Motorola DROID RAZR vs Apple iPhone 4S

Introduction:

If you are not already lured by one of the two big contenders in the contemporary mobile OS space – iOS and Android – you will probably be facing a tough choice this holiday season whether to snatch the Motorola DROID RAZR or the Apple iPhone 4S.

For the uninitiated, they both offer slim bodies and 8MP cameras with 1080p HD video capture capabilities, but differ in much everything else.

We are here to help with a comparison between the latest and greatest from Motorola and Apple, so read on for our findings...

For the purpose of this comparison, we are using the Motorola DROID RAZR in its GSM variant. It is identical to the one available on Verizon, except that active is its HSPA+ connectivity.

Design:

Designwise the Apple iPhone 4S is an antithesis of the Motorola DROID RAZR. It brings a boutique feeling with its steel and glass chassis that cuts in your palm, a more solid weight, and a compact size due to the 3.5” display. The RAZR is lighter but way larger, and the thick bezel makes it a handful, as it comes wider than other handsets with 4.3” screens.


 It sports some exotic chassis components in its turn, like a Kevlar-woven back and metal frame, which, however, don’t really contribute to a premium feeling, compared to the unique glass shell of the iPhone 4S. Kevlar actually feels like lino, less stellar than quality soft-touch plastic to the touch, for example.

The RAZR is unbelievably thin, though, with a 0.28” (7.1mm) profile, except for the 0.4” (10.6mm) camera part at the top, which also houses a microHDMI and microUSB ports, along with the audio jack. It’s undeniably a great design achievement by Motorola, which has brought on a non-removable battery, just like on the iPhone 4S. Apple's finest is 0.37” (9.3mm) thick at all places.

The two screens couldn't be more different - we have the 3.5” Retina Display with its enormous 326 ppi pixel density on the iPhone 4S, and a qHD Super AMOLED Advanced in the RAZR with 540x960 pixels.

The 256ppi pixel density on the RAZR is not as refined as on the iPhone 4S, and the PenTile matrix arrangement of its screen is visible at times. That’s only if you examine the display closer, though, and know what to look for – for everyday usage from normal distance it isn't an issue. The iPhone 4S screen is brighter than the RAZR's Super AMOLED, which helps for better outdoor visibility when the sun is shining.

The AMOLED colors are more saturated, even gaudy in the case of the RAZR, whereas the iPhone 4S screen is more toned down.swhile The cold colors of the Super AMOLED make white appear blueish, as usual with this screen type. The big question however is – a 3.5” screen in a more compact body, or a 4.3” display and a larger phone – we leave this one up to you.

We have side-mounted power/lock button in the case of the RAZR, and top-mounted on the iPhone 4S, and both are easy to press. The volume buttons on the two handsets are a tad small for larger hands, but on the iPhone 4S they are separated, while the RAZR has them in the form of a volume rocker that is too short and flush with the surface to be comfortable.

Interface and Functionality:

With iOS 5 the iPhone interface got an active lockscreen and a pull-down notification bar with stocks and weather widgets floating there. The execution is flawless, but if you are you used to getting almost all of your info directly from homescreens, instead of firing up separate apps for everything, you’d have to side with the Android handset.


The Motorola DROID RAZR's interface doesn’t go into Android as deep as some other overlays like HTC Sense or TouchWiz 4.0, but it offers features like resizable widgets, too, of which there are plenty. Icons, buttons and other interface elements are way less refined than the rounded, polished bits in iOS 5. The RAZR doesn't lag or anything, but the responsiveness of the UI still lacks in comparison with the iPhone 4S, which is powered by a custom-made dual-core A5 chip with a nifty SGX543 MP2 GPU, while the RAZR sports a dual-core TI OMAP 4430 processor with the previous-gen SGX540.


Messaging on the phones is very easy with their excellent on-screen keyboards. The iPhone 4S, despite having a smaller screen, compensates with big and well-spaced keyboard letters, and thus doesn’t feel less comfortable to type on than the 4.3-incher, but you have smaller remaining screen estate to look at while typing.

Software:

The Motorola DROID RAZR leaves us scratching out head at times with the wide-ranging quality of its default apps. In the Gallery, for instance, you can’t interact with the stacks of your pics or videos right away, but have to choose an option among unwieldy-looking buttons first. Also, trying to zoom in a picture moves it as shutter blinds instead of the exceptional fluidity on the iPhone 4S.

On the other hand, it offers an excellent set of preinstalled apps, like Smart Actions, which is like action macros you can record for you handset, and MOTOPRINT for wireless printing.

Google’s services like Maps look and work best on the Android handsets, of course, compared to Apple’s finest, but iOS 5 has a winning trick up its sleeve, too, called Siri. Voice recognition software is something present in Android, too, but here in the iPhone 4S its intelligence is taken to unseen levels.

The ability to interact with your phone via Siri might be game-changing, and Apple is taking a pretty bold bet with it that users’ perceptions towards voice recognition can be changed, issuing Siri in beta form, which is unprecedented. Then we have iCloud, which offers 5GB of free centralized storage, which the ragtag gang of Google’s services doesn’t do, but rather each service has its own storage account with Mountain View. 


Internet and Connectivity:

Both smartphones have excellent browsers, too, with the more fluid navigation packed with Safari, which gives way to the Motorola DROID RAZR when it comes to Adobe Flash support and a larger screen real estate to enjoy your websites. The potency of Safari in iOS 5 coupled with the powerful A5 chip is shown in the synthetic benchmarks – it scored about 90 000 in BrowserMark, which is almost twice the 48 000 number of the RAZR, for instance. These scores don't reflect Adobe Flash performance, of course, which will remain relevant at least for a while . For now, there are some pages you can't use properly with the iPhone 4S.

On the Verizon network, the RAZR has the advantage of using the 4G LTE network, while the 4S is stuck on the slow EV-DO Rev.A 3G data. Although both have a combined GSM/CDMA chip with 14.4Mbps download speeds in HSPA+ mode, the Verizon RAZR is limited and cannot be used as a world phone, unlike the iPhone 4S.  The Motorola DROID RAZR has a Qualcomm MDM6600 GSM/CDMA dual-baseband. The DROID RAZR also has a regular microHDMI port for mirroring your phone’s screen on your HDTV, whereas you have to use dongles to do that with the iPhone 4S. 

Camera:

Both the Motorola DROID RAZR and the Apple iPhone 4S have 8MP camera modules capable of 1080p HD video. The iPhone 4S has an extremely simplified interface, as if Apple aimed to put new meaning in the term point-and-shoot with it. Almost everything is automatic, and shot-to-shot times are incredibly fast, less than a second, even inside.

The Motorola DROID RAZR offers shooting modes like Macro and Panorama, effects and adjustments, but the experience is cumbersome in comparison, and shot-to-shot times take a few more seconds than the iPhone 4S. Outside, for instance, the iPhone 4S focuses and takes the picture, then writes it down and you are ready to shoot again in a second, whereas the RAZR takes about 2-3 seconds to take a picture then another one to write it in, before you can shoot again Inside, when it has to focus and take one firing the flash, the whole process can take up to six seconds, whereas the iPhone 4S gets it for two or three.

The results also couldn't be more different. Apple has put extra effort in the 8MP module of the iPhone 4S, and we have much better results now than with the iPhone 4. The overly saturated images with pumped up contrast have given way now to accurate colors, which are still warm and vivid. The pictures are also sharp, and the focus even throughout, plus the camera captures a lot of fine detail.

The RAZR pales in comparison, with its noisy photos that are lacking sharpness and contrast. The soft images also tend to misrepresent colors, and cast a reddish hue during tricky exposure situations.

The handsets shoot 1080p video with 30fps, which runs smooth, but the iPhone 4S beats the soft RAZR clips which look somewhat flat and indistinct.  We also have more life-asserting colors in the iPhone 4S video capture examples, compared to the dull tones from the Motorola DROID RAZR. Apple's handset also shoots with 24Mbps bit rate, whereas the RAZR hits 15Mbps.

Motorola DROID RAZR Sample Video:



Apple iPhone 4S Sample Video:



Motorola DROID RAZR Indoor Sample Video:



Apple iPhone 4S Indoor Sample Video:



The RAZR suppresses surrounding noise when it has to record voice during video pretty successfully thanks to its noise-canceling microphones, but the iPhone 4S captures cleaner audio overall with richer sound.

Multimedia:

Music playback from both handsets is pretty satisfying, and the players support all the basic functions we’ve come to expect from high-end handsets, like categorizing by album, artist, song or playlists. The RAZR's player has the upper hand in functionality, since it integrates TuneWiki to pull and display song lyrics, which run as karaoke while playing. Artists info is also shown, including upcoming tour dates.

The iPhone 4S offers excellent sound output, perfected over the years of iPod making. Motorola's phone has good output, too, but not as clean as from the iPhone 4S, which also feeds fuller sound into the headphones, with distinct bass and clear vocals. The RAZR's music player sports a few audio profiles, which can be applied even in speaker mode. The loudspeaker on Motorola's handset is stronger, but less clear than the one housed inside the 4S.

The Motorola DROID RAZR is great for video playback,  due to its large and vivid Super AMOLED display, which is perfect for watching high-def videos. The iPhone 4S follows on account of the smaller screen size.

Performance:

The Motorola DROID RAZR takes the crown here with its excellent call quality – a clear and strong sound both in the earpiece, and on the receiving end through the noise-canceling microphones. The iPhone 4S also provides for a rather good calling experience, with clearly discernible voices in the earpiece, and potent microphones.

Battery life is rated longer on the Motorola DROID RAZR – 9 hours and 20 minutes of talk time in 3G mode, which is becoming a staple for Moto’s handsets with the power-sipping TI OMAP processor family. The iPhone 4S is rated at 8 hours in 3G - it had battery issues in the beginning with some push notifications draining on the juice, but Apple issued a fix with iOS 5.0.1, which is meant to start remedying the issue.

Conclusion:

You can’t go wrong with any of these handsets, but the choice will be much easier if you know beforehand which mobile OS you are leaning to – the simpler and polished iOS, or the more  flexible Android.

The Motorola DROID RAZR sports a very thin profile and light weight, while at the same time being durable thanks to the metal frame and exotic Kevlar back plus its spill-proof coating. It excels in call quality both in the earpiece, and on the receiving end, and offers a large 4.3” Super AMOLED display, suitable for watching videos, but its 8MP camera is of subpar quality.

The iPhone 4S, on the other hand, provides one of the finest camera modules on a mobile device, and capturing images and 1080p video with it is the simplest and fastest experience available. It doesn't support Adobe Flash in the browser, but has one trump card hiding in the deck of features, called Siri, which is the personal assistant closest to those movies with futuristic voice-controlled gadgets you watched when you were a kid.

As far as applications go, we think that the Android and iOS stores are now pretty close in terms of quality and quantity, and you’ll be hard pressed to find something on the App Store that is not available in Android Market in similar fashion, although Apple has the upper hand in artsier projects, as well as mobile games.

Motorola DROID RAZR vs Apple iPhone 4S: