Motorola Droid RAZR hands on

Seth Weintraub | Oct 19 2011 - 9:05 am PT

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYLL1zWT0zk]

Just getting my barrings after a crazy day yesterday…and have to say that of the Ice Cream Sandwich and Nexus announcements, I was most blown away by the Motorola Droid RAZR. Well the hardware anyway – we didn’t get to spend any time with the Software which is Android 2.3.5 with Motorola and Verizon Droid overlays. All I can say about that is it is typical for the Droid line as far as I can see. But let’s talk hardware really quick, shall we?

I’m going to say it: On hardware alone, this is the most impressive piece of mobile device equipment I’ve ever seen. It is both impossibly thin and feels incredibly solid. As you can see in the video above, when someone picks it up, there is a gasp. It’s like picking up a material so light and strong (titanium?) with such a vibrant display that you can’t reconcile it with your past smartphone experiences. Sure Samsung makes devices similar in size and weight, but they are plastic. This is a super-light metal phone that doesn’t bend and whose back cover doesn’t fall off.

People will point out the bump at the top as making it thick – but even the bump is thinner than most smartphones (see below) and it is “so big” because it needs to house an LTE antenna and a 8-megapixel backlit CCD camera with advanced lens technology.

The display is also the best I’ve ever seen perhaps save for the tablet-phone tweener 5.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Note. At a more pocket manageable 4.3-inch qHD 960×540 pixels Super AMOLED, it has amazing 180 degree viewing angles and looks incredible (the video above doesn’t do it justice). I’m not sure how it will do outside but the presentation room had all kinds of lights which would have put a damper on early OLEd screens like the original Droid. When compared to the Motorola Droid Bionic’s 4.3 inch display, it isn’t even close. This looks like the highest end Samsung display.

For all of its thin-ness, Motorola still touts it as having a much better batter life than its competitors on LTE.

Again, based on hardware alone – I’ve yet to use it – this is the best phone I’ve ever seen. It goes on pre-order at the end of the month and hits stores some time in November (hopefully before Black Friday). If Motorola has production delays like it did with the now obsolete Bionic, it will have missed a pretty significant opening. If it delivers the product on time and without any glitches in the software, this will be its most significant phone since the original Droid, which put Android on the map two years ago.