Motorola Razr i XT890 in the flesh, first impressions

Lats week’s @geekynights show introduced us to the Motorola Razr i (XT890) which is one of the very few Intel-powered Android smartphones in the market. It’s been released in the US about two quarters ago but never officially arrived in the country.

One of our co-hosts, @marklim, shipped it straight from the US for about Php15,000 (including shipping and duties) only to drop it on the floor a few days later, leaving a nice bump on the aluminum chassis.

The Razr i is very interesting because it’s among the few handsets that run on an Intel Atom Z2460. We’re curious on how that chip performs compared to the other dual-core and quad-core chips we normally encounter with other handsets.

The design and build-quality is also pretty interesting — the white variant is made up of light aluminum and polycarbonate materials that is covered with Kevlar which gives it a premium feel.

The device look pretty small but is actually 4.3 inches across (the narrow bezel does allow for bigger screen real estate). The display is a combo of Super AMOLED Advanced and Gorilla Glass (the somewhat greenish tint of the screen was a giveaway that it was AMOLED).

The device has a bit of heft to it, is also very thin at just 8.3mm. The shape somewhat tapers towards the bottom end and reminds us of the Asus Padfone.

The unit only has Android 4.0 ICS out of the box but an official ROM (already on OTA in Europe) is available so @marklim flashed it to upgrade to Jellybean.

The 8MP camera at the back is very prominent but that HD Video label just made it look un-sightly. We weren’t able to take photos at that time but the existing ones showed to us looked pretty decent.

If you looked at the hardware configuration, the Razr i obviously belongs to the mid-range category with that sub-720p display resolution and single-core processor.

Motorola Razr i XT890 specs:
4.3-inch Super AMOLED Advanced display @ 540×960 pixels, 256ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass
Intel Atom Z2460 2.0GHz single-core processor
Hyperthreading
PowerVR SGX540
1GB RAM
8GB internal storage
up to 32GB via microSD
3G/HSPA+ 21.1Mbps
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, dual-band, DLNA
Bluetopoth 2.1, A2DP
NFC
8MP rear camera, LED flash
1080p video recording @ 30fps
VGA front-facing camera
GPS w/ aGPS support
Andoroid 4.1.2 Jellybean
Li-Ion battery 2,000mAh

However, the battery capacity looks good and according to @marklim, the battery life in idle mode is really good.

So we ran a couple of benchmarks to see how the Intel chip fare against the competition.

The results actually surprised us — a Quadrant score of 4,163 which trumped the Nexus 10 (3,806) and close to the quad-core Meizu MX (4,046); the Antutu Benchmark gave it an over-all rating of 14,063 (beating the Galaxy S3 at 12k and Note 2 at 13.5k ).

Nenamark 2 pegs it s 51.4fps which is still pretty good.

Considering that this is just a single-core chip the Atom Z2460 is a powerful processor. The Hyperthreading technology allows it to act like it has 2 cores so we’re very curious how the next generation dual-core Atom will perform.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

16 Comments

mh and hps grow says:

10 years ago

I’m impressed, I must say. Rarely do I encounter a blog that’s both educative and amusing, and without a doubt, you have hit the nail on the
head. The problem is something that too few people
are speaking intelligently about. I am very happy that I came across this
in my hunt for something relating to this.
- Reply
drej says:

12 years ago

Sino yang lalake nasa likod?
yan ba si @marklim?
- Reply
Birdie says:

12 years ago

Makes me wonder what the point is for articles like this. Old phone. Not released in the PH?! 15k shipping and duties!! SMH nalang…
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r41 says:

12 years ago

Just IN CASE this phone actually lands here. Think about it – 15k WITH shipping and duties. So a local one would cost significantly less, right? With the excellent performance to boot, a good bargain.

r41 says:

12 years ago

That is an insanely good chip! Runs at 2GHz at well!
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meh says:

12 years ago

not that great? the benchmark shows it only slightly better than the galaxy s2 which is several years old now…
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r41 says:

12 years ago

(beating the Galaxy S3 at 12k and Note 2 at 13.5k )

Omg says:

12 years ago

Omg sir abe, ang pogi ni victor basa. Nakakabasa talaga hahahaha! Sana siya naman ireview niyo next time please! :))
- Reply
Carlo says:

12 years ago

wow! magkano kaya ito..
- Reply
Benchmark says:

12 years ago

It’s been so long since you reviewed a Motorola device. Anyway, isn’t the back hatch a kevlar like the moto droid razr? I like moto…i just hope moto x would be a great phone.
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Gnarly! says:

12 years ago

wow!pano pa kaya qng naging dualcore or mas matindi quadcore..

panget nga lang ng design netong phone na to.
- Reply
Darren philip says:

12 years ago

Wow…
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luther says:

12 years ago

how about overclocking the CPU guys..? ..would it perform better?
- Reply

someone says:

12 years ago

In theory it should perform a few digits more on benchmark. But why overclock a mobile device (smartphone)? You’ll end up hooking it to the charger more often.

gwapogi04 says:

12 years ago

14000+ Antutu Benchmark for a SINGLE CORE device??
that’s HELL!
- Reply
haykal loren says:

12 years ago

Its the hyperthreading thats doing the work me thinks.
- Reply