Razer Phone (COMPLETE WALKTHROUGH)(Video)
I finally got my hands on the new Razer phone. Razer had a shortage of them, wrong addresses were involved but regardless, it’s here and so I figured that meant it was time for one of my complete walkthroughs.
If you’re not familiar, these walkthroughs are my way of showing you every single thing the device can do in case you yourself were thinking of maybe grabbing one yourself. So, I’ll shut up now so we can get started because there’s a lot to go through.
Check out the Razer phone here.
Hardware
First up, let’s just talk about the hardware, of which, the Razer phone has a seriously impressive spec list.
The phone might not have the slim bezels that we’re used to seeing on most flagship devices nowadays, but that is in part to these giant front-facing speakers that we’ll get to in a bit. It’s made out of aluminum and is the same matte black that Razer is sort of known for from their laptops and other gaming gear. It feels and looks pretty solid frankly.
It has a very unapologetically square design along with the famous, whether you like it or not, three-headed snake Razer logo. The logo is inset and is silver instead of Razer’s normal green that is on a lot of their laptops (although there is a green logo limited edition one that is no longer on the site and a new gold logo one on the site at the time of writing this).
On the right side, we have our SIM card and MicroSD card slot and our power button that is also a fingerprint scanner.
On the left, we have our two volume buttons centered (Razer says they are centered to make for a more logical setup when using the phone in landscape mode. Which they expect you to do a lot since they’re a gaming company and the device is so geared towards entertainment–more on that in a sec).
At the bottom, we have the USB-C port without a headphone jack but it does come with a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter that also is a built-in DAC certified by THX that enhances audio quality when plugged in.
And at the top, nothing.
The front is comprised of a 5.7″ 2560×1440 IPS display that can do 120hz and Wide Color Gamut and is the same IGZO panel as their laptops. The display switches dynamically from the 120fps down to the more standard 60fps and even further down depending on the content on the screen.
This makes for super smooth transitions in the UI, smooth scrolling on web pages, and fluid gameplay or video watching.
Speaking of video watching, there are not only Dolby Atmos stereo speakers that support Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound flanking the screen on either side, but also THX-certified amps inside, as well. And this means that the Razer phone has some serious audio output. In fact, it is the loudest phone I’ve ever heard.
At the top of the front, we have the front-facing 8MP f2.0 aperture camera and around back our dual 12MP cameras. One with an f1.8 aperture and the other with an f2.6 aperture.
Powering all of this is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and 8GBs of RAM.
It only comes in one storage size which is 64GBs and has a 4000mah battery that can be charged using Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4+ to go from 0 to 70% in about 30 mins.
Check out the Razer phone here.
Software
On the software side, Razer has purposely kept things pretty light. They don’t even have a custom launcher, instead, they use Nova launcher and include the Prime version of it for free. Which, in my opinion, is amazing because it’s the one I usually put on my devices anyway, is super fast, and infinitely customizable. For more info on Nova, check out my video on the best Android launchers here.
Razer did add a few apps to the device that are worth mentioning though including:
- Camera: There own camera app which is basically the stock Android camera app that comes in the SDK with nothing added. No added features and the dual cameras on the back just switch from the wide to the telephoto automatically as you pinch to zoom instead of with a toggle button.
- Game Booster: Which allows you to customize the performance or battery life settings for individual games or a collection of games. Form changing the processor speed to the resolution to frame rate and whether or not anti-aliasing is on or not.
- Games: It also comes with the following games pre-installed for free.
- Arena of Valor
- Gear.Club
- Titanfall Assault
- World of Tanks
- Netflix: We also need to talk about Netflix since it is pre-installed on the Razer phone (you do still need an account to use it though) but it’s the first phone to support Netflix HDR.
- Theme Store: A place to download specific Nova themes and icon packs a lot of which are game-focused.
And there you go. Normally, these walkthroughs are a lot longer because there’s a ton of software that companies usually put on their devices that I try and go through as well as the camera features, but since Razer kept everything super simple without any bloatware really, I guess I’m done.
Hope you guys enjoyed that, let me know what you think of the Razer phone in the comments below and don’t forget to follow me on social for more tips, tricks, and tech stuff.
I’d like to point out that as an early adopter of the Razer Phone, I am dismayed that Razer has not released any factory images. One would think that this device is directed at the market that Razer seems to be catering to, namely enthusiasts, developers, and the like. All requests for the images have been met with either “real soon now” or dead silence. Buyer beware!