On stage at its London event today, Razer took the wraps off of its first smartphone. Simply called the Razer Phone, the Android device brings Razer's gaming gravitas to the mobile world.
The fact that Razer was working on a smartphone hasn't exactly been a secret. Following its acquisition of Nextbit, makers of the unique Robin smartphone, in early 2017, Razer hasn't been shy about teasing its plans to expand from its bread and butter of gaming peripherals and laptops to the smartphone market. What remained a mystery, until now anyway, was how it would differentiate the Razer Phone from the competition.
As you might expect, Razer is gearing the Razer Phone toward mobile gamers with some pretty beefy specs. One of the more intriguing inclusions is a 5.72-inch 2560 x 1440 display with an absurdly fast 120Hz refresh rate and a wide color gamut. Razer is also talking up the phone's audio prowess, with dual front-facing speakers, THX certification, and Dolby Atmos support. Internally, you'll find a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, 8GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage.
Razer says its smartphone is the first to ship with Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+, which will allow the 4,000 mAh battery to charge from zero to 85 percent in an hour. Around back, the Razer Phone sports dual 12MP cameras, which will allow for some cool depth of field effects. Razer promises more features, like slo-mo and portrait mode, will arrive in future updates. All of this is packed into a matte black exterior that screams of the Nextbit Robin design language, albeit with Razer's iconic logo on the rear.
As for games, Razer has included what it calls Game Booster, which it says will let you manually optimize gameplay for performance or battery life. Razer also says it is planning gaming partnerships that will result in games that are optimized to run well on the Razer Phone.
The Razer Phone will be available starting November 17 for $699 / €749.99 / £699.99 in North America and Europe. Preorders are open now at Razer's online store, and the phone will be sold at Microsoft Stores as well.
