Razer Phone

The camera really doesn't seem that bad to me, or maybe my bar is just very low.

Really the main thing with the camera is the lack of optical stabilization. With good firmware (see Pixel 2, latest Galaxy, latest iPhone), optical stabilization can very noticeably reduce noise by allowing longer shutter speeds. The only other alternative is to use flash, which photographically speaking, is horrific (but fine when there's no other way to get the shot).

Honestly, it's not a make/break omission for me, but should be for many.
 
Really the main thing with the camera is the lack of optical stabilization. With good firmware (see Pixel 2, latest Galaxy, latest iPhone), optical stabilization can very noticeably reduce noise by allowing longer shutter speeds. The only other alternative is to use flash, which photographically speaking, is horrific (but fine when there's no other way to get the shot).

Honestly, it's not a make/break omission for me, but should be for many.
I have not taken a picture using the flash in years.
 
It's obvious Razer skimped on the camera aspects, they could have put better camera hardware in the device but that would just increase the retail cost and I for one am pretty sure they really wanted to keep that $700 price point in place even if it meant making a few sacrifices to do it.
I don't believe that adding an okay camera would cost Razer much more if any at all than it already spent on the camera. Look at what the Chinese companies are charging for their flagships, especially Huawei and OnePlus. The OnePlus 5T with the same amount of RAM and storage is $549! I would also say the Essential camera is good enough too. If the Razer Phone has a good enough camera, it'll be hard to argue against the phone.
 
I don't believe that adding an okay camera would cost Razer much more if any at all than it already spent on the camera. Look at what the Chinese companies are charging for their flagships, especially Huawei and OnePlus. The OnePlus 5T with the same amount of RAM and storage is $549! I would also say the Essential camera is good enough too. If the Razer Phone has a good enough camera, it'll be hard to argue against the phone.
Aye, Huawei has proved that. Their Honor lineup uses pretty much the same camera as the P and Mate lineup. Quality is really good yet the price is far from ridiculous.
 
So, I don't know if you guys have been following the CEO of Razer on social media, but he has addressed the camera out-cry (as well as a lack of a headphone jack).

Apparently the phones has good hardware, but suffers from software, and it was admitted, and followed by a commitment to bring many software updates to the camera. And Oreo by Q1 '18. And I'm pretty sure he mentioned adding IOS as well.

After he addressed this, I put my order in that night. Hopefully will be here later this week.
 
And I'm pretty sure he mentioned adding IOS as well.

Not exactly sure what you mean by that there 'cause that hardware won't run iOS (if that's what you were meaning, Apple's mobile OS) - Apple would never allow for such a thing for a whole slew of reasons so I'm just going to chalk that mention up as a mistake of some kind. As for Oreo that was mentioned in the introduction event, they clearly stated they intended to have Oreo on the Razer Phone by the first of February 2018 and I'm sure they're working to make that a reality.
 
So, I don't know if you guys have been following the CEO of Razer on social media, but he has addressed the camera out-cry (as well as a lack of a headphone jack).

Apparently the phones has good hardware, but suffers from software, and it was admitted, and followed by a commitment to bring many software updates to the camera. And Oreo by Q1 '18. And I'm pretty sure he mentioned adding IOS as well.

After he addressed this, I put my order in that night. Hopefully will be here later this week.

Basically, Razer pulled an Essential: good hardware (in theory, anyway) let down by inexperience in software.
 
I think he means OIS, but that darn autocorrect. However, you cannot add OIS through software. So I'm assuming it'll rather be digital images stabilization or EIS. Unless, Razer make a Phone S/T or perhaps D version.

Facebook post
 
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Yes I meant OIS... That post was at 4am. Lol. I'll have to find where he mentions it. Totally could be a pipe dream. But, I wasn't quite sure...

Anyways, looks to be some great improvements to come in the future. For their first phone, I think they're doing a damn good job. I haven't heard of any major issues, yet. I'm excited to get mine in.
 
Razer Phone started rolling out the following update today.

111.png

Image via XDA Forums



Regarding the camera, SlashGear posted three before and after photos. View here.
Here is how I see them.
Would like to know how you evaluate them.

Flashlight: I don't know if the change is for the better or worse?
Fabric: The detail in the top fold of the fabric in both the before and after photo, appears to be equally clear. However there is a difference in level of brightness, am not sure which one is optimum. Regarding the bottom portion of the fabric, I don't know if it is an improvement or not because the before appears muddy and the after appears washed out.
Fence: No ambiguity here. The after photo eliminated the washout and brought out more detail.
 
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Sweet! I got it too. It's nice to see Razer delivering. It's nice to have the camera improvements before the holidays for family pictures.
 
Watch MKBHD's phone awards of the year...
If he got paid, then he snubbed Razer a lot. Since this missed phone of the year, large phone of the year, and numerous other more "lucrative" awards.
I think it's better to just stop assuming everyone is shilling. I don't know MKBHD, but I've seen enough of his reviews to know that his thoughts on things are consistent. And this is consistent with what he thought of the phone when he reviewed it.
 
Why would he need to be paid? The phone gets crazy long battery life.
 
Snubbed? He talked about this phone for like 10 minutes of a 17 minutes video, due to winning the battery and being the runner up to the large phone and the other times he mentioned it.
 
Snubbed? He talked about this phone for like 10 minutes of a 17 minutes video, due to winning the battery and being the runner up to the large phone and the other times he mentioned it.

Mentioning and not winning means nothing. Razer can’t post runner up on any of those categories for fear of basically advertising for the winner.

Look whatever. If you think he’s getting paid out, fine. But if he is, he’s the worst shill ever. Since there were like 4 categories it could’ve won. Not least of which was best large phone of the year.

Address that first and then maybe we can talk about your cynicism.
 
So since you can't argue that he talk about this phone more than any other phone in the video by a significant margin, let's just throw it back and question the person asking questions... This is like making-shill-reviews-seem-realistic 101. What I'm asking for is transparency. I want to know what he also got in exchange for being able to review the phone prior to release etc.
 
Im pretty sure he talked about the Pixel 2 XL more than any other phone. That is a terrible argument. Just stop. MKBHD makes some of the best reviews of phones in the industry and millions can agree with me, and only few will agree with you. Just stop.

Also, as good as this phone is, there is a lot to talk about. I'm loving mine.
 
So since you can't argue that he talk about this phone more than any other phone in the video by a significant margin...

Except that he doesn’t?
(EDIT: Like what, do you seriously need to force my hand to watch this video and create statistics for you on how long he talks about each product for with a bar graph representing talking time? Which by the way it wouldn’t convince you I’m sure. You'd just think he was shilling for whatever company he spends the most amount of time talking about).


let's just throw it back and question the person asking questions...

If you're going to throw accusations, then you'd better be able to prove said accusations. Or at least have a hell of a lot of smoke. You've done neither.
The impetus is on you to prove wrong doing, not on us to automatically assume wrong doing.
Innocent until proven guilty. If you've heard of that, that's how that works.


I want to know what he also got in exchange for being able to review the phone prior to release etc.

The same as any other reviewer. He got access. This is how every industry works. A company gives free product either permanently or temporarily to someone in the space with influence, to review the product. The reviewer gets access the company gets exposure. That is the exchange.

Do you think car and driver is shilling for every car company?
Do you think that every movie reviewer is shilling for every single movie studio?
Is every motherboard that Anandtech (or H) getting requiring shilling?

In case you didn’t figure it out, the rhetorical answer to all those questions and many others is: “no”.

It’s not worth talking to you about this stuff because in order to take your perspective you’d have to believe every person in every industry that does reviews is corrupt. And not the other way around. I’m just trying to point that out to you and bring up what is already apparently obvious to everyone else and apparently not you.

(EDIT: And in case you need references, I was an Editor for a small hardware review site called Viperlair.com for 2 years, now defunct [the current site there is owned by someone else and not Hubert Wong]. Shame that, as it gave me some credibility as a technical writer, although it's something I only really did for fun and for free hardware back in college when I was too poor to afford it. I'm sure Viperlair is archived somewhere).

(EDIT 2: https://web.archive.org/web/2006123.../reviews/video/msi/nv4x/pci6600gt/index.shtml
https://web.archive.org/web/2006032...reviews/video/his/r4xx/x800iceqii/index.shtml
Man, those were the days. Of course it's laughable to look at writing I did when I was 20-22, but hey, I guess I did it. All I see is the tons of grammar and spelling errors though. I don't think they even bothered to read over what I wrote before posting).
 
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(EDIT: And in case you need references, I was an Editor for a small hardware review site called Viperlair.com for 2 years, now defunct [the current site there is owned by someone else and not Hubert Wong]. Shame that, as it gave me some credibility as a technical writer, although it's something I only really did for fun and for free hardware back in college when I was too poor to afford it. I'm sure Viperlair is archived somewhere).

(EDIT 2: https://web.archive.org/web/2006123.../reviews/video/msi/nv4x/pci6600gt/index.shtml
https://web.archive.org/web/2006032...reviews/video/his/r4xx/x800iceqii/index.shtml
Man, those were the days. Of course it's laughable to look at writing I did when I was 20-22, but hey, I guess I did it. All I see is the tons of grammar and spelling errors though. I don't think they even bothered to read over what I wrote before posting).

Whoa! I totally remember Viperlair! I used to read that site all the time, as well as [H], and others way back in the day. Thanks for the memories, man.
 
I too thank you for the memories. I respect you and your opinions.

But this weird Razer situation still stands. I watched the video multiple times. And yet I feel like he talk about the Razer Phone more than any other phones. If you like to timestamp it, go right ahead.

Two, other trusted review site/blog/vlog battery tests shows that this phone has a disappointing battery life even when running on 60fps especially with a battery at 4000mAh. Everything out there suggests that the battery champ is either OnePlus 5/5T or LG V30. Somehow Razer here won??? I don't believe everyone in the industry is corrupt, but if this doesn't strike you as fishy, I don't know what is.

Three, no other trusted review site/blog/vlog sings the praises of this phone as much as he does. He does try to sound unbiased by pointing out the camera sucks, but then immediately praise the phone. He doesn't typically review things from gaming PC companies, so he probably doesn't typically get free gaming gear. Whether or not he thinks of that when giving out his reviews are up for speculations. But with everything that adds up, something just doesn't seem right imo.

If you follow this thread, you can see me praising and hyping up this phone. I'm not hating on Razer. I think this phone would be absolutely amazing if the camera isn't so bad. And I'm definitely not being paid by Razer. But realistically, this phone should not have won an award for its battery life.
 
I too thank you for the memories. I respect you and your opinions.

But this weird Razer situation still stands. I watched the video multiple times. And yet I feel like he talk about the Razer Phone more than any other phones. If you like to timestamp it, go right ahead.

It's not really worth the time or effort. If I get super bored, I'll do it.


Two, other trusted review site/blog/vlog battery tests shows that this phone has a disappointing battery life even when running on 60fps especially with a battery at 4000mAh. Everything out there suggests that the battery champ is either OnePlus 5/5T or LG V30. Somehow Razer here won??? I don't believe everyone in the industry is corrupt, but if this doesn't strike you as fishy, I don't know what is.


Here are his opinions.

He has plenty of critical remarks. From big criticisms to small ones.


Three, no other trusted review site/blog/vlog sings the praises of this phone as much as he does. He does try to sound unbiased by pointing out the camera sucks, but then immediately praise the phone. He doesn't typically review things from gaming PC companies, so he probably doesn't typically get free gaming gear. Whether or not he thinks of that when giving out his reviews are up for speculations. But with everything that adds up, something just doesn't seem right imo.

Well MKBHD like every other reviewer is biased. He likes the phone and unabashedly says so. I think there is a difference between liking something and being biased versus being a shill.


If you follow this thread, you can see me praising and hyping up this phone. I'm not hating on Razer. I think this phone would be absolutely amazing if the camera isn't so bad. And I'm definitely not being paid by Razer. But realistically, this phone should not have won an award for its battery life.

Okay. Well, out of all the awards it could have won, it's not one that most people will care about. This isn't "Best Picture". This is some minor technical award.
 
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I run the phone only at 120Hz, ever since i took it out of the box. I can easily last a full day, and have 40% in the morning. I feel this award is easily won by the phone.
 
But realistically, this phone should not have won an award for its battery life.

Have you stopped to consider his usage cage scenario? Meaning how Marques himself actually uses the devices he owns/tests? Perhaps he lives extremely close to the cell site(s) that provide him service hence longer battery life because the phone isn't maxing out the transmitter circuit trying to maintain a good quality signal and other reviewers/testers don't. Perhaps he doesn't game as much as some of the other reviewers/testers do and that translates into longer battery life for him as well. There could be any number of reasons why MKBHD said that the Razer Phone he's got lasts him longer on a charge than any of the other devices he's used/owned/tested in 2017 and that's the simple reason why he chose that device as the one winning his makeshift aware for best battery life.

Hell, I owned a Samsung Galaxy S7 Active - with a 4000 mAh battery in it powering the Snapdragon 820 which is a quad core SoC and the quad HD SuperAMOLED panel too - in mid/late 2016 and that device provided me the longest actually useful battery life of any device I've ever owned, period, including a consistent 13+ hours of SOT (screen on time), and I plugged it in to charge it once every 3-4 days, seriously.

Now, other people owned a GS7A at the same time I did and they were not reporting battery life anywhere near what I was getting with mine (using T-Mobile 4G LTE service + Wi-Fi enabled basically all the time, but rarely any Bluetooth activity since it's of no use to me, I prefer wired headphones and always will) so I cannot say with any precision why the GS7A I owned was doing it but I was damned happy it was. Not having to plug in to charge even daily was a major plus to me when I had that device and I regret selling it to this day so I hope to get another one if I can find a really great deal on the price.

I can't stand the Galaxy S8 Active even in spite of it being available from T-Mobile now (first time any other carrier has been allowed to sell the Active series devices), I prefer the older style with the physical buttons so, hopefully I'll be able to get another GS7A sometime. Even now that it - like so many other devices - are considered "obsolete" after just a year of release, it remains one of the best devices I've ever owned and that was without any root potential or custom ROMs and I was fine with that. It was damned fast, highly responsive even in spite of Samsung's shitty overlay crap, and of course DAT BATTERY LIFE was absolutely awesome.

As for MKBHD being a shill, I've never had that impression. For many years as he was starting out he bought every device he reviewed/tested, he even kept the receipts to show he was fronting the cost of the hardware being used for his videos as well (he comes from a family with some wealth as I understand it, not super duper wealthy but better than average). Nowadays because of his popularity and influence he's probably getting a lot of hardware pre-release and not having to front the cost of it anymore himself directly - I don't have a problem with that myself and as stated earlier by UnknownSouljer MKBHD has a proven history of consistency in his reviews, from day one to today, so it's kinda hard to be able to just blow a comment off that he's made simply because "every other reviewer out there says something different."

I don't personally ever buy anything based on what someone else has to say about a device or item or whatever, I only trust my own experience in such situations and if the product doesn't hold up I return it, plain and simple - not even MKBHD holds that kind of sway over me and I watch his videos from time to time (not every single one of them, especially the ones related to cars/Tesla/"dope gear"/etc which I don't care about) more as entertainment than anything else.
 
So, with this new twist on things - Razer Project Linda - I wonder how many folks will consider it a worthy addition to the situation:

Razer_ProjectLinda.jpg


https://www.razerzone.com/projectlinda

As someone that had the original "smartphone + lapdock" years ago, the Motorola Atrix + lapdock, I had serious hopes the idea would take hold but no manufacturer has ever really done it right. I thought at one point Apple might give this a shot - there was a concept image shown years ago of a MacBook Pro with a slotted area where someone would drop in their iPhone as the touchpad/etc and knew it would sell like fucking crazy if they did make it but it never materialized. Asus tried with their PadPhone concept but that too died pretty fast, too clumsy and unwieldy to use effectively.

Motorola had a good idea at the time with the Atrix but of course the phone itself simply wasn't powerful enough to provide a good experience when docked with the lapdock, and when the lapdock actually came to market months after the introduction of the Atrix it was crazy overpriced considering what it was: just a screen, a keyboard, and a battery and nothing else, at roughly $499 which was damned near as expensive as the Atrix itself was.

So this idea with Razer is a great one, and I've been waiting for some company to actually realize having the smartphone as the touchpad/trackpad is the best possible setup for such hardware. I can't say for sure how well this could or will work out of course, but considering the demo videos I've seen (Linus Tech Tips has one from yesterday, and there were two others I saw posted from other reviewers attending CES, hopefully MKBHD will get a hands on as well and make a video) it could be one damned useful piece of hardware for those Razer Phone owners.

I personally wouldn't mind having such a setup myself if they can do it right. The obvious downside here? The pricing, which nobody has any clue about, and with them now saying the Razer lapdock is supposed to come with 200GB of internal storage (some Flash-based memory, could be just a microSD card on the mobo, who knows, but it'll need to be pretty power efficient so there won't be a hard drive or probably a full SSD or NVMe in it) then that means the pricing of this lapdock is going to be crucial to its potential success.

If they can keep it under $300 it'll be a big winner and considering the components needed to make it I don't see that being a big issue but, if I had to guess I'd say they'll go for at least $379-399, potentially more but that'll be problematic for customers. When you can buy a damned Chromebook that can nowadays run Android apps for $300-400 people will probably just do that instead of a "dumb dock" piece of hardware which is what a lapdock is: it has no processing capabilities, that's what the smartphone is for.

I hope they bring it to market, regardless, it's something I think has great potential for acceptance and starting the more serious merging of smartphones and more traditional laptop style capabilities. I'm just surprised it took some company this long to finally do it. I'd still like to have a Razer Phone, actually, but for the time being it's just beyond my finances unfortunately, maybe someday. ;)
 
I'm definitely intrigued by it. I wish that I didn't have to take my phone case off every time I used it... Because all Razer Phone owners know, this phone is very slick and pretty much requires a case.
 
They definitely have the lapdock concept right. Why not use the phone as the touchscreen?

Razer has a touchscreen numpad for some of its laptops. So what would be really cool is if Razer could make a wireless keyboard with a phone-numpad attachments for a media/gaming keyboard. Or even an even make the razer synapse software portable on the mobile phone to be plugged in and controlling the non-app specific keyboard customization.
 
That laptop dock is what I was hoping Samsung would do with DeX from the get-go, phone-as-trackpad and all.

However, Razer's implementation looks so seamless around there that I can't help but wonder how anyone is supposed to dock or undock the phone when needed. It's one of the challenges I find with this approach; such a lapdock should be reusable across a range of phone models, but many of them have variances in their physical design that makes it difficult to design a mount up front, unless the entire palmrest area happens to be detachable (which, in turn, could mean a big waste of space for things like batteries that could be shoved in there on the phone's flanks).

Also speaking of lapdocks, the idea's actually a lot older than most people think. Celio Redfly, anyone? Oh, wait, nobody ever remembers the Palm OS/Windows Mobile/BlackBerry era of smartphones these days.
 
Regarding docking/undocking: the power button on the lapdock (top right corner) causes a small motor to insert the USB-C connector into the base of the phone and lock the phone into the slot so it won't fall out for whatever reason - if you do have a need to undock the phone (I'm sure you'll be able to take phone calls and whatnot without having to do that at all) then another press of that same power button and a simple lifting of the phone's exposed edge (under the phone's power button on the side) pops it right back out after the motor retracts the USB-C connector, pretty spiffy little idea there instead of the older ideas with dock mounts on the back (aka Atrix/Bionic style) or even the ones where it has a short section of USB and micro-HDMI cabling to attach to the ports on the device(s).

I really hope they pursue this concept into a workable product, actually, it has great promise and of course if they come out with later Razer Phones they could just keep the same form factor so the lapdock doesn't become a one-off product that becomes useless with newer devices over time.

As for Palm/BlackBerry/Windows Mobile, been there, done that, had dozens of such products from the first ones through the end of that era. There was a real joy to using those, in my opinion, and I miss my old trusty Dell Axim X51v nowadays actually. ;)
 
A motorized USB-C plug sounds awesome... and also a potential point of failure down the road, for all I know. Here's hoping there's safety measures in place in case the plug and port aren't perfectly lined up for some reason and the motor doesn't keep trying to jam it in.

I'm also hoping that the desktop interface such a dock would bring would push Razer to make Android's mouse input implementation not suck, since I can't picture the phone screen trackpad being the only option people might use with such a dock. There's some kind of forced mouse acceleration in Android that I've never found a way to disable, and FPS source ports can't even have mouse aim without root because there isn't a proper API for it.

I figure Razer would care more about this sort of thing than Samsung or the others, given their usual target market having zero tolerance for anything less than pure, one-to-one mouse input.

Also speaking of old WinMo hardware, I actually remember wanting the Dell Axim X51v back in the day; I had its Windows Mobile 2003 SE-oriented predecessor, the X50v, alongside one of its biggest competitors, the HP iPAQ hx4700.

The hx4700 had a better magnesium-alloy build, bigger battery, and much better screen in terms of viewing angles, not to mention that 4" 640x480 was considered pretty impressive back then (note that iPhones and Palm OS devices topped out at just 480x320, and even many following Windows Mobile devices still had a mere 320x240 for years to come). Also, my hx4700 digitizers never went all out of whack like my X50v's. (If anything, that's one thing I don't miss about 4/5-wire resistive digitizers, big time. Note that you never have to calibrate a modern capacitive multi-touch digitizer, and Wacom EMR digitizers like the Galaxy Notes have only need minor calibration at best.)

On the other hand, the X50v and X51v had that awesome-for-the-time Intel 2700G GPU to go with the 624 MHz PXA270 (remember when Intel had the best ARM CPUs before selling that entire division to Marvell?), allowing for Quake III Arena in your pocket and VGA output. Yeah, I actually impressed a whole classroom with the X50v's VGA cable once. Oh, and later custom ROMs from XDA-developers (back when "XDA" meant a line of O2-branded HTC Windows Mobile smartphones) gave the X50v/X51v SDHC support, which the hx4700 never gained (CompactFlash adapters notwithstanding).

Back then, I didn't have a laptop, let alone a sophisticated Tablet PC, and taking something that wouldn't fit in my pocket along with me would've been impractical. I had to push those PDAs as hard as I could, and Windows Mobile gave me the software flexibility to do that. They were real power user tools.

Ironically, even though my current Galaxy Note 4 and 8 are far more capable than my PDAs of last decade, even packing far superior pen input than a resistive digitizer and cheap plastic stylus could ever hope to offer, I never end up using them to the same power user extremes.
 
Worst thing about this is you can't use a case with this dock
 
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Taking a case off and putting one on takes seconds, I still can't believe people focus so much on that aspect of smartphones so often, it's a bit silly in most respects, but that's just my take on it. If someone were interested in this particular setup with the Razer Phone and this lapdock one would be expected to know going in that a case isn't going to be possible in regular usage without having to remove it and put it on.

Perhaps it might be possible to get a USB-C extender cable and attach it to the connector in the dock when it extrudes inside the slotted area where the phone should be, I don't know for sure but it's possible I suppose. A bit cumbersome and going against the entire concept of the docking aspects but if it works then whatever.

For the record I do use cases with my smartphones, and matte anti-glare screen protectors without fail, but with this setup as mentioned, this Razer Phone + this (hopefully going to be manufactured) lapdock I more than likely still wouldn't have any issues with using a case and removing it as required for times when I'd want to use the full lapdock functionality. I mean it's not like I'd be taking the lapdock absolutely everywhere I go, obviously, but having it as an option on-the-go would be awesome and I'd know ahead of time what would be required to make proper use of it.
 
To be fair, it depends on the case design as to whether it's an inconvenience or not.

Something like a Caseology Vault slips on and off in a second, an OtterBox Commuter takes a smidge longer due to the two-piece design, and the OtterBox Defender is utter hell to get a phone in and out of on a whim. (Oh, and then there's their Armor 1900 Series PDA Case that I used to have for my hx4700; you can utterly forget about putting that thing in your pocket, it's a brick!)

I went with a Commuter for my Note 4 since I wanted the port flaps to keep dust and moisture out, but I also wanted a case that was easy to pop off if I wanted to dock the thing in the Gear VR or pop the back to swap batteries and/or microSD cards. (Oh, how I miss removable batteries...) The Note 8 has IP68, so I figured the lack of port flaps on the Vault wouldn't be an issue.

Here's hoping the Razer Phone has some decent case options, at least. Anything that isn't Apple, Samsung or even LG tends to be a crapshoot when it comes to available accessories, and the Razer Phone is as niche as it gets for the smartphone market.
 
So owners of the Razer phone, speak up and let us know if you are still enjoying/liking the phone.
 
It's a first good try. I hope they continue to refine there phones. More players in the market the more pressure and hopefully reverse this trend of 1000$ smartphones
 
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