I don't get it. A large phone should always have a headphone jack, since it should always have the board space for a nice, discrete DAC and maybe even a headphone amplifier. Anything less is wasting the form factor.
Latency with high end headphones and high end phones it pretty minimal. And, there is going to be latency in a wired connection as well. You have to convert digital to analog. It may not be as long since you are just going digital to analog instead of digital, to another digital codec then to analog, but it's there. Also, I use noise cancelling headphones, so even if you are feeding them analog audio they are then digitally processing it, so I doubt there is much difference in latency whether you have them plugged in or bluetooth.
The Bluetooth latency is there, and will bother some players. lmcd is right, instead of going all-in on profits, Razer should have offered the option of a headphone jack.
By that logic latency exists in everything, the point is that %99.9 of people are not going to notice it to even care. Which is that case with Bluetooth
Note how people say it has gone with "high end" headphones. So everyone should go out and buy stupidly expensive headphones to get around an artificially created deficiency? I could spend a load of cash on some headphones with an old jack connection where the R&D has gone into the sound or I could spend that on some bluetooth ones where the money has had to go into correcting the issues with Bluetooth.
Every time I use Bluetooth I have issues. It's just unreliable, patchy, expensive and not a good replacement for a cable. I certainly have no problem with the option of bluetooth being there but I refuse to pay a fortune for high end kit where the issues have been solved.
Also, can someone tell me what the difference is between the wireless charging used by the author's LG V30 and the Razer Phone? I thought they would both work with the same wireless chargers, but the article seems to indicate otherwise?
Really? This is basically the anti-pixel. Other than their OS both being closer to AOSP than many of the other phones out there, i would consider this phone the complete opposite approach of a Pixel, im sure many will agree.
Assuming you can get one into Andrei's hands I'd be very interested to see how effective the vapor chamber is. Without a way to increase external surface area of the phone (like with fins vs just making the phone BIGGER) I'm not sure how else they can increase the thermal dissipation without something like a vapor chamber.
Also, I get it -- Dev cycle and all, but I'm disappointed that this is launching with 8.1 instead of 9.0. At least it isn't launching with 8.0 or older.
I really wish AT would adopt a more modern gallery solution. The current one is slow, cumbersome, unsuited for mobile use, and not even consistent (sometimes it allows for flipping between images, others you need to navigate back and forth). This seems like a hold-over from ... 2010?
Despite the massive bezels and "gaming" focus, this is along the lines of what I'm looking for in my next phone: large battery, no notch, no rounded screen corners, and few "AI" buzzwords...just normal buzzwords.
"THX Certification" never meant much, IMO, and its parent company putting it on one of their own products means even less to me. The lack of a headphone jack is disappointing, but at least they include an adapter in the box. The "Netflix 5.1 Certification" is also funny for a device which only has 2 speakers.
Glad to see this phone is notch free, but it's still been infected by the glass back and no headphone jack craze. There are other materials besides glass that enable wireless charging that also won't shatter when dropped. Not including a headphone jack makes zero sense on a gaming phone where ironically you'll be MUCH more likely to want to use a nice set of wired headphones and be able to charge the phone in at the same time. Very poor design choices IMO.
Otherwise, not a bad phone, although with only 64GB of storage I wish it had true dual SIM plus microSD, not the hybrid system. High-end mobile games are getting pretty huge now. Would also be nice if they had an option with increased storage (128GB or more).
Overall, glad to see these botique phones starting to crop in response to the copy Apple and race to the bottom behavior of nearly all the other phone manufacturers. Hopefully by the time I need a new phone they'll have a proper power user phone without silly design choices.
A decent processor with GPU, good screen, front speakers, 3.5mm jack powered by a good audio DAC, an SD slot, and a removable battery are what a gaming phone NEEDS to have before I will buy one. The devices become too niche then get abandoned, so I don't want an expensive paperweight when the battery finally dies.
We are in the infancy of Android phones marketed as gaming platforms (though there were prior attempts to make gaming-friendly phones in the past). If these things continue to land enough sales to show profits, there will be OEMs that diversify on features. In the meantime, since you're not really getting substantially more gaming performance than any other modern flagship phone, there might be another alternative available now you can you can purchase that is just as powerful, but lacks the gamer styling. Though, I don't know where else you'd get the same screen refresh rate if that's an important feature for you.
If all phone copycats will follow Apple in increasing price 10% per year, in 100 years the phones will cost exp(0.1*100) times more or 20-30 million bucks. The Regulatirs have to look if the virtual cartel wasn't already formed.
That's some pretty heavy-handed extrapolation there.
I'm also not sure where you're getting the 10% price increase per year from Apple. Per Wikipedia (which is always right about everything, ever), the iPhone 6, 6S, and 7 all launched at the same price ($650), and only with the iPhone 8 did Apple increase the price (by $50).
The iPhone X was more expensive than the iPhone 8 (by closer to 50% to the normal 8 and 25% for the 8+), but didn't replace the iPhone 8. The iPhone XS is the same price as the iPhone X was a year ago. The iPhone XR *is* $50 more than the iPhone 8 it's (presumably) replacing, but that's not exponential, since the iPhone 8 was $50 more than the iPhone 7.
A yearly increase of $50 is linear, and would correspond to a price of $6000 in 100 years if you wanted to extrapolate 2 years worth of data to 100 years.
OLED screen’s cost a lot more, and Samsung is believed to be charging Apple more than they charge themselves, which is why the OLED models from Apple cost more. The XR, out soon, is $749 with a 6.1” screen. It’s also why Apple gave LG $2.7 billion to develop better quality OLED screens as opposed the total crap they had last year.
There’s such a thing as inflation too. If we all went back to small LCD screen phones, they wouldn’t cost as much.
I really don't get it, who would purchase a gamer's phone for $800 when a PS4 cost less than $280, a Switch for $300, or a GTX 1080 for $450, which will surely last 3 years? If you do, I'd be interested in knowing why, what kind of games you play on it and if it's your main game machine.
None of those other hardware alternatives are as portable with the exception of the Switch, but the Switch can't also handle communications tasks or act as a GPS. There might be a certain amount of appeal to people that want one and only one device that does everything from entertainment to making calls. For them, buying something like this might offer a cost savings over multiple devices that have somewhat redundant capabilities.
I don't think that reasoning justifies the $800 price. You can accomplish those same goals at significantly lower cost if you manage your expectations and aim for a more practical platform, but there is a certain amount of logic behind tossing all your consumer electronics related needs into a single thing. Yikes if you lose or break that thing though!
None of those devices provide the ego boost of whipping up a phone in public 24/7. You are thinking utility when companies like Apple are getting people to pay for vanity.
No, we pay Apple for the best devices on the market, whether you want to believe it or not. The best service too, and the ability to get new OS upgrades for a full five years, and have the newest when a new phone comes out. Not like this one, with an old OS version which will get upgraded to just one more in a few months.
I'm too OCD to have those micro perforated bezel grills. Last big photo in the article it's already filled up with gunk (dead skin?, lotion?, pocket fuzz?)
Wireless Phone Chargers Market Analysis - http://bit.ly/2Z1SW9O This report focuses on Wireless Phone Chargers volume and value at global level, regional level and company level. From a global perspective, this report represents overall Wireless Phone Chargers market size by analyzing historical data and future prospect. Regionally, this report focuses on several key regions: North America, Europe, China and Japan. At company level, this report focuses on the production capacity, ex-factory price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer covered in this report.
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lmcd - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
I don't get it. A large phone should always have a headphone jack, since it should always have the board space for a nice, discrete DAC and maybe even a headphone amplifier. Anything less is wasting the form factor.WorldWithoutMadness - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
So it can sell more of their bluetooth peripherals.Diji1 - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Bluetooth has an unavoidable delay making it unsuitable for video or gaming although some people get used to it.imaheadcase - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Uhh no it doesn't. Maybe long ago it did. I use them everyday and have no issues compared to wireless headphones on desktop.Flunk - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Yes, it does. You not noticing it doesn't mean it exists. It's measured in ms so it's not very noticeable, but it is there.P.S. So do your "desktop" wireless headphones.
schilling3003 - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Latency with high end headphones and high end phones it pretty minimal. And, there is going to be latency in a wired connection as well. You have to convert digital to analog. It may not be as long since you are just going digital to analog instead of digital, to another digital codec then to analog, but it's there. Also, I use noise cancelling headphones, so even if you are feeding them analog audio they are then digitally processing it, so I doubt there is much difference in latency whether you have them plugged in or bluetooth.Silma - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
The Bluetooth latency is there, and will bother some players. lmcd is right, instead of going all-in on profits, Razer should have offered the option of a headphone jack.imaheadcase - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
By that logic latency exists in everything, the point is that %99.9 of people are not going to notice it to even care. Which is that case with Bluetoothmelgross - Monday, October 15, 2018 - link
Not 5. Earlier versions had a small problem. Even that delay is eliminated with Apple’s W series chips inside.philehidiot - Sunday, November 4, 2018 - link
Note how people say it has gone with "high end" headphones. So everyone should go out and buy stupidly expensive headphones to get around an artificially created deficiency? I could spend a load of cash on some headphones with an old jack connection where the R&D has gone into the sound or I could spend that on some bluetooth ones where the money has had to go into correcting the issues with Bluetooth.Every time I use Bluetooth I have issues. It's just unreliable, patchy, expensive and not a good replacement for a cable. I certainly have no problem with the option of bluetooth being there but I refuse to pay a fortune for high end kit where the issues have been solved.
dqniel - Monday, October 15, 2018 - link
Even many of the modern bluetooth headphones have delay. Sometimes a significant amount.https://www.rtings.com/headphones/tests/active-fea...
Matthmaroo - Saturday, October 13, 2018 - link
I started using the beatsx with the w1 chipWhatever they did, no delay
dqniel - Monday, October 15, 2018 - link
About 130ms. That's a pretty long delay in the A/V world.milkywayer - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
A photo of this phone can be printed next to the word Fugly in next year's Oxford Dictionary.1_rick - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
So? I personally will take ugly--and no notch!--in exchange for front-firing speakers any day of the week.coolhardware - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Good point.Also, can someone tell me what the difference is between the wireless charging used by the author's LG V30 and the Razer Phone? I thought they would both work with the same wireless chargers, but the article seems to indicate otherwise?
Sorry if I am missing something obvious!
Narg - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Let's face it. Smartphone makers don't care about what smart people want these days.mrochester - Sunday, October 14, 2018 - link
They definitely don't. They still try and shove Android down our throats despite our protests to the contrary!axi6ne8us - Saturday, October 13, 2018 - link
Totally agree!Matthmaroo - Saturday, October 13, 2018 - link
Once Apple dropped the jack it was overEventually it will be completely gone - sooner then later
beginner99 - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
If you are already doing a humongous bezel, why not add capacitive buttons to it vs on-screen? thi sis just poor desgin.WorldWithoutMadness - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Less programming, less designing, less material, etc.Valantar - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
... because it contains a speaker?Flunk - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Android doesn't support capacitive buttons and hasn't for years. Hacking on 3rd party support is expensive.Devo2007 - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
The KEYtwo says otherwise. It's not a "hack"aleny2k - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Looks like a very good and competitive alternative to Pixel 3 XLdanielfranklin - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Really?This is basically the anti-pixel.
Other than their OS both being closer to AOSP than many of the other phones out there, i would consider this phone the complete opposite approach of a Pixel, im sure many will agree.
MrCommunistGen - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Assuming you can get one into Andrei's hands I'd be very interested to see how effective the vapor chamber is. Without a way to increase external surface area of the phone (like with fins vs just making the phone BIGGER) I'm not sure how else they can increase the thermal dissipation without something like a vapor chamber.Also, I get it -- Dev cycle and all, but I'm disappointed that this is launching with 8.1 instead of 9.0. At least it isn't launching with 8.0 or older.
sid1712 - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Ian, the IMX363 is a 12MP camera sensor, not 20MP. You might want to edit that :)Valantar - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
I really wish AT would adopt a more modern gallery solution. The current one is slow, cumbersome, unsuited for mobile use, and not even consistent (sometimes it allows for flipping between images, others you need to navigate back and forth). This seems like a hold-over from ... 2010?PeachNCream - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
You mean like the way the comment system's lack of an edit button is something out of 2000?...
Yeah, I don't see the gallery changing soon.
Inteli - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Despite the massive bezels and "gaming" focus, this is along the lines of what I'm looking for in my next phone: large battery, no notch, no rounded screen corners, and few "AI" buzzwords...just normal buzzwords."THX Certification" never meant much, IMO, and its parent company putting it on one of their own products means even less to me. The lack of a headphone jack is disappointing, but at least they include an adapter in the box. The "Netflix 5.1 Certification" is also funny for a device which only has 2 speakers.
gamer1000k - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Glad to see this phone is notch free, but it's still been infected by the glass back and no headphone jack craze. There are other materials besides glass that enable wireless charging that also won't shatter when dropped. Not including a headphone jack makes zero sense on a gaming phone where ironically you'll be MUCH more likely to want to use a nice set of wired headphones and be able to charge the phone in at the same time. Very poor design choices IMO.Otherwise, not a bad phone, although with only 64GB of storage I wish it had true dual SIM plus microSD, not the hybrid system. High-end mobile games are getting pretty huge now. Would also be nice if they had an option with increased storage (128GB or more).
Overall, glad to see these botique phones starting to crop in response to the copy Apple and race to the bottom behavior of nearly all the other phone manufacturers. Hopefully by the time I need a new phone they'll have a proper power user phone without silly design choices.
richough3 - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
A decent processor with GPU, good screen, front speakers, 3.5mm jack powered by a good audio DAC, an SD slot, and a removable battery are what a gaming phone NEEDS to have before I will buy one. The devices become too niche then get abandoned, so I don't want an expensive paperweight when the battery finally dies.PeachNCream - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
We are in the infancy of Android phones marketed as gaming platforms (though there were prior attempts to make gaming-friendly phones in the past). If these things continue to land enough sales to show profits, there will be OEMs that diversify on features. In the meantime, since you're not really getting substantially more gaming performance than any other modern flagship phone, there might be another alternative available now you can you can purchase that is just as powerful, but lacks the gamer styling. Though, I don't know where else you'd get the same screen refresh rate if that's an important feature for you.SanX - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
If all phone copycats will follow Apple in increasing price 10% per year, in 100 years the phones will cost exp(0.1*100) times more or 20-30 million bucks. The Regulatirs have to look if the virtual cartel wasn't already formed.Inteli - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
That's some pretty heavy-handed extrapolation there.I'm also not sure where you're getting the 10% price increase per year from Apple. Per Wikipedia (which is always right about everything, ever), the iPhone 6, 6S, and 7 all launched at the same price ($650), and only with the iPhone 8 did Apple increase the price (by $50).
The iPhone X was more expensive than the iPhone 8 (by closer to 50% to the normal 8 and 25% for the 8+), but didn't replace the iPhone 8. The iPhone XS is the same price as the iPhone X was a year ago. The iPhone XR *is* $50 more than the iPhone 8 it's (presumably) replacing, but that's not exponential, since the iPhone 8 was $50 more than the iPhone 7.
A yearly increase of $50 is linear, and would correspond to a price of $6000 in 100 years if you wanted to extrapolate 2 years worth of data to 100 years.
melgross - Monday, October 15, 2018 - link
OLED screen’s cost a lot more, and Samsung is believed to be charging Apple more than they charge themselves, which is why the OLED models from Apple cost more. The XR, out soon, is $749 with a 6.1” screen. It’s also why Apple gave LG $2.7 billion to develop better quality OLED screens as opposed the total crap they had last year.There’s such a thing as inflation too. If we all went back to small LCD screen phones, they wouldn’t cost as much.
Silma - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
I really don't get it, who would purchase a gamer's phone for $800 when a PS4 cost less than $280, a Switch for $300, or a GTX 1080 for $450, which will surely last 3 years?If you do, I'd be interested in knowing why, what kind of games you play on it and if it's your main game machine.
PeachNCream - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
None of those other hardware alternatives are as portable with the exception of the Switch, but the Switch can't also handle communications tasks or act as a GPS. There might be a certain amount of appeal to people that want one and only one device that does everything from entertainment to making calls. For them, buying something like this might offer a cost savings over multiple devices that have somewhat redundant capabilities.I don't think that reasoning justifies the $800 price. You can accomplish those same goals at significantly lower cost if you manage your expectations and aim for a more practical platform, but there is a certain amount of logic behind tossing all your consumer electronics related needs into a single thing. Yikes if you lose or break that thing though!
wr3zzz - Monday, October 15, 2018 - link
None of those devices provide the ego boost of whipping up a phone in public 24/7. You are thinking utility when companies like Apple are getting people to pay for vanity.melgross - Monday, October 15, 2018 - link
No, we pay Apple for the best devices on the market, whether you want to believe it or not. The best service too, and the ability to get new OS upgrades for a full five years, and have the newest when a new phone comes out. Not like this one, with an old OS version which will get upgraded to just one more in a few months.Gunbuster - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
I'm too OCD to have those micro perforated bezel grills. Last big photo in the article it's already filled up with gunk (dead skin?, lotion?, pocket fuzz?)Barf.
Notmyusualid - Sunday, October 14, 2018 - link
Wow... I was waiting for a 5G handset, saw this and thought wow - nice great front facing speakers, but then no dual-sim, and no headphone jack.I'll pass.
r13j13r13 - Monday, October 15, 2018 - link
absurd if they want portability a switch but the PS4 or Xbox One but the phones are not gamer understand it is throwing the money awayvaibhav24 - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
Wireless Phone Chargers Market Analysis - http://bit.ly/2Z1SW9OThis report focuses on Wireless Phone Chargers volume and value at global level, regional level and company level. From a global perspective, this report represents overall Wireless Phone Chargers market size by analyzing historical data and future prospect. Regionally, this report focuses on several key regions: North America, Europe, China and Japan.
At company level, this report focuses on the production capacity, ex-factory price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer covered in this report.