Motorola Droid RAZR HD, RAZR Maxx HD, RAZR M Hands-on: Battery Life is King

Motorola's trio of Android phones promises to outlast the competition, and long battery life is key when you consider that 4G smartphone owners check their phones twice as often. We just went hands-on with the RAZR HD, Maxx HD and RAZR M and wanted to share our initial impressions.

All three phones feature Motorola's Quick Settings screen (just swipe to the left), circle widgets on the main home screen (to check things like weather and data usage) and the Google Chrome browser as default. Check out our hands-on videos.

Motorola Droid RAZR HD

The RAZR HD delivers a large high-def 720p screen in a slim body. This 4.7-inch AMOLED screen really popped in person, whether we were loading webpages on the default Chrome browser or viewing video clips. The screen itself houses the three buttons for Home, Back and Recent apps. As you might expect, the design is built Kevlar tough, and we like the metal band that runs around the outside, which adds some nice contrast. Despite packing a high-capacity 2,500 mAh battery, the RAZR HD measures a mere .33 inches thick.  

Droid RAZR Maxx HD

Yes, the RAZR Maxx HD bumps up the thickness to .36 inches, but we think plenty of folks will be willing to live with a tiny bit of extra bulk in their pocket. Why? Because this Droid packs a 3,300 mAh battery, which promises 8 hours of web browsing and up to 13 hours of video playback. The Maxx HD will come with 32GB of memory, compared to 16GB for the regular RAZR HD, so expect to pay a premium for its endurance and more storage space. 

Motorola RAZR M

We have to give Motorola credit for cramming a 4.3-inch qHD AMOLED screen into such a tiny body. The affordable $99 RAZR M gives Verizon customers a fast 4G LTE phone for a good price. Although you don't get HDMI, otherwise this phone is pretty feature packed for its size. You get 40 percent more screen real estate than the iPhone 4S that's fortified with Gorilla Glass, a Kevlar back and a 2,000 mAh battery. We think this little guy is going to be a hit.

Mark Spoonauer
Editor-in-Chief
Responsible for the editorial vision for Laptopmag.com, Mark Spoonauer has been Editor in Chief of LAPTOP since 2003 and has covered technology for nearly 15 years. Mark speaks at key tech industry events and makes regular media appearances on CNBC, Fox and CNN. Mark was previously reviews editor at Mobile Computing, and his work has appeared in Wired, Popular Science and Inc.