wastes far more of its face
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on bezels and on-screen buttons though
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maybe waste is an unfair word call quality on the handset in
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particular was pretty unexceptional but when it came to playing games or
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watching movies that wasted speaker space was an absolute
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godsend now i went out of my way to praise the pixel 2 and pixel 2 xl for
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their spectacular front-facing speakers even though it did cost us a headphone
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jack and razer is going to get the exact
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same treatment here great speakers guys wish it had a headphone jack
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yes somewhere in there and the skin is actually another
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highlight they're using a nearly stock Android skin that seems to kind of
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borrow from the oneplus playbook nothing razer added feels like bloat and
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their game booster which lets you tune performance versus battery life on a per
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game basis is pretty cool so no complaints here other than the usual
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warning that comes from buying a low volume Android phone the expediency of
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razer software updates and how long you
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can expect to get them on their first generation product are both unknown
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quantities at this time and that isn't the only buyer beware
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statement that i've got about this phone here are a few more in no particular
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order one it's not waterproof for careful people this might not be a
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huge deal but ip67 ingress protection is
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quickly becoming industry standard and this omission is made worse by number
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two the razer phone's ergonomics are not great
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i understand why they went with this blocky shape it's cheaper and it gives
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them much more internal space for heat pipes than batteries compared to a phone
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that's similar in size on paper like the pixel 2 xl but curvier
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but the hold-ability drawbacks compared to devices with a more
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natural hand-like shape are something that stood out to me
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3. razer says the camera is going to
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improve a lot and it might
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but right now the best thing i can say about it is that it actually is capable
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of capturing decent or even pretty good pictures
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the worst thing i can say about it is that the camera app is best replaced
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with a third-party one off the play store the low light performance
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is not very good and that i haven't experienced shutter lag
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like this in years it's just
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not very competitive right now and if all i had to go on was my knowledge of
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razer's long-term support of their first gen products and how difficult the
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software tuning required to get even identical hardware up to par with apple
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and samsung or even oneplus would be
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i'd have to say i sincerely doubt that it will get there before work on a new
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uh snapdragon 845 based new razer phone start sucking up all of
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razer's dev time which brings us to the last buyer beware price
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when a new razer product comes out
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to its credit the razer phone is significantly less expensive than other
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top-tier flagships like the iphone 10 and galaxy note 8. but compared to the
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next level down kind of second-tier flagships like the galaxy s8
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iphone 8 oneplus 5t its flaws become
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much harder to overlook so bottom line then i'm not switching to the razer
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phone but razer has still done something insane remarkable here that is
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especially remarkable given that this is their first attempt they've managed to
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create an identity for this product line that gets me pretty excited for where
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they're gonna take it in the future it might not be great at everything
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but it's the best at something butter
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smooth gaming and that is a lot more than most me too phone manufacturers can
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say speaking of me too if you guys noticed
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the sexy d brand skin on our razer phone and you thought i gotta get me one of
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them too then head over to the link in the video
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description dbrand creates awesome vinyl skins for laptops phones tablets
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consoles controllers and more they use high quality authentic 3m vinyl on every
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product and their cut is so precise they
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measure many times to ensure that they have a factory fit for your product and
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not only do the skins look great dbrand skins protect against incidental scuffs
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and scratches and they have recently announced their dbrand grip case the
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grippiest case ever so head over to the link in the video description they ship
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worldwide their products are affordable and their configurator lets you see
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exactly what it's going to look like before you click buy
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so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get
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subscribed maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also
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down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our
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community forum which you should totally join we spent an insane amount of money
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insane and insane but it's insane insane insane insane insane performance
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all right it's got truly insane performance insane and insane the insane
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insane insane and insane insane isn't that insane
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just insane insane insane that insane
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you