T-Mobile Razr2 V8 Cell Phone Review - Organizer
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Mark Brezinski Published on December 10, 2007 Comment on this |
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Synchronization Ease of Use (0.0)
The Razr2 can only sync up music, which unfortunately does not encompass PIM information. It will therefore receive a zero in this section.
Alerts (3.5)
Alerts on the Razr2 aren't great. The sounds themselves aren't very loud or shrill enough to perk your ear. The vibration is barely enough to catch your attention in your pocket. The on-screen notifications are nice, as they give you the quick option to zoom to whatever the alert is reminding you about, but they aren't very eye catching unless you're currently using the phone. They tend to be grayish and don't take up the whole screen. Of course, if the screen is dimmed, just lighting up should catch your eye. Overall, however, sub-par alert functionality.
Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The Razr2 V8 doesn't support any sort of PIM synchronization, which includes over the air synchronization.
Address Book
Adding Contacts (7.50)
For this test, we again begin with the phone in a closed standby. We then enter in a sample contact, stopping our timer when we hit the save button. The Razr2 V8 was able to add a contact in an average of 13.33 seconds. This is a fast time, made possible by the relatively easy interface for contact entry. All you need to do is type the number, and "save as a contact" becomes a soft key function. From here all that's necessary is multi-tapping out the name. We really didn't run into much menu lag here either, which further facilitated our trials.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| T-Mobile Razr2 V8 | 13.33 | 7.50 |
| Helio Fin | 22.02 | 4.54 |
| Samsung Juke | 14.57 | 6.86 |
| Sony Ericcson W580i | 22.74 | 4.40 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 20.5 | 4.88 |
| LG Venus | 14.38 | 6.95 |
Looking/Sorting/Search (3.5)
Contacts are organized by first name as a default, but there is an option to sort them by last name under contact settings. You can further filter contacts by most frequent, SIM/phone contacts, or by category. You can make your own categories as well. There is a multitap search feature, but it will only search by what you've set as the organization criteria (either first or last name). Overall, though, the Razr2 V8 provides some good contact functionality for a non -business device. The reason the score is low is because it lacks features like predictive search found in more advanced phones.
Fields (7.4)
Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (2.75)
The Razr2 V8 features both speed dial and voice commands. It only allows you to set seven different speed dials for some reason; number 1 goes to voice mail, and the 9 key is mysteriously left off the list. This isn't very good, as most phones will allow you to set up almost 100 or even 1000 speed dials. The voice command software is really quite bad. If it didn't recognize what you were saying, you had to quit out and restart the application. It also only recognized one of our test names, and for those it didn't recognize it immediately thrust us into various applications that sounded nothing like the name we had said. Furthermore, we were often interrupted mid-name by the voice claiming it did not recognize the command. We'd have though an application that receives a giant dedicated button would be slightly more functional.
Calendar
Adding Calendar Items (6.54)
This timing test takes the phone from a closed standby to a completed calendar entry. We stop the timer when we save our test appointment and do a handful of trials to get an average.
The Razr2 V8 was able to type out the sample appointment in about 15.28 seconds. It certainly seemed as though it was faster since we crammed quite a lot of navigation into this time. First of all, the Razr2 V8 buries its calendar application three menus deep. The keypad savvy will begin to equate 6-7-3 with appointment scheduling. Unfortunately for such users pressing 3 too soon after 7 will open video capture instead. Apparently you can't navigate first and wait for the phone to catch up later, which slows down the process a bit.
Once you've managed to get inside the calendar application, the first sticking point is getting out of the title field. The phone's xt9 requires you to hit select before navigating out of the field, or else you'll just cycle through word predictions. Setting a reminder was also a pain. Our test entry calls for a reminder 15 minutes before. To do this we first had to press up a few times to wrap around to the bottom of the list where the alarm was. Once in the alarm settings, we noticed that the preset increments didn't include 15. Fortunately for functionality and unfortunately for this timing test, there was a custom reminder field at the bottom of the presets list. Adding calendar entries is a bit of work on the Razr2, but if you're used to it it doesn't take much longer than other phones, as you can see below.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| T-Mobile Razr2 V8 | 15.28 | 6.54 |
| Helio Fin | 14.1 | 7.09 |
| Samsung Juke | 13.72 | 7.29 |
| Sony Ericcson W580i | 14.04 | 7.12 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 6.48 | 15.43 |
| LG Venus | 18.87 | 5.30 |
Calendar Views (6.5)
The week view will look very similar to virtually any other respectable week view. Apparently our society has hit the apex of week view technology and this is it. The top of the screen will display days of the week and their corresponding dates within the month. The left side displays hours. Appointments are represented by purple vertical lines that block out the item's duration. Week view is definitely better than month view, though we would've liked some sort of informative pop-up when we highlighted an appointment. Clicking on an item will zoom to that entry in day mode.
Fields (10.0)
The Razr2 has virtually all the important fields we award points for. Some of the non-basic features you'll have access to are recurrence, attendees, and notes. The only field we would've liked to see was one for categories.
ToDo/Tasks
Adding ToDo/Task (6.78)
This score is based on our standard organizer software timing test: we start with the phone in a closed, unlocked standby, and end as soon as we save our test entry.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| T-Mobile Razr2 V8 | 14.74 | 6.78 |
| Helio Fin | 11.58 | 8.64 |
| Samsung Juke | N/A: can't create tasks | 0.0 |
| Sony Ericcson W580i | 16.56 | 6.04 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | N/A: can't create tasks | 0.0 |
| LG Venus | N/A: can't create tasks | 0.0 |
ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (7.0)
Fields (4.0)
Notes
Adding Notes (3.66)
Again, our organizer timing tests involve browsing to the application and creating a test entry, stopping the timer as we save it.
In the case of notes, the Razr2 V8 received a lap time of 13.66 seconds. This is a slightly below average score. Like the prior two timing tests, this one involved a winding menu path initially. Like a few other recently reviewed phones, the V8 tried to goad us into cheating towards a better score with its smart word prediction. Our test note is, "Lunch 12pm tomorrow". Normally entering in the numbers is a bit of a bottleneck, but from the second run on it would automatically suggest "12pm" whenever we input the 1. We graciously declined to use this advanced tactic in the interest of accuracy and to maintain the ethics of scientific research. If you tend to use the same words repeatedly, however, you could churn out notes fairly quickly.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| T-Mobile Razr2 V8 | 13.66 | 3.66 |
| Helio Fin | 15.3 | 3.27 |
| Samsung Juke | 16 | 3.13 |
| Sony Ericcson W580i | 12 | 4.17 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 13.73 | 3.64 |
| LG Venus | 18.86 | 2.65 |
Note Interface (3.0)
The interface of the notes application itself is bare-bones. You can change your text entry method and that's it. Your notes are listed in the order they're created, and there's no options for rearranging them. You can, however, flag them. This gives them a red, squarish icon imbued with a white pennant on a pole. The flagging option is interesting as we didn't see it implemented anywhere else on the device.
Note Formatting (0.0)
There are no options for formatting notes.
Voice Memo (4.0)
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