I’ll admit it, I’m a cell phone junkie. Yeah, I know, you’re surprised.

I have TWO new cell phones I’m trying out right now. Let’s talk about the first one … my unlocked Motorola RAZR V3i. The most noticable improvement is the addition of iTunes, which uses the MicroSD chip to store its songs. If you’re looking considering this phone, here’s what you need to know:

• Very cool phone. Same great audio qualityas the original Razr’s.
• “Black” means “dark-silver-purple” when they describe the shell cover.
• A new “M” light was added to the front below the small screen. No more faking cell phone calls, people!
• Somehow, the interface became slightly more fluid. I can’t explain it.
• iTunes is cool … I’m amazed at how similar the experience is. Its not an iPod, but its good.
• Before you can sync iTunes stuff, you need to tell the phone that your “default USB device” is the memory chip, not the phone. If you don’t do this, the phone won’t appear in iTunes. (That’s in the instruction manual … I wish I would have started there instead of spending 3 days on it).
• It’d be nice if the current song scrolled on the front screen. It doesn’t.
• Album art does work, if its in iTunes to begin with.
• There is something uber-cool about making phone calls using the stereo headset. I think its because you hear the call in both ears. Think about it … when does that ever happen on a normal phone call.
• Sound quality on your music sucks.
• Headphone music quality sucks.
• The headphones are not extremely comfortable.
• Another big improvement is the addition of their VoiceCommand software. I seriously considered getting a PEBL because of this feature alone. It allows you to train the phone to respond to certain phonebook entries or to respond to a series of commands without recording/training it first. Very cool! — And when it doesn’t have a match, it’ll prompt you for the closest ones it found AND the phone interface is set to make it easy for you to just stop talking and point-n-click to what you want! — Someone really spent some time with this and made it work EXACTLY how I would have spec’d it out!

Standard “unlocked” constraints apply with this, as almost any other unlocked phone:

• Since its unlocked, the carrier hasn’t had the chance to program it with their internet browser settings to allow you to browse the internet on the phone.
• You get a lot more themes, backgrounds and default images.
• You get a lot more menu options.
• The date/time may or may not automatically sync. - In this case, it has to be set manually … which really sucks.

In summary … its a great phone. iTunes is more of a novelty than anything else because of the uncomfortable headphones and poor sound quality. If it was good, I might actually carry the headphones around with me at times to listen to music.

Overall: 8 out of 10.

Next review: Nokia E61