Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Razer Phone 2 Impressions!”.
Hey what is up guys, mkbhd here and hardware season, aka techtober continues with a new smartphone again. This is our first look and impressions of the razer phone 2.. Now i know a lot of people were interested in this phone. I found the first one uh somewhat of a mixed bag.
I definitely had my complaints about it, but it was promising and it had some unique unmatched features like a 120 hertz display now this year. Those features are still here and they’re, definitely still unmatched, but they’ve made a number of improvements and tweaks and upgrades towards one thing, and that is to make this second generation razer phone a little bit more friendly, like a normal everyday flagship, not just a gaming phone. Now, they’re not going all the way to full-on bezel-less notched all the way to the edge 2018 design. No, no, but pretty much. Every little change and every tweak they’ve made in this phone is targeted towards that appealing to more of the masses with a phone that can actually be used every day.
That happens to have a couple advantages for gaming. So here’s what’s new first thing, you’ve probably noticed already – is the glass back. I’D say this is the biggest outside change on the razer phone. We all remember the first one soft touch back sort of like that. Next bit robin it came from well, the shape of the sequel is all still the same, still very boxy and square. But now you have a glass back which enables wireless charging, which this phone now has and then not to be outdone by asus. They also have now a glowing light up razer logo on the back of this phone, controllable by software, of course, and with rgb and razer told me, you’ll even be able to use this as a notification led.
So if you get a tweet, for example, it’ll glow blue, if you get an email, it’ll, glow, red, green for phone calls, etc, that’s actually pretty sick, but of course you can turn it off all the way. If you don’t want it, it is pretty faint to begin with, especially in this brightly lit environment, but it’s there. It’S also now ip67 certified, which the first one wasn’t but doing this turned out to be a big deal for razer phone, because the huge speakers had to be water sealed but still keep their massive sound.
That’S the whole reason they’re there. So that was a challenge for them. As you may know, waterproofing a phone 100 of the time has a hit on the speakers. When you go from a non-waterproof phone to a waterproof phone, you always notice that samsung’s phones all used to have better speakers. Many years ago they waterproofed them and now not so much htc had those massive boom sound speakers, those front firing, stereo monsters, but none of those phones were ip rated. It’S just a big deal, putting a water tight, diaphragm in front of a speaker driver.
So my big question, when i saw the second one was: would the razer phone 2 being waterproof, make it lose its amazing speakers? I love so much about it after hearing them. I actually don’t think so so to be clear, they’re still very loud and very hard to block with your fingers. That’S what it’s all about i’d say they probably have a little bit of a lower peak loudness than before, but quality is great and they definitely didn’t distort at high volumes from my brief listening test. So that’s good to see and up front there’s also a slightly brighter 5.7 inch.
120 hertz ips lcd display the only one in a phone again this year, 2560 by 1440 resolution, but yeah. It is now up to 645 nits, basically brighter than last year, but still not quite as bright as the 60hz oleds and all these mainstream flagships. That’S the trade-off for the ultra smooth frame rate and then also they specifically addressed some of my biggest complaints in my review with the first razer phone. First off the camera.
There are two new sony sensors on the back they’re, both now 12 megapixel sensors, one standard, one with optical image, stabilization and one telephoto. Without it, these will be worth testing to see how far they’ve come, but they seem pretty proud of them, and they’ve also now switched to a new vibration motor. So i did kind of really hate on the vibration motor in my unit last year. This one’s entirely different, that’s a good look! You got a snapdragon 845 inside still eight gigs of ram. Still a four thousand milliamp hour battery still has expandable storage, still no headphone jack, still the side power, slash fingerprint reader button and the little nub volume buttons on the side from the original next bit design and still a light skin on top of android 8.1 waiting For android pie, eventually someday, who knows when that’ll come, but little bit of green accents tossed in there plus a couple features specifically for improving gaming and changing your rgb lights on the back of course, so yeah, it’s a nice little mixed bag of improvements. I’M interested uh at this point, they’re consciously trying not to just call it a gaming phone but more of like a media and gaming flagship, and i think those are good moves to take.
So what do you think i mean if you’re on team? No notch, then this will definitely be one of your last available options. If you’re on team, i hate every thousand dollar flagship phone, because they’re not worth that much. This will also be one of your latest options, but also one of your best. So let me know what you think either way: that’s been your first impressions thanks for watching talk to you guys in the next one peace .