Introduction
The Razer Phone 2 is not your everyday, regular phone, in much the same way the Razer Blade is not exactly a conventional laptop. On the surface this might sound like a straight-out praise, but in reality, there are many facets to such a device and more than one way to approach it.
One thing is certain, however, just like its predecessor, the Razer Phone 2 is different. With its gaming-centric, yet subdued design, its focus on function over form, and its paradigm-shifting 120Hz IGZO display, the Razer Prone 2 is a unicorn of sorts. That analogy actually works very well. For some, it's going to be the perfect fit - the phone they have been waiting for. Though, the overwhelming majority won't really feel comfortable riding around on a mythical horned horse.
Razer Phone 2 key features:
- Body: 158.5 x 78.99 x 8.5mm, 220 grams CNC machined aluminum unibody, Gorilla glass back; IP67 water resistance
- Screen: 5.72" IGZO IPS Ultramotion LCD, 1,440x2,560px resolution (16:9); wide color gamut, 120Hz refresh rate; 580nit max brightness
- Chipset: Snapdragon 845 chipset: octa-core Kryo 385 CPU (4x2.8GHz + 4x1.7GHz); Adreno 630 GPU
- Memory: 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, 64GB V4 UFS inbuilt storage, microSD slot (up to 2TB)
- OS: Android 8.1; Nova Launcher Prime Razer Edition
- Rear camera: 12MP f/1.75 wide-angle, with OIS + 12MP f/2.6 telephoto, PDAF; dual-tone dual-LED flash; 2160p@60fps, 1080p@120fps video recording with stereo sound
- Front camera: 8MP, f/2.0; 1080p@60fps video recording
- Battery: 4,000mAh; QuickCharge 4+ support (proper charger included); Qi wireless charging
- Connectivity: LTE Cat.18 download/ Cat.13 upload, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Dual-band MIMO, 2x2 antennae, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, USB Type-C
- Misc: Fingerprint sensor embedded in power key, RGB Chroma logo on back, dual front-facing speakers, THX-certified dual amplifiers, 24-bit DAC, Dolby Atmos
Once you cross the threshold into "unicorn ownership" however, a few other interesting concerns start creeping up. As unique as the Razer Phone 2 is on the wider smartphone scene, it no longer exists in a vacuum. High refresh rate displays are rare, but still available elsewhere. The gaming-first approach to hardware and software is less exclusive still. Even the fancy RGB Chroma logo is not a one-off in the fast-paced mobile realm of 2018.
In fact, one of the biggest direct rivals Razer currently has in mobile gaming is itself and the original Razer Phone. Hence, the other way of examining the Razer Phone 2 and probably the most logical one - as an upgrade to the original. Externally, hardly anything has changed between the two when it comes to the overall design and the impressive IGZO display. In this regard, it's actually easier to think of the Razer Phone 2 as a hardware refresh (in PC terms), more than anything else.
Razer Phone 2 in official renders
Like most other aspects of the Razer Phone 2 this sounds deceptively simple on the surface. Hidden underneath, however, are a few details that can make or break Razer's second-gen handset, namely those the gaming brand didn't get quite right on the first try. Battery life and screen brightness are definitely at the very top of that list. As per Razer's PR - all taken care off. If this turns out to be the case, the Razer Phone 2 could finally have little to no usability compromises as a daily driver.
Razer Phone 2 in official renders
Unboxing
In keeping with its premium image, Razer once again opted for lavish packaging, done in thick black cardboard, plenty of padding and a soft-touch finish.
The Box is noticeable smaller this time around, but you still get a pair of thick, premium braided cables - one being the Type-C to 3.5mm audio dongle, while the other a Type-C to Type-C charging and data cable. That makes Razer one of the few to actually adopt and ship a cable with the new connector on both ends.
Naturally, that means that the included charger also has a Type-C port. It easily covers the Quick Charge 4+ spec, putting out 18W and even beyond. Razer actually rated it for 12V@2A as well. However, before you get too excited, you can't really charge the phone with that much power and the output is simply there to power Razer's new Qi wireless charger, also rated at 12V@2A for input. Presumably, all that RGB goodness in the charger needs the extra juice.
Join us on the following pages as we dive deeper to see just how much Razer's phone has changed, examining what makes it such a unique offer along the way.
Design and 360-degree spin
In many ways, the Razer Phone 2 constitutes a rather unique design offer. That's if you ignore the original Razer Phone. This is really shaping up as a recurring theme in the review, facts are facts. Dimension-wise, practically nothing has changed. The Razer Phone 2 still employs the same industrial "metal slab" design, complete with mostly straight lines and edges and an all-black, muted, stealth-jet-fighter-like appearance.
That is a double-edged sword right there. Just like the design of the gaming PCs isn't up to everyone's taste, the Razer Phone design definitely won't hold a universal appeal on the smartphone market. Now, the PC gaming scene might not be our usual forte, but we kind of know who we are dealing with here and will gladly admit that calling yourself "the world's leading lifestyle brand for gamers" unironically, is kind of off-putting for many, in itself.
Still, one thing is undeniable here - whether you personally like it or not, Razer has, by now, pretty much perfected its industrial gamer-y design. So as we said in the original Razer Phone review, it's kind of unsurprising that Razer nailed the look on the first try.
Speaking of unsurprising things, the decision to stick with the same design and especially dimensions for at least a couple of product generations is not a new one, nor was it kept a secret. On the contrary, once project Linda - the laptop-style shell accessory, for the Razer Phone saw the light of day, the company reassured fans that it would remain relevant for at least one more generation of handset hardware.
That being said, it is, perhaps, worth noting that the official dimensions for the original model (158.5 x 77.7 x 8 mm) and the Razer Phone 2 (158.5 x 78.99 x 8.5mm) do show some slight variations. Nothing too severe, but potentially enough to make any Razer Phone cases fit a bit oddly. Other than that, having seen Project Linda and the padding it uses to line the phone dock area, readjusting it shouldn't be much of an issue, even including the motorized Type-C connector, which won't be affected by the extra half a millimeter of girth on the Razer Phone 2.
But, I think we might have gotten a bit sidetracked. Nothing that a quick and instantly sobering look at the RGB Chroma-compatible logo on the back of the Razer Phone 2 can't instantly fix. Remember, Razer knows its target audience extremely well and we have a hunch that putting RGB on the phone and matching the lighting on the new Qi charging were probably just as high on the Razer Phone 2 RnD list, as the new internals. Frankly, we dig it as well. Just a little bit.
Back side
The new Gorilla Glass back surface, complete with different camera placement is the biggest change in the second generation handset. One extra perk, made possible through the shift to glass for the back - Qi wireless charging. As per specs, it caps out at 11.25W, which is quite high as far as Qi charging goes.
The back surface itself feels great and quite sturdy, but it is a fingerprint magnet. You can probably expect to only see it pristine in the few short seconds after taking the phone out of the box. After that, all bets are off, especially if you are in the habit of munching during game sessions. That can be remedied with a case and you probably want one for the extra grip and control as well.
Razer mentioned that a "satin" finish version of the handset will be released at some point in the future as well, which could be another way to go about things. Then again, we have no doubt that you can find a good skin sticker for the regular one as well, if you are into that.
Speaking of extra grip and control, this is probably our biggest grudge with the Razer Phone 2. Upon first glance, the boxy design looks great for handling. After a few extensive gaming sessions on it, however, we can definitely attest to the opposite. The pointy edges tent to burrow down into your palms, leading to fatigue. This was somewhat of an issue with the original Razer Phone as well, but it's the new-found glass back that really ruins handling, since it makes the phone really slippery. A case really is a must. Perhaps even a Bluetooth controller, if you don't like hand cramps.
Left hand side • SIM and microSD card tray
Experiencing ergonomic fails on the Razer Phone 2 is particularly frustrating, considering so many aspects of its design are specifically tailored to accommodate horizontal use and mostly gaming. Like the volume buttons on the left side, with their seemingly odd location and with a rather unconventional shape and size. These are quite small, round and "clicky" - definitely not as convenient as a wide volume rocker, but also not in the way while gaming. Razer figures that having these buttons out of the way and preventing accidental presses during game is a lot more important to gamers than making them convenient for all other situations.
Right hand side and power button/fingerprint reader
On the right-hand side is the power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader. This is another familiar feature from the original Razer Phone. Unfortunately, it seems to sit almost flush with the rest of the frame this time around, making it hard to feel around and find. However, that also potentially makes in a bit harder to miss-click while gaming. The reader itself is very snappy and accurate.
We only wished Razer would include some modern authentication alternative as well, like face recognition. Currently, you are only stuck with Android's standard patterns, pins and Smart Unlock. It simply feels lacking on the competitive 2018 flagship scene where everyone is rushing to provide all sorts of creative biometric solutions.
Bottom side
On the bottom of the phone - a single pinhole for the main microphone, which had to be distanced away from the bottom speaker and next to it - the USB Type-C port. Around the top - another microphone hole. Unfortunately, if you were hoping to see the 3.5mm jack make a sudden appearance on the Razer Phone, it is still, very much missing. Razer does still ship with a very premium Type-C to 3.5mm adapter.
The front of the Razer Phone 2 looks all too familiar. No curved displays or notches in sight. In fact, there is still a rather thick inner bezel, surrounding the 5.7-inch display, which makes for a rather deceptively "non-premium" look. Any such notion, however, quickly disperses once you actually see the gorgeous 120Hz, IGZO panel in action. But, more on that in a bit.
Front side • Huge bezels and speaker grills
One thing we really hoped Razer would re-style this time around, at least a little bit, was the huge front speaker grilles. Again, we are sure that the particular look holds a certain appeal. Plus, we definitely appreciate its functional nature in covering the pair of dual amplified, Dolby Atmos, front-firing speakers. Those are great for both gaming and multimedia and really loud in person. However, it just looks outdated on a 2018 flagship, even one as different as the Razer Phone 2. And it's also really easy to get grime and various small particles trapped in the grille.
After only a few days of use of the original Razer Phone 2, the two chins start looking rather nasty and perpetually dirty, and there's not much you can do about that. You don't want to rub the grilles with anything chemical, since these are stickers placed above the speakers and will come off and wrinkle up quite easily.
Interestingly enough, even with the significant number of tiny holes on the front, the Razer Phone 2 still managed to earn an official ingress protection rating. IP67, to be exact. That's a clear upgrade over the original.
Display
If we had to pick one headlining feature on the Razer Phone 2, it would definitely be the RGB Chroma logo! In fact, we would have preferred a second logo on the front of the device instead of a display. Joking aside, the Razer Phone 2 has a truly unique display. Again, unique with a sibling twist, since the original Razer Phone has pretty much identical display tech.
In keeping with "PC master race" traditions, the screen in question has plenty of titles and figures to throw around: ULTRAMOTION, 120Hz, IGZO, Wide Color Gamut. As far as familiar metrics go, it is a 1440 x 2560 pixel panel, with a traditional 16:9 aspect ratio, which works out to a very sharp 513ppi. Razer's justification for sticking with the traditional aspect, instead of going with the trendy 2018 extra-tall display crowd is content consumption. There is something to that, since most video content is, indeed, still delivered in 16:9 aspect ratio and that's unlikely to change anytime soon. Plus, if you really care about your in-game frame rates, then the last thing you would want is rendering extra pixels on the sides of the image.
Anyway, to really appreciate the Razer Phone 2's display and its unique nature, we have to start picking apart the aforementioned technologies it incorporates. If you are already familiar with the original Razer Phone and its panel, it is worth starting the tour off with a comparison of the two. On paper, they look really similar and that's no coincidence. We are pretty certain this panel also comes courtesy of SHARP. In fact, it is probably the exact same panel, only handled and controlled a bit differently.
One of the main shortcomings of the original Razer Phone IGZO display was its inadequate brightness, topping off at around 300 nits. Razer has since acknowledged the issue and as a result, the Razer Phone 2 gets noticeably brighter. Now, the company's PR department claims peek brightness of 580 nits, which we really tried to validate. No matter how bright of a light source we introduced to the phone's ambient light sensor, however, the best we managed to get out of the max auto boosted mode is 426 nits. Under normal conditions, simply setting the brightness slider to maximum yields around 380 nits.
| Display test | 100% brightness | ||
| Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | ||
| 0.554 | 778 | 1404 | |
| 0 | 658 | ∞ | |
| 0.003 | 657 | 219000 | |
| 0 | 647 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 631 | ∞ | |
| 0.002 | 624 | 312000 | |
| 0 | 620 | ∞ | |
| 0.002 | 508 | 254000 | |
| 0.347 | 491 | 1415 | |
| 0.414 | 470 | 1135 | |
| 0.314 | 461 | 1468 | |
| 0 | 458 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 455 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 453 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 442 | ∞ | |
| 0.403 | 426 | 1057 | |
| 0 | 426 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 420 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 412 | ∞ | |
| 0.401 | 380 | 948 | |
| 0 | 376 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 367 | ∞ | |
| 0.251 | 300 | 1195 | |
That's still not great on a market-wide scale, but is definitely an improvement over the original. The same can be said for the previously abysmal sunlight legibility.
Sunlight contrast ratio
The new-found, higher maximum brightness is definitely helpful in this regard. Speaking of which, brightness problems aren't what you would typically associate with IGZO technology. If you are not familiar with it, this is a pretty good point to open a bracket and provide a quick overview. This might get a bit technical but bear with us for a moment. A modern flat-panel display, LCD or OLED, is generally comprised of multiple very thin layers. These can include polarizers, light diffusers, and other layers, but one common part is the so-called thin-film transistors layer (TFT for short). It is a layer of transistors that allows pixels to be turned on and off. In most panels, this layer is comprised of amorphous silicon or aSi - a material that is not transparent by nature but gets etched thin enough for the backlight to still be able to shine through it.
This is where IGZO comes in, it is an acronym for "indium gallium zinc oxide" - a transparent alternative to aSi that's better at passing light through. Manufacturers can thus leverage IGZO technology in one of two ways: either boost the maximum brightness of a panel or lower the power consumption necessary to achieve a particular brightness level. Razer was clearly shooting for the latter with its original smartphone, while the latter tries to strike a more user-friendly balance.
And, since we can already hear you asking, the main reason why Razer is trying to be as conservative as possible with brightness and by extension, power usage, has a lot to do with the 120Hz refresh rate of the panel. Almost a year has passed now since the release of the original Razer Phone and we are happy to see high-refresh rate display popping up here and there in the smartphone realm, like on the Asus ROG Phone. Even so, chances are that most users haven't gotten a chance to experience the glorious smoothness 120Hz provides. Alternatively, some that have had the pleasure to use one of Apple's recent 120Hz tablets can attest to just how much of an experience changer it is.
That level of smoothness does, however, come at a cost. Razer has done a great job optimizing its UI to make it run really smooth at 120fps, thus saturating the panel's refresh rate. That, however, means more strain on the Adreno 630 GPU. Not to mention that the fact that the panel is refreshing twice as often as it would on a regular smartphone also makes it more power-hungry.
So, maintaining a smooth, high-refresh rate experience is a hard task. And it gets exponentially harder when the Razer Phone 2 has to render heavy game graphics and shoot for high frame rates, not just the mostly static pixels of the Android UI. This is where ULTRAMOTION comes in. The technology is based on a variable refresh rate, quite similar to Nvidia G-Sync or AMD Freesync. At every given moment, the screen refresh rate adapts to match the framerate that the GPU outputs resulting in ultra-smooth motion. No dropped frames, no stutters, no tearing, no lag. You simply get to see every frame the GPU renders, as quick as it does so. And this syncing is important since there is not much Razer can do to guarantee consistently high framerates in all the millions of apps and games that are currently available for Android.
There is a major power-saving aspect to the ULTRAMOTION variable refresh rate technology as well. While Razer does allow you to set a desired refresh rate in the settings: 60Hz, 90Hz or 120Hz, doing so does not fix the refresh rate at that number. Since it is variable, when there is nothing happening on screen, the phone can theoretically lower its refresh rate all the way down to 1Hz, also reducing the panel's power consumption. This kind of dynamic flexibility is really impressive, since other high-refresh rate devices, like the aforementioned ROG Phone and compatible Apple tablets, only have a couple of fixed refresh rate values to switch between, depending on circumstance - the adaptive part being left out.
While on the topic of changing and adapting display properties, Razer also allows resolution change. Natively, the display runs at QHD, but you can also set it to run at 1080p or even 270p. In the past, we have already determined that doing so has little battery life benefits and the case was the same here. So, our first guess was that this could help with frame rates, so we can saturate that 120Hz refresh rate as best we can. As it turns out, this is not entirely true either. We will get into more detail in the performance section, but as it turns out, most game engines can't really come close to the 120fps mark by design, no matter how much you lower the screen resolution. But, we digress.
Back to the second generation of Razer's IGZO panel and its color accuracy, which appears to have taken a slight hit compared to the original. No matter how much we fiddled with the settings, the best color rendering we managed to get had an average deltaE of 6.7 and a maximum of 9.1. Boosted, natural and vivid modes all over-saturate certain colors in different ways. It's not all bad news, though, unlike the distortion and tint that is typically associated with cheaper, non-color-accurate LCD panels, the one on the Razer Phone 2 remains well balanced with all the color profiles. Also, there is support for Wide color gamut but it's not something readily perceivable with the naked eye. Still, Razer claims its phone is the only one certified by Netflix for both HDR and 5.1 surround sound.
Battery life
Just like its predecessor, the Razer Phone 2 is pretty well equipped in the battery department. 4,000 mAh is plenty of juice to go around. However, that stunning, high-refresh rate panel draws quite a bit of power. In fact, so much so that the original Razer Phone ended up being very crippled in terms of overall battery endurance.
So, with its new, higher brightness, the Razer Phone 2 must be even more power-hungry, right? Well, Razer shifted some things around and did its best in the optimization department.
The new Razer Phone 2 clearly fairs better in this respect than its predecessor. That being said, however, it doesn't necessarily get more Screen On time out of a full charge. Playing back a 1080p, h264 video still drains the battery in just about seven hours which is subpar. Wi-Fi browsing time has seen some improvement, but that is more than likely due to Qualcomm optimization on the newer Wi-Fi radio, combined with Android and Google Chrome software improvements.
Speaking of which, the main area of improvement is definitely stand-by performance. Perhaps a large chunk of that can again be attributed to the newer and more efficient X20 LTE modem or the OS itself. But it is still a noticeable improvement. The reported standby figures fall in line with other Snapdragon 845 handsets. In fact, they compare with some of the better-optimized implementations of the chip out there. The same goes for the 3G talk time figure.
Since we are certain it's going to come up, leaving the RGB Chroma logo ON all the time at its maximum brightness drains quite a bit of battery. It's hard to measure exactly how much, but our best estimate puts it at somewhere around 5% every hour. Of course, you can use it at a medium setting, only when the screen is on or, better yet, just when new notifications come in.
All things considered, the Razer Phone 2 will probably last you longer than its predecessor while simply idling and waiting for a call or notification in your pocket, but won't really do much to extend your gaming time. This is pretty understandable, since, despite the variance in maximum brightness, we still set both phones at 200 nits for our on-screen runs, which levels the playing field. This only comes to show that, just like with the original Razer Phone and its IGZO panel, it's the dynamic high refresh rate that really takes its toll on the battery more than anything else.
Our endurance rating denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Razer Phone 2 for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern, so our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can also check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
Loudspeaker
The Razer Phone 2 gets really loud. Impressively and almost uncomfortably so. It lacks a bit behind its predecessor in terms of sheer decibel output, but even so, the newer model is impressively consistent in loudness in the highs, mids and even does an impressive job at trying to represent bass and lows.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overall score | |
| 67.8 | 69.5 | 71.5 | Good | |
| 66.2 | 70.4 | 78.2 | Good | |
| 68.3 | 73.8 | 75.8 | Good | |
| 68.4 | 74.0 | 80.1 | Very Good | |
| 68.1 | 72.3 | 82.2 | Very Good | |
| 67.2 | 72.5 | 84.5 | Very Good | |
| 71.2 | 74.9 | 80.2 | Very Good | |
| 74.3 | 70.2 | 82.6 | Very Good | |
| 70.7 | 75.2 | 81.2 | Very Good | |
| 68.0 | 75.3 | 84.0 | Very Good | |
| 70.3 | 73.4 | 83.8 | Very Good | |
| 71.0 | 75.4 | 82.9 | Excellent | |
| 72.8 | 74.7 | 86.6 | Excellent | |
| 69.3 | 75.0 | 90.5 | Excellent | |
| 76.7 | 77.7 | 87.7 | Excellent | |
| 78.2 | 78.8 | 86.9 | Excellent |
However, being loud doesn't necessarily equate to a good sound. In fact, more often then not, phones tend to hit some unpleasant high-pitched resonance frequency to get the top scores. Out of the box, the Razer Phone 2 is really no different. Despite having a pair of hefty speakers and plenty of air in the chambers around them, the default sound profile is rather hollow and often times distorted.
That being said, we really appreciate the addition on a Dolby equalizer in the Razer Phone 2. Once we enabled it on auto mode (Dolby Dynamic), everything started to sound noticeably better. Sure, at the cost of a few decibels, but more than a justified trade-off. If you really go full hands-on with the EQ sliders and know what you are doing, the Razer Phone 2 is actually capable of some really impressive sound output. Razer just needs to improve the defaults a bit and make them less discouraging and off-putting.
Audio quality
Speaker output aside, the Razer Phone 2 really impressed in the audio quality test when we measured what comes through that USB-C port. Using the supplied adapter, the phone delivered a perfectly accurate output with an active external amplifier connected. There is minimal degradation when headphones come into play, which is merely par for the course when talking flagships.
Yet the super high volume in both test use cases made it shine - it's rare that you see a phone so loud these days, and rarer still one that relies on a USB-C to 3.5mm audio adaptor. The Razer Phone 2 adapter's larger USB-C plug is larger than just about every other unit we have seen, so that might be what explains it - the company just had more room to fit in a higher quality chip inside Of course, that's just guessing on our part but the numbers prove it.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.06, -0.52 | -93.4 | 93.3 | 0.0018 | 0.0078 | -92.8 | |
| +0.12, -0.18 | -92.8 | 92.8 | 0.014 | 0.168 | -68.3 | |
| +0.02, -0.16 | -92.1 | 92.0 | 0.0017 | 0.013 | -85.6 | |
| +0.07, -0.07 | -92.1 | 92.4 | 0.0021 | 0.106 | -66.5 | |
| +0.03, -0.05 | -93.4 | 93.3 | 0.0010 | 0.0070 | -93.8 | |
| +0.17, -0.15 | -93.2 | 93.1 | 0.0056 | 0.245 | -61.1 | |
| +0.01, -0.02 | -91.2 | 93.2 | 0.0024 | 0.0080 | -88.7 | |
| +0.38, -0.21 | -93.1 | 92.5 | 0.0049 | 0.233 | -61.7 | |
| +0.01, -0.03 | -93.7 | 93.7 | 0.0017 | 0.0074 | -94.1 | |
| +0.03, -0.02 | -93.6 | 93.5 | 0.0033 | 0.046 | -93.2 | |
| +0.02, -0.15 | -94.3 | 94.3 | 0.0021 | 0.0069 | -94.3 | |
| +0.18, -0.13 | -93.7 | 93.6 | 0.0024 | 0.104 | -52.7 |
Razer Phone 2 frequency response
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process
Near stock Android Oreo, with Nova Launcher on top
Like many other gamer-centric PC brands, Razer has managed to gather quite a bit of negative reputation over the years for including bloated UIs and various software suites on its computers. Thankfully, it has decided to adopt a vastly different policy for its mobile OS and is sticking to it for the Razer Phone 2 as well.
Whether the decision came about through a strive towards simplicity, a concern for performance or simply as a time- and RnD cost-saving measure, it all adds up to a nearly stock Razer ROM.
The Razer Phone 2 boots Android 8.1 out of the box. Considering the minimal amount of extras and modifications done on top of Google's mobile OS, we are looking forward to quick and timely updates.
The cool part is that despite running a surprisingly clean Android install, with a very minimal app package on top, Razer still found a nifty way to stay true to its roots and deliver all the "swag" its fans have grown accustomed to, without too much bloat. The solution in question is a custom Nova Launcher Premium install, that ships with every Razer Phone 2 by default just like it did with the original Razer Phone.
The latter opens up a tremendous amount of UI customization options. You can pretty much tweak every part of the UX to your liking. For instance, out of the box, the Razer Phone uses a Pixel-Style up swipe gesture to enter into a vertically scrolling app drawer. After a few clicks, we were able to remap that gesture to something more relevant to us. For instance, bringing out a classic app drawer icon, or switching to a horizontal layout in the app list or even tweaking the appearance of the notification badges and the transition animations.
Nova Launcher Premium
The sky is the limit with the Nova launcher and it's no wonder it is still one of the most popular custom launchers out there. Plus, Razer worked with the Nova team to sprinkle in some extra stuff of its own as well. There is a powerful Razer theming engine running on top of Nova. Just fire up the Themes app and browse a selection of well-crafted themes, courtesy of Razer themselves, absolutely free of charge.
Theme store
Besides tweaking the usual things like wallpapers and icons, these actually change some color accents deep within the UI itself, like the notification shade. Most default Razer apps change their color scheme accordingly as well.
The infamous Razer toast theme
While this color accent approach works pretty well overall, there are still a few areas that need improvement. For instance, you can stumble upon random elements in the UI that should have been affected by the color scheme of a given theme, but are, instead, left to stand out as an odd patch.
Then, there are certain system apps, notably the Phone and Contacts app that remain unaffected by custom theme colors at all.
Last, but not least, most themes in Razer's store make the deliberate design choice of selecting very close accent colors, which often makes it really hard to distinguish whether something, like a quick toggle icon, is active or not.
A spot left white here and there • The Phone app does not accept customization • Non contrasting colors
Other than these small gripes, however, Razer's selection of themes is constantly growing and really high quality. There is a little something for everybody to like in the Theme library and especially so if you are searching for a masterfully crafted look based on your favorite game titles. Once again, Razer proves it knows its audience very well.
Default Nova Launcher UI setup
Since most of the looks and feel of the Razer UI is subject to some form of customization, there is no real point in touring the basic controls. As already mentioned, you can set up the app drawer any way you like it, the same goes for the homescreen, the navigation gestures and the optional Google Now pane.
Nova launcher settings
The notification shade is a pretty stock Android affair. Well, minus the color customizability previously mentioned, that is. One swipe down for notifications and another or a two finger one for the quick toggles. These can be rearranged freely.
Standard notification shade
One toggle, in particular, seems to stand out - DOLBY. The pair of powerful stereo, front-facing speakers on the Razer Phone are THX certified and powered by DOLBY ATMOStechnology. The latter threw its own equalizer software in the mix, complete with custom profiles. You can quickly switch between these from the DOLBY quick toggle. That's a great convenience to have since the pair of speakers tends to sound really hollow and distorted out of the box. What we went for is the Music preset, with the Intelligent Equalizer curve adjustment to warm it up, which fixed the sound quite a bit.
DOLBY equalizers
Most other aspects of the Razer Phone UI are stock or almost nearly so as well. This includes the app switcher and most of the main settings menu as well. Split screen is supported.
Settings • More settings • Split Screen
Speaking of settings, there are a few important aspects of the Razer Phone 2's specific Android experience that you can tweak. The display menu, for instance, is your primary access point for tweaking the advanced IGZO display on a system-wide level. By default, the Razer Phone 2 runs at its native WQHD resolution and the instantly impressive, buttery-smooth 120fps. There are some rather insignificant battery endurance benefits to be gained by lowering the resolution, but running at a lower refresh rate is what can really make a noticeable difference in battery life.
Display settings
You could do that, but we don't really advise you to do so since you won't double your battery endurance if you decide to rock 60Hz, but you will miss out on this device's headline feature. Of course, you could only use the display to its full potential (WQHD and 120Hz) while gaming. To do so, Razer provides a nifty GAME BOOSTER utility.
GAME BOOSTER
It actually serves as a complementary feature to the resolution and refresh rate adjustment controls, found in the Display menu, while also adding a maximum CPU frequency setting to the mix. This does make things a bit confusing, which Razer hasn't addressed since the original Razer Phone. The idea is that the GAME BOOSTER settings operate alongside the system-wide once. So, if you force 60Hz in Display settings and then tell a game to run at 120Hz from GAME BOOSTER, the end result might be a game running at 120Hz, but it could also swing the other way around. The situation is even worse when you mix and match resolutions.
Certain apps can end up rendered in a window or with wrong touch input calibration. The remedy, for the time being, is to always modify the system and GAME BOOSTER settings together. So, if you have a certain game set at 720p and 120Hz, for example, you need to go into Display settings and dial the same in system-wide to get the best chance of running the game properly. Razer really needs to bind the two sets of settings together.
Razer CORTEX
Besides the GAME BOOSTER app, there is also Razer CORTEX. Things are thankfully more straight-forward with this one. It is simply a custom launcher for all your games, combined with a curated list of advertised games, which simply link you to the Play Store. There is also a nifty quick shortcut to open GAME BOOSTER.
Razer Chroma logo control app
Of course, we can't skip a tour of the new Chroma control app for tuning the phone's RGB logo. It offers quite a few options. First off, you have to decide on when and how you want the logo to light up. There are three convenient modes to choose between: High simply leaves the light on all the time, practically destroying your battery life. Still, that's the mode you'll probably want at a LAN party. Medium ties the logo's lights to the display. They are on only when it is on or when you receive a notification if you enable that option. 'Low' only lights up the logo for notifications, nothing else.
Speaking of the notification toggle, that is meant to make up for the lack of a dedicated notification LED on the front of the device. The only downside, besides only being able to see it from the back side is that there are no custom notification settings available. We would have loved to see options for things like patterns, colors, and intensity for different apps. Similar to what Samsung has for its Edge Lighting. To Razer's credit, they do pick up the notification's color and use it to shine the logo automatically. Pretty nifty.
Chroma settings
The Chroma software does offer a lot of customizability, though. Just not for notifications, but rather a general purpose lighting. You can dial in your desired brightness, as well as the color and its intensity. Razer even threw in a HEX input field, so you can really properly select your color of choice. Then there are two other modes to choose form, besides a static light: Breathing, which is pretty self-explanatory and Spectrum, which cycles through colors.
There is still plenty of room for optimization, though. The Spectrum and Breathing modes, for instance, could benefit from a speed control, since both are a bit too slow for our taste. One other nifty Chroma trick the Razer Phone 2 can do involves Razer's new Qi wireless charger.
Naturally, it's a separately sold accessory, but if RGB is your thing, you really need it in your arsenal. It shines bright and provides really smooth RGB transitions along a rim near its bottom side. While charging the Razer Phone 2 (or any Qi smartphone for that matter) these shine in colorful waves. We would be lying if we called them anything short of mesmerizing. Also, while placed on the stand, the Razer Phone 2 passes any notification light on to the charger, making it shine in the appropriate color.
That last bit is bitter sweet, though, since it makes us wonder why Razer omitted integration for either the phone and/or the Qi charger with the rest of the wide Chroma ecosystem of devices. We really hope something along these lines is in the works, since we really see no reason why all your Chroma things can't put on a synchronised light show.
A few additional Razer Phone 2 settings
Just to top the software section off, there are a few more extras in the Razer Phone's settings, which are worth mentioning. Nothing too spectacular or out of the ordinary, but it is still good to see double tap to wake and sleep, as well as toggles for the power button, double click gesture to launch the camera and the display turning on when you pick up the phone.
Performance
With modern smartphone hardware - there is little variance in chipset configurations and pretty much everyone has to work within the confines of what ARM has to offer. Hence, under the hood on the Razer Phone 2 we get the industry's favorite Snapdragon 845 chipset, complete with the usual tally of connectivity features and image processing chops. For memory, 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 64GB of expandable v4 UFS storage are still perfectly adequate.
One aspect of core performance left up to manufacturers and their engineers is cooling. Not unlike many of its competitors, Razer boasts a vapor chamber design. It's an impressive-looking custom design, with quite a large footprint. The ultimate goal Razer has set for itself is to avoid any throttling and performance dips altogether.
Keeping that in mind, before we move on to the traditional set of synthetic benchmark runs, we decided to try and verify some of these claims in real-world scenarios. Or at least as close as possible. When dealing with mobile hardware and extended loads one thing is inevitable - heat build-up. Since there is no fans or any kind of active cooling solution, there is really no way of dissipating the heat more effectively. The main consequence from that - a toasty chipset that needs to be cooled down, something that can only be achieved by lowering its clock speed and performance. In other words, thermal-throttling.
The latter seems to be tossed around quite a bit as a major criticism. While that might be true in the PC realm, where active cooling is a thing, it is inevitable, at some point. Every phone eventually drops its performance to deal with heat. The Razer Phone 2 utilizes its heatsink design, on the one hand, to dissipate that heat away quicker.
Xiaomi Pocophone F1 CPU throttling test
Then there is the thermal-throttling and cooling policy. One might think that a big cooling chamber would be leveraged to sustain maximum performance for as long as possible. Looking at the above test run, done with a Xiaomi Pocophone F1, we can see at least a couple of major and sudden performance drops.
Sony Xperia XZ3 CPU throttling test
Looking at the same test on the Sony Xperia XZ3, the pattern appears to be full of even more rapid drops. Every time one of those occurs, you can be sure a dip in in-game frame rates and performance will be observed as well. Razer's unique adaptive refresh rate tech might manage to bring the refresh rate down quick enough and smooth things out, but you still want to avoid sudden dips in performance on a gaming device as best you can.
Razer Phone 2 CPU throttling test
Looking at the Razer Phone 2 throttle test, we can see the different approach. Instead of waiting for the very last critical moment, the handset decides to preemptively dial back speeds a bit, which gives better control over the performance and heat equation. That means smoother performance for longer and more subtle drops.
Razer Phone 2 Actively cooled CPU throttling test
Of course, we also dropped into PUBG to see just how smooth of an experience all this equates to. All the while, monitoring our frame rates using GameBench's excellent toolset.
Razer Phone 2 PUBG stability test
And for the sake of comparison, here is roughly the same run as done on the Xiaomi Pocophone F1 and the Samsung Galaxy S9+. Remember, we are examining FPS smoothness, rather than the maximum FPS count here. All three phones were left to run the game in full-screen mode at native resolution and with the in-game graphics settings set as high as they will go: HDR graphics and Ultra frame rate.
PUBG stability test: Xiaomi Pocophone F1 • Samsung Galaxy S9+
Razer's massive cooling solution does have its notable negative consequences. Probably first and foremost, the Razer Phone 2 gets really hot to the touch really quick. Fire up a game and within 5 minutes your hands are going to be almost uncomfortable toasty. Having a case snapped on the back mostly mitigates this, but if Razer's initial plan was to disperse heat so aggressively, perhaps an active cooling solution/accessory, like on the Asus ROG phone is in order.
Another unfortunate consequence of Razer's early, pre-emptive, controlled performance drops is the inability to provide short bursts of high performance for long enough to score comparably in some benchmark tests.
GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)
Higher is better
Looking at benchmark tables, starting with GeekBench, it is clear some aspects of performance are more susceptible than others. In these pure CPU tests, for instance, the Razer Phone 2 clearly delivers pretty much the fullest potential of the Snapdragon 845 when only one of its cores is active. Once all eight cores (4x2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold & 4x1.7 GHz Kryo 385 Silver) start ramping up and putting out heat, scores start to plummet.
GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)
Higher is better
Just to better illustrate the whole heat management situation the Razer Phone finds itself in, we also ran all the tests with our own external active cooling solution, constantly taking heat away from the phone. In certain workloads, like the above all-core test, the variance in performance is huge.
AnTuTu 7
Higher is better
Looking at a more well-rounded benchmark, like AnTuTu, we can see that in a more balanced, closer to real-world usage scenario, the Razer Phone 2 doesn't really have any significant problems with heat. Its massive internal cooler handles things well and adding extra cooling has little to no effect on numbers.
Basemark OS 2.0
Higher is better
Basemark paints a pretty much identical picture. So, it's clear that with regular, every-day productivity tasks, the Razer Phone 2 performs exactly like any other Snapdragon 845, 2018 flagship. GPU workloads, however, are a whole other story.
GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)
Higher is better
A cooled Razer Phone 2 is clearly a better performing Razer Phone 2. At least in quick short bursts and as far as maximum FPS is concerned.
GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)
Higher is better
As the render scene difficulty and OpenGL ES versions increase, the difference between the hot and cooled runs starts to shrink. That's perfectly understandable as other performance bottlenecks start to come into play to a greater degree than pure number-crunching power. Plus, there is the matter of better API optimization, increasingly employing concepts like distributed, balanced and even heterogeneous computing.
GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)
Higher is better
Just a friendly reminder while looking at the performance charts that any on-screen frame rates are dependant on the native device resolution and hence skewed. The OnePlus 6T is a perfect illustration here, competing against higher-res devices.
Aztek OpenGL ES 3.1 Normal (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
Aztek OpenGL ES 3.1 Normal (onscreen)
Higher is better
As usual and especially considering the Razer Phone 2's particular approach to performance maintenance, BaseMark X provides a more accurate representation of the overall graphics potential of the device. It is clearly very generous to the Razer Phone 2, as well as the original Razer Phone, for that matter.
Basemark X
Higher is better
Summing up performance
But, what happened to the promise of ultra-smooth 120Hz goodness? Valid question and one we made sure to test thoroughly. Firstly, we have to give credit where credit is due, Razer definitely managed to optimize its Android UI to take full advantage of the variable, high-refresh rate panel. Every motion looks buttery smooth. And it's not just system animations. Every scroll on a web page instantly results in a rendering fps hike all the way up to 120 fps and an incredibly crisp scroll effect. No blurring or tearing whatsoever. Browsing on the Razer Phone is a great experience, even if most multimedia content online is still played back at 30 fps. Plus, every intermittent moment before the hardware manages to react to the motion and ramp up the fps count, everything remains perfectly smooth as well, thanks to the variable refresh rate.
However, even though almost a year has passed since the original Razer Phone made the leap to 120Hz, the Android OS and ecosystem are still not really prepared to handle anything beyond 60 fps. And it's not necessarily that the Adreno 630 is not powerful enough to push all the frames, it's just that most of the existing app ecosystem, including game engines, is not designed to work under such conditions. Perhaps a second "Project Butter" will happen at some point to make that a reality, but currently, Razer is stuck in a mostly unfavorable early-adopter position.
To Razer's credit, it has been working really hard over the past months in aiding third-party developers to optimize their games and apps for 120Hz. The result is a list "UltraMotion" supported titles, which you can check here. As per the description, all of these are optimized for dynamic high refresh rates, but not necessarily all of them can reach 120 fps and saturate the display.
Dead Trigger 2 can do 120fps easily • Need for Speed No Limits can only hit 60 fps, regardless of resolution
We made sure to test at least a few of these titles on the Snapdragon 845 and its Adreno 630 GPU, as found inside the Razer Phone 2. Some titles definitely worked better than others, so your mileage may vary.
ARK: Mobile and Hungry dragon both break at lower resolution can hit: 40 fps • 60fps
If you are really adamant about getting every last frame possible out of a given title, which you have verified as capable of more than 60fps, there are a few things you can do. For one, there is a really convenient FPS counter that can be enabled from within the developer settings, so you can measure if your optimizations have any effect. Then there are Razer's neat per-app performance tweaking options. These allow you to set a refresh rate cap, a CPU frequency and a resolution. We encourage you to play around with combinations of these for every titles, just like you would do on a PC.
Keep in mind that beyond Razer's official list of UltraMotion games, it is not uncommon to find ones that can hit 120fps. These are typically less graphically intensive, like Alto's adventure and BADLAND 2, which both easily reach up to 120 fps.
Alto's Odyssey and BADLAND2, both not on the supported list, but run beautifully at around 120 fps
We also looked into remote play for some of our favorite PC games on the Razer Phone 2 to potentially take advantage of the high refresh rate. A couple of solutions do exist, like Nvidia's Game Stream with a compatible client (Moonlight). Unfortunately, all the apps we checked out are currently capped at 60 fps for one reason or another, exactly like they were back when the original Razer Phone was released. Perhaps, we'll see how things evolve over the following months. Here's hoping Razer releases a solution of its own, perhaps accompanied by a gamepad accessory for the best possible experience.
Still, even in its current flawed state, we see potential in Razer's ULTRAMITION panel. It is an important early effort to spearhead high refresh rate gaming on mobile devices. If the PC realm is anything to go by, it is a good and logical upgrade path to explore in the future. Definitely one mobile gamers will eventually come to appreciate.
Familiar dual 12MP camera setup
It should come as no surprise that having the best camera around is clearly not a big priority for Razer. In fact, we still remember the bare-bones nature and hardly impressive quality of the original Razer Phone camera setup.
Upon first inspection, we were a bit underwhelmed to by the apparent lack of change in the camera department. At least on paper. The 12MP, f/1.8, 25mm (wide), plus 12MP, f/2.6, 2x telephoto is still the same. However, upon further inspection and some snooping around in Android config files, it turns out the actual hardware module have been swapped. While the original Razer phone used a pair of Samsung sensors, namely S5K2L7 and S5K3M3, the Razer Phone 2 is equipped with Sony Exmor units. As per said config files, these are the IMX351 and IMX363. Now, some of Razer's official specs don't really match up with those posted by Sony for said sensors. Perhaps, Razer is down-scaling or cropping a bit, but we won't ponder too much on such details.
We will, however, note that unlike its predecessor, the Razer Phone 2 has OIS added to the feature mix. It is one of the more aggressive implementations we have seen in a while, with the viewfinder floating around quite noticeably and at times rather sporadically. It does offer some tangible extra stabilization, though, which is nice.
Still, the only real burning question here is - has Razer improved its camera experience? Well, the short answer is Yes, but only relatively and in terms of actual camera quality. Looking at the Camera app UI first, we find a noticeably improved, but still quite messy and even sloppy regarding its interface.
Main camera UI
But first the good bits - we definitely appreciate the newly added features. The Razer camera is no longer as bare-bones as it was. At least now there are some extra modes, neatly organized on the left side of the screen, like Portrait, Beauty, and Panorama. It's like we're back in 2015, but hey, it's a progress if you look Razer's phones in isolation.
But we're not quite done with the bashing. Take another closer look at the right-hand side of the main camera UI. Those few pixels at the top and bottom there are actually functional icons that simply ended up cropped by the phone. King of odd when you consider Razer only had a single device and its resolution to size the UI for.
Beauty mode UI with issues
Now, let's look at the Beauty mode, shall we? Moving past the fact that the mode is only available for the selfie camera, for some reason, that unmitigated disaster of a control cluster on the left is actually a set of icons, leftover incorrectly from another camera mode, overlapping the Beauty mode intensity slider. The latter still works, somewhat, which, we guess is a plus?
OK, to be fair, while reviewing the Razer Phone 2 a small OTA did come in, actually managing to impressively install itself automatically in the background (proper project Treble style) that remedied these UI issues for us.
Fixed camera UI
OF course, we could have left this whole detail out, but we kind of felt the whole thing was pretty indicative of Razer's overall attitude towards the camera.
As far as interesting new functionality goes, we feel like we have to mention the little thermometer icon near the bottom right, which is now fully visible, after the update. It toggles between two color profiles, intended to fluorescent lighting and cloudy weather and a third auto option. Both manual modes look really off, almost like filters, so you are probably better off leaving them alone.
The seamless zoom feature from the original Razer Phone is still present. Although there is now a convenient toggle between 1x and 2x, the way Razer implemented zooming has the phone constantly switching from the telephoto camera to a crop of the main one and you can never be quite sure which one is in use.
There is an Auto HDR mode this time around. But we'll discuss its shortcoming more in a bit.
On to actual photo quality then. One thing we can say with a fair bit of confidence is that the Razer Phone 2 offers an improvement in this respect over its predecessor. That being said, it's hardly a remarkable one.
Razer Phone 2 daylight samples
In no particular order, the Razer Phone 2 has trouble focusing accurately all the time and even when it does, most shots end up looking really blurry for a number of reasons. Edge to edge sharpness, for one, is really inconsistent. Also, noise suppression is rather aggressive and tends to "paint over" most things, leaving few well-defined lines behind. The algorithm also does a lot of damage to the sky, leaving behind unnatural looking patches of "fixed" same color pixels.
Razer Phone 2 daylight samples
In an effort to, what we can assume is a remedy for the noise suppression damage, a lot of sharpening gets applied to most shots. Last, but definitely not least, dynamic range is rather poor, losing most of the detail in the shadows by default.
But, as we mentioned earlier, the Razer Phone 2 does have HDR. In fact, Auto HDR, which is one better than what the original Razer Phone had to work with. It should help with shadows and highlights, right?
Razer Phone 2: HDR Off • HDR On • HDR Off • HDR On • HDR Off • HDR On
Turns out, that's a solid NO. Most of the time, HDR hardly managed to recover any clipped detail in the shadows. All the while, it very frequently overexposed the shot clipping all highlights and somehow narrowing the dynamic range even further along the way. Very rarely did it actually manage to do any good and only in ideal HDR conditions, like this half-sky, half reflective glass building shot.
Razer Phone 2: HDR Off • HDR On
Honestly, you are are better off just leaving HDR Off and forgetting about it indefinitely. Since, at best, you can hope it won't touch your shot at all and at its worse, it can do a fair bit of damage.
So, how is the 2x telephoto camera then? Well, take pretty much everything we already said about the main camera and add some extra softness and less detail in the mix.
Razer Phone 2 2x camera samples
HDR on the telephoto seems to be even more sporadic, as far as exposure goes.
Razer Phone 2 2x camera: HDR Off • HDR On • HDR Off • HDR On • HDR Off • HDR On
Portrait mode is plagued by all the issues of the regular stills, but is still capable of producing nice results every now and then. Edge detection does fail pretty often, though, leading us to believe that Razer opted for a pure software approach to things rather than leveraging extra data from the secondary camera.
Portrait samples
These are admittedly pretty discouraging results under what we can describe as pretty good overall conditions. Still, we decided to take the Razer Phone 2 on a night shoot.
Razer Phone 2 low light samples
Surprisingly enough, this worked out better than we thought. Now, there is still plenty of noise on the shots and edge to edge sharpness is not uniform, but Razer's particular approach to photography just seems to work a bit better in low light. Of course, that's all comparatively speaking.
Razer Phone 2 2x low light samples
Naturally, we also took a crank at our studio posters with both the normal and the telephoto cameras. Here are the results for your pixel-peeping pleasure.
Razer Phone 2 versus the original Razer Phone and the Samsung Galaxy Note9 in our Photo compare tool
Razer Phone 2 telephoto versus the Xiaomi Mi 8 and the Samsung Galaxy Note9 in our Photo compare tool
On the selfie side of things, we get an 8MP, fixed focus snapper. Nothing too fancy. The results don't look half bad, considering the circumstances and matching expectations.
Razer Phone 2 selfie samples
Just, for the love of photography, don't touch the Beauty mode. It's... something else...
Razer Phone 2 selfie samples with beauty mode
Video quality
It should come as no surprise that the Razer Phone 2 is capable of capturing video at up to 2160p resolution. It does so with a petty standard configuration - AVC video, hovering just around 42 Mb/s and a stereo AAC audio stream at 48 kHz.
Quality can be best described as usable. Just like with stills, softness and noise are an issue, colors are a bit off. But what probably does the most damage to clips is the lacking dynamic range. Still, the sky looks better on video, which is something positive we can add here.
Dropping the resolution down to 1080p does little to improve the dynamic range or the colors. Sharpness understandably takes a hit with the lower pixel count and the noise becomes even more visible. We wouldn't recommend it.
We can't really say the telephoto is any worse than the main camera in video. In fact, the two are actually pretty comparable. At least there is that.
Looking at stabilization, the OIS system in place is clearly contributing quite a bit to videos. It works at any resolution and on the telephoto, as well. Unfortunately, the work that it does is really counter-productive. The frame jaunts about quite a bit with every hand movement, mostly ruining the videos.
In case you want to examine Razer Phone 2 video samples in more depth, you can download unedited samples here: 4K (10s, 52MB), 4K telephoto (10s, 52MB), 1080p at 30fps (10s, 25MB), and 1080p at 30fps telephoto (10s, 25MB).
Last but not least, here is the Razer Phone 2 in our video compare database - both the main wide and the telephoto cameras.
Razer Phone 2 versus the original Razer Phone and the Samsung Galaxy Note9 in our 4K Video compare tool
Razer Phone 2 telephoto versus the Appli iPhone XS and the Samsung Galaxy Note9 in our 4K Video compare tool
Competition
We've probably said this more than enough times already throughout this review, but we'll have to say it again, simply to drive our main point home one last time: The Razer Phone 2 is a pretty unique product, mainly for its impressive IPS Ultramotion, 120Hz variable refresh rate IGZO display. After spending quite a bit of time with it and testing its other aspects in depth, we can safely say that the panel is where its value lies.
In pretty much every other software and hardware aspect, Razer is neither unchallenged or objectively better than its competitors. And in some respects, like battery endurance, it fails to impress.
So, when looking at alternatives, there are a couple of equally valid scenarios to explore. If your heart is set on both 120Hz high and variable refresh rate gaming, without necessarily caring too much about the other aspects of the device, there is really no competition and few alternatives out there. We would recommend the older Razer Phone, but if you're going to get a phone purely for gaming getting previous gen hardware is probably not a worthwhile compromise. Given the parameters, of course.
Razer Phone • Asus ROG Phone • Apple iPad Pro 12.9 (2017)
The closest you can actually come to this experience is the Asus ROG Phone. It has plenty of tricks of its own to impress with and a plethora of intriguing gaming peripherals with potential added value. As far as our particular refresh rate quest goes, however, it is only 90Hz and it lacks the adaptive refresh technology. On the other hand, it is 90Hz, which is still smoother than your average device and the panel is AMOLED. And that's if we're only talking displays and ignoring the rest of Asus' frankly impressive package.
Other than that, frankly, the Black Sharks and Red Magics of the world can't really offer anything past the mundane 60Hz. And we're already out of phones, so you might have to explore an Apple tablet, like the iPad Pro 12.9 (2017).
OK, but what if you don't want to board the high refresh rate train (or rather pushcart, considering its current state) and would rather get a more well-rounded handset, which just happens to be great at running games as well. Even if that's at "peasant" 60fps. Well, Samsung's current line of devices has spent a few months on the market now and prices have been going down steadily. The Galaxy S9+ requires few compromises, with its crispy Super AMOLED panel, powerful dual camera setup and potent internals.
Samsung Galaxy S9+ • Huawei Honor Play • Xiaomi Pocophone F1
As far as gaming features are concerned Huawei and Honor currently have an interesting offer on the table in its CPU Turbo and GPU Turbo software optimization layers. These do their best to optimize frame rates and smooth out any performance dips and are actually pretty good at it. You can read more about it here. As for a specific device recommendation, the Honor Play seems to stand out for its great value. Last, but not least, you can go cheaper still and enter the unique 2018 budget flagship realm with something like the Xiaomi Pocophone F1. A few corners cut here and there, but you still get a Snapdragon 845 chipset, 6GB of RAM and a spacious display.
Verdict
Clearly the Razer Phone 2 is not for everyone. Much like a Razer Blade laptop isn't meant to be as popular or universally appealing as a Macbook. And we're not just talking about a "gamer" price premium here. The fact of the matter is that most people don't really care about a 120Hz display or want an RGB Chroma logo on the back of their phones. Which, of course, is perfectly fine and well understood by the likes of Razer.
If you are simply looking for a great daily driver and simply stumbled here out of curiosity, our best advice is to keep looking. As a 2018 flagship Android smartphone, the Razer Phone 2 simply lags behind the competition in more than a few key aspects.
Pros
- Very particular, industrial-looking design that easily stands out.
- IP67 rating is an appreciated upgrade over the original.
- The RGB Chroma logo looks great.
- ULTRAMOTION and 120Hz are still unique display features that make everything feel snappier.
- The screen is brighter and better in sunlight than the original Razer Phone.
- Audio output quality on headphones is great and really loud.
- Near-stock Android Oreo ROM.
- Game Booster offers convenient controls over CPU speeds, resolution and fps caps on a per-app basis.
- The hefty passive cooling system allows the phone to sustain smoother and higher average performance for longer.
Cons
- Glass back is really slippery and the phone is really not comfortable to hold horizontally for a long time.
- Bezels, bezels everywhere.
- ULTRAMOTION and 120Hz are really power-hungry and drain the battery quick.
- No 3.5mm audio jack.
- The Razer Phone 2 gets really hot, sometimes uncomfortably so during gaming.
- Few existing Android games can run at more than 60 fps.
- The Razer Phone's cameras are unimpressive in both photos and videos.
However, there is an alternate way to look at the Razer Phone 2 as well. Not as a flagship smartphone, but rather an advanced touch Android portable gaming console that simply happens to be able to connect to the internet and make calls. Under these parameters, the Razer Phone 2 really shines.
Plus, this is the only way to appreciate how much better it is from its predecessor. We have to appreciate the work Razer is putting in, improving on key aspects like ingress protection, battery life, wireless charging and camera, to name a few.
In the grand scheme of things, the pioneering work Razer is currently doing could turn out to be more important than we realize. The mobile gaming niche is clearly widening quick in software and more recently, hardware terms as well. And while it might be a bit too early to board this particular hype train now, it is pretty exciting to see it has already left the station and gaining momentum fast.
0 Comments