Review: Motorola Droid RAZR M for Verizon Wireless
Camera
The M does not have a dedicated camera button, but the camera can be accessed from the lock screen. It launches quickly. The camera controls are nicely arranged and intuitive to use.
The M's camera can shoot at a maximum of 8 megapixels with a 4:3 aspect ratio. If you want to shoot in a 16:9 ratio — matching most of today's TVs and computer monitors — images are 6 megapixels.
The focusing box hovers in the middle of the screen, but the M also includes touch-to-focus if you want to be specific. There's a slide on the left of the display for zooming and the volume key doubles as a zoom key.
The M's camera offers shooting modes such as portrait, landscape, close-ups, sunsets, and more. It has an easy panorama mode for taking shots of wide vistas.
Overall, the camera functions well. It opens quickly, is quick to focus, and is fast to capture/save images.
Photos
The M's camera does a better job than the Photon Q or Atrix HD. I thought the low-light performance was vastly improved when compared to these other Motorola devices. Focus was good, exposure accurate, and white balance correct most of the time. Shooting in low light adds some grain to the results, but that's not out of the ordinary. The flash does a great job when lighting is poor, as long as your subject is only a few feet away. Overall, the results are laudable.
Video
The 1080p HD video camera does a good job, too. Most of the time exposure was spot on, focus was clear, and colors looked good. The results will look excellent on YouTube as well as your HDTV.
Gallery
The M uses the standard Android 4.0 gallery app. It shows stacks of photos and videos floating on the screen, which are broken down into groupings such as Camera Shots, All Photos, All Videos, and Screenshots. The gallery also includes access to online accounts, such as Facebook or Picasa.
When viewing images, buttons appear along the bottom for performing actions such as share, delete, play, and so on. It's a snap to share photos through any social network/messaging service you want.
Editing features are decent, though the bulk of them are simply different filters. For example, some of the "edits" that can be applied include: Fill Light, Shadows, Posterize, Vignette, and Fisheye. The M also lets users crop photos, eliminate red-eye, straighten them, rotate them, flip them, and sharpen them.
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