Amajor revision, almost three years of sales and over 50 million phones sold worldwide. The RAZR has already gone down in history as the fastest selling cell phone ever. The RAZR 2 has some pretty big shoes to fill. So how you go about making a phone that just has to be better in every respect? Make it thinner, sharper, stronger, faster, sleeker and you've probably just started to come close.

At first glance, it's immediately recognizable as a RAZR. All the me-too phones over the years that have copied the RAZR's keypad, the colors, the slim profile and clamshell design are instantly forgotten. The hump on the bottom of the phone is gone and the whole thing is 2 mm slimmer. Long paragraphs could be written about the exterior display (itself among the largest on any phone); it's a 2-inch, 240x320 pixel, 262K color unit with touch capabilities. Other phones with main screens that don't match up will be cowering somewhere in embarrassment.

When I say touch capabilities, I mean that the whole display is not a touchscreen, but it has capacitive buttons. If music is on, you can play/pause or skip tracks using the on-screen buttons. If you get a message, you can read the message using the side buttons and even reply (using pre-made templates) without opening the flip. The phone vibrates slightly when you touch a button, providing a nice feedback.

The interior screen is slightly larger, at 2.2 inches but otherwise has the same specs as the external screen. But the biggest improvement is the interface–the thing most people complained about with the old RAZR. You now get a Linux-based platform, powered by a 500 Mhz ARM processor. The graphics, icons and display is much nicer & smoother and the menu can be configured to your liking.

The fixed focus 2 MP camera is nothing spectacular though, a Sony CyberShot phone will beat it hands down. In terms of battery life again, don't expect it to break any records. Heavy users will have to recharge every day while most people will get by charging it every other day. You have to pay a price for the slim form factor–it's a necessary trade-off.

It's laudable that Motorola has designed it keeping all the most desirable features of the old RAZR intact. For instance, you can still open the phone with one hand or shut it with a quick flick of the wrist.

You cannot use an older Motorola charger and neither can you use your earphones of choice. It might also irk some people that there is no memory card expansion slot in a phone that costs almost 20k, but a generous 512 MB of memory is provided on-board. Motorola tells us that a 2 GB version is on the way, as well as some special bundles which will include stereo Bluetooth headsets. All the same, the new RAZR definitely has our vote, not just because of all the enhancements, but simply because it still manages to turn heads.