Razer’s first smartphone is now available for purchase. As a company known for its gaming hardware, Razer is positioning the Razer Phone as a device for gamers. But really, it’s a high-end flagship phone with a few special features including a display with a high refresh rate and front-facing stereo speakers with Dolby ATMOS and THX certification.
With a $700 price tag, the Razer Phone is more affordable than many of today’s flagships… but it also has a design that looks a little dated by modern standards.
Early reviews are mostly positive. The phone is said to have excellent speakers, decent performance, and ultra-smooth graphics thanks to its 120 Hz display.
On the down side, the phone is said to have a mediocre camera, poor screen visibility in sunlight, and it lacks some modern features like water resistance or a slim-bezel design.
Razer did follow one recent trend: the company omitted a headphone jack.
The Razer Phone features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 8GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a microSD card slot. It ships with near-stock Android 7.1 software and uses the popular Nova Prime app as its default launcher.
Reviews are a bit mixed on the phone’s battery life: it has a higher capacity battery than most phones in its class, but multiple reviewers suggest the phone gets below-average battery life anyway.
Anyway, the Razer Phone seems like it could help establish Razer as at least a bit player in the smartphone space. Or maybe this’ll be a one-off product. Razer launched a tablet a few years ago and hasn’t bothered to release an updated model since. And the company’s foray into the TV box space was even briefer.
Still, at a time when smartphones are outselling PCs, it makes sense for a PC-centric company like Razer to at least try to broaden its scope to cover the mobile space.
If you want to read more about the Razer Phone, here are some of the reviews I consulted when writing this article: