Razer Phone review – handset for gamers sets new standards for smartphone industry
Its battery life may be a little short and its camera not the best, but the Razer Phone has twice the screen refresh rate of any other smartphone, plenty of RAM and the best speakers out there
First-generation products from companies venturing outside their comfort zone are usually a mixed bag. The original iPhone, for example, may be credited for starting the mobile revolution, but it lacked plenty of crucial elements that have been paramount to the growth of smartphones, including 3G connectivity, an app store and a selfie camera. Those features didn’t appear the iPhone until its second year or later.
Considering that, the Razer Phone, despite a couple of glaring flaws, is an unusually polished first outing for the Singaporean-American video gaming hardware company of the same name.
Design and hardware
The Razer Phone is marketed as “made for gamers, by gamers”, and three hardware elements fulfil this promise.
The first is a display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Almost all smartphones on the market operate at 60Hz, which is more than sufficient for normal smartphone usage. But serious gamers require a display with less input lag – even a millisecond delay between button press and on-screen action can be life or death in the gaming world.
This effectively makes animations on the Razer Phone twice as smooth as on any other device on the market. This matters when gaming, of course, but I was surprised to find that the 120Hz refresh rate also tangibly improved mundane smartphone experiences such as scrolling through a website or opening an app.