Motorola Droid Razr Maxx Review

The user interface on the Droid Razr Maxx is the same as on the Droid Razr. Both smartphones run on Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) along with Motorola's Motoblur interface. Motorola has said an upgrade to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) will be available at some point in the future, though no release date has been announced.

One of the features we really liked on the Droid Razr and some of Motorola's other recent phones is Smart Actions. Thankfully, Motorola has also included this app on the Droid Razr Maxx. As you may recall, Smart Actions will automatically adjust device settings to your liking based on your location, the time of day, battery level, and or another trigger of your choosing. The Smart Actions app comes with a number of predefined rules to help you get started. You can also create your own rules from scratch. While testing Smart Actions, we were impressed by how accurately the phone determined our location and responded to other configured Smart Actions.

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The Droid Razr Maxx has five customizable home screens. If you tap the Home button from the main home screen, you'll see a thumbnail view of each of these five home screens. Just above the four touch sensitive hardware buttons (Menu, Home, Back, and Search), you'll notice Motorola has placed four static icons at the base of each of the home screens. These icons provide easy access to the phone, text messaging, camera, and application listing by default. The first three of these applications can be customized by pressing and holding the icon and selecting a new application to add to the Dock.

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It's no secret the majority of today's smartphones ship with additional applications. The Droid Razr Maxx is no exception. Among the list of preinstalled apps on the Droid Razr Maxx, you'll find Amazon Kindle, Blockbuster, GoToMeeting, Let's Golf 2, Madden NFL 12, MotoActiv, MotoPrint, My Verizon, Netflix, NFL Mobile, Quickoffice, Slacker, and others. Some of these applications such as Blockbuster and Let's Golf 2 can be uninstalled using the Manage Applications menu. Many of these preinstalled applications cannot be removed without hacking the phone. We've said it before, and we'll say it again: We wish wireless carriers and manufacturers would give users the option to install these applications rather than automatically installing them on the phone. At the very least, we wish there were more applications that you could uninstall without rooting the phone.

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To help you manage the apps on the phone, you can group apps into folders. You can also place Links to Groups on your home screens. By default, there are four predefined app groups: All apps, Recent, Downloaded, and Verizon Wireless. From the upper left corner of the app screen, you can view existing groups and add new ones. While viewing the groups, you can add a new group. Once you create a new group, the phone will ask you to select which apps belong in that group.

The Droid Razr Maxx comes with both the standard Android keyboard and the SWYPE keyboard.

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