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Razer makes fantastic computers and gaming accessories, but that's not the case for gaming phones yet. The Razer Phone 2 at $ 799 makes many of the mistakes we've seen in the original model, bringing the before the basic features of smartphones. There are improvements, for sure, including high end specifications, better cooling, a customizable RGB logo on the back, wireless charging and waterproof construction. If you are mainly interested in mobile games, you will find here a lot to like. However, the poor performance of the camera and the battery life mean that we continue to recommend the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 as the best phablet for most people.
Design
The Razer 2 phone has a distinctive design reminiscent of last year's model as well as the Nextbit Robin. This is a thick and heavy rectangular slab with a pair of huge front speakers above and below the screen, as well as a fully customizable RGB RGBer logo on the back glass. This helps the phone to stand out a bit with a more "gamer" aesthetic than last year's model, although it does not attract as many eyes as the next Asus ROG phone.
Measuring 6.24 x 3.13 x 0.33 inches (HWD) and 7.84 ounces, the Razer Phone 2 is a very big handset. It is significantly larger than the LG V40 (6.25 x 2.98 x 0.30 inches, 5.96 ounces) and of comparable size, but heavier than the Galaxy Note 9 (6.38 on 3.01 on 0.35 inches, 7.09 ounces). With its thick frame and wide body, the phone is almost impossible to use with one hand and strains the seams of my pockets. No matter how long your fingers are, it's a two-handed device.
The smooth metal sides of the phone are quite devoid of ports. You will find a single USB-C port at the bottom for both charging and headphones (the included headset dongle has a 24-bit digital-to-analog converter). Two small dot-shaped volume buttons are located on the left, as well as a SIM / microSD card slot that worked perfectly with a 256GB card. Enable storage is enabled, allowing you to configure the SD card for operate as internal storage. A power button / built-in fingerprint sensor is located on the right.
The real physical attraction is the Razer Chroma RGB logo illuminated on the back. With the help of the included Chroma application, it can be configured with a variety of fade and color change effects. You can configure LED intensity and even set it to blink certain colors for particular applications, making it a notification cookie.
The phone is rated IP67, which means it can withstand full immersion in several feet of water for up to 30 minutes. This is an improvement over the original model, even though it's not as good as the IP68 Note 9.
120Hz display
The Razer Phone 2's 5.7-inch, 5.7-inch, 1.440-inch LCD displays a 16: 9 aspect ratio, which looks a bit dated compared to the flagship OLED products such as Note 9 ( 2,960 by 1,440, 18.5: 9) and LG V40 (3120 by 1.440, 19.5: 9). Even if it tries to get an OLED-like appearance by increasing color saturation, it just can not produce the same dense blacks and ink. The viewing angles are good and the screen becomes bright enough to see on the outside, but it fades under the sun. The screen is HDR-compatible, but it does not make upscaling like the Sony Xperia XZ3.
The most noticeable feature of the display is its refresh rate of 120Hz. This is twice as fast as standard telephone panels, for a smoother and more responsive experience. The original Razer phone also sported a 120Hz display, but the number of parts this support has improved since, especially with popular titles such as Injustice 2, Pokemon Go, Lineage 2: Revolution and Fire Emblem Heroes. I've found that the higher refresh rate was most noticeable in racing games and first-person shooter games, though it certainly can make a difference in any title requiring reactive action.
The Featured section of Razer's Cortex application directs you to games that support high refresh rate. The Game Booster panel of the app gives you granular controls to customize the exact settings of each game. For a shooter like Battlegrounds from PlayerUnknown, you can choose to pass the resolution from 1440p to 1080p or 720p, by example, to achieve a higher frame rate. Other games might not be perfectly compatible with the higher refresh rate. GTA: San Andreas, for example, is glitchy unless you lower it to 60Hz (90Hz is another option that most games use by default).
Perhaps more interesting still, the Cortex application also allows you to control the clock speed of the processor. You can individually synchronize games from 1.36 GHz to 2.80 GHz, but 2.32 GHz is the default. If you do not want to manage all the details, you can simply optimize all the settings by pressing the Performance mode or reduce everything to the Energy Saver mode.
Network and audio performance
The Razer Phone 2 is available unlocked, with support for LTE 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/14/18/19/20/26/28/30/32 bands 38/39/40/41/48/66/71. Like its predecessor, it will work on AT & T and T-Mobile, but not on Sprint and T-Mobile. Network performance in downtown Manhattan on T-Mobile was strong, with a drop of 22.8 Mbps and an increase of 14.5 Mbps despite network congestion.
Other connectivity protocols include Wi-Fi on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, Bluetooth 5.0 for wireless listening and NFC for mobile payment.
The quality of the calls is solid. The transmissions seem a bit muddy, but the noise cancellation is excellent, eliminating the vast majority of traffic and other background noise. The volume of the earpiece is high enough to allow conversation in a noisy environment.
With its huge front stereo speakers and Dolby Atmos software, the phone delivers powerful sound. Calls, games and music sound full and rich, without the tenacity that afflicts most phones. The speakers were powerful enough to easily fill a small conference room in our test lab with audio.
Processor and cooling
In terms of specifications, the Razer Phone 2 is a power plant. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor clocked at 2.8 GHz and 8 GB of RAM. You can overclock it with the built-in Game Booster to get the highest frame rates while playing. Of course, the heat becomes a source of concern, but the phone is equipped with a system of "cooling the steam chamber" that allows it to better disperse heat.
In comparison tests, the phone recorded a score of 9,125 on PCMark, which measures several tasks such as web browsing and video editing. It's one of the highest scores we've seen, just behind the highly optimized Google Pixel 3 (9.191). In terms of multitasking and overall responsiveness, it seems equally fast, despite a heavy user interface layer. Changing the settings between standard and game modes has hardly changed the benchmarks, nor does the screen refresh rate from 120Hz to 90Hz (default).
See how we test phones
The cooling system is the key. We played over an hour of intensive games ranging from Asphalt 8 to Life Is Strange. Despite the fact that the phone is heating up, it has never been as hot as the other devices we tested. Performance was steady throughout the process, with no loss of images or jerky play, and controls were responsive. If you like to play games on your phone several hours at a time, the Razer Phone 2 should handle better than any other flagship product.
Battery, camera and software
All this power of play has consequences on the life of the battery. The phone only has 3 hours and 51 minutes for Wi-Fi video streaming with maximum brightness when the screen is set to 120Hz. This is far from the case of phones such as Note 9, which survived our 12-hour test video without power anymore.
This result was disconcerting. So we set the refresh rate of the screen to 60Hz and run the test again. This time it lasted 4 hours 17 minutes, another mediocre result. If you do not play games, you will want to save by reducing the refresh rate of the screen, the CPU clock speed and the resolution. Fortunately, the phone supports fast charge with the Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0+ adapter included, as well as wireless charging. But with battery results like these, you may want to consider carrying a power bank.
The rear camera configuration includes a standard 12MP sensor with optical stabilization and another 12MP telephoto lens with 2x zoom. Unfortunately, the camera application was slow to test, the sensor did not react even under good lighting (complete lock in one case) and the performance was downright poor in low light.
The images taken in PC Labs low-light setting were either noisy, fuzzy, or a combination of both. The auto exposure was strange, bringing out the background of the photos in the viewfinder, but strangely not in the processed photo. The photos taken outdoors on a beautiful fall day were dark and muddy, with color reproduction better suited to a midrange phone than a flagship product of $ 800.
The phone is capable of recording a 4K video at 30 frames per second and now supports optica.the image stabilization resulting in a relatively stable video. The 8 MP front camera offers acceptable performance for selfies, but has the same problem of automatic exposure in the viewfinder. If camera performance is important to you, any other high end phone (and even many midrange models) will do a better job.
We asked Razer if he was considering making any major changes to the camera software, but there does not seem to be anything in the cards other than the bug fixes.
While we are on the software, the phone ships under Android 8.1 Oreo, a generation behind Tarte, which is available on Google's pixels. The software is loaded with the important changes of the Razer user interface into application icons, widgets and menus. Fortunately, there is not much in the bloatware. Of the 64 GB of storage, you have 50 GB available and, as mentioned before, you can use a microSD card and enable optional storage.
conclusions
The Razer Phone 2 is another impressive gaming machine, but it neglects the basics. Yes, the 120Hz display and advanced cooling system will definitely appeal to mobile gamers looking for top-notch performance. But it does not allow an extraordinary performance jump beyond phablets like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, the LG V40 and the Google Pixel 3 XL, which all offer the same thing Powerful hardware with a battery life and much better camera performance. Unless you are a very competitive mobile player, you will be better served by one of these options. We still love the idea of a killer gaming phone, and no business is better equipped than Razer. But to win this game, it's not enough to play.
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