Just when you thought the trendy RAZR handset had lost its luster, Motorola has finally given the nation's best-selling phone a much-deserved renewal. The V3xx is a high-speed, high-style, high-powered handset that, for now anyway, is selling for an insanely low price.

The Motorola RAZR changed the cell-phone world with its slim style, but that was almost three years ago. Since then, Motorola has pumped out a steady stream of RAZR clones—red RAZRs, Verizon RAZRs, RAZRs with iTunes—without giving the phone's heart a real refresh. The result was that by late last year, the 2004-era RAZR had become famous for its slow response times, annoying phone book, and lack of features.

The launch of the V3xx changes all that. This time, the phone's upgrades are more than just cosmetic. Sure the V3xx may look like an ordinary dark-gray RAZR, perhaps just a tiny bit wider and a hair thicker. But open it up for the first wow. Inside sits an ultrasharp 320-by-240 screen, a huge step up from the 176-by-220 screens of past RAZRs.

The RAZR made its name as a voice phone, and the V3xx delivers there as well. This is an excellent-sounding cell that gets very good reception, with one exception (we'll discuss that below). Volume is superb, loud with no distortion, and the speakerphone is quite punchy, even in a noisy outdoor scenario. Voices could be just a bit sharper, but that's nitpicking. The phone supports Bluetooth headsets (both stereo and mono) and uses the top-notch VoiceSignal voice dialing suite. And yes, you can assign your own MP3s as ringtones. As with all of Cingular's newfangled HSDPA handsets, talk time is much shorter than on older EDGE phones. I measured the V3xx's at 3.5 hours.

Every bit of the V3xx's software has been rewritten, too. It's a much faster phone than the RAZR, in part thanks to its zippy 314-MHz ARM9 processor, a big jump from the 40-MHz ARM7 CPU in most RAZRs. The address book is so much better that Motorola execs should be put in stocks for not giving us these improvements sooner. You can search by multiple-letter strings and page through groups easily, and it defaults to showing one name per person—no more duplicate entries. The lousy WAP browser has been replaced by Opera, a full-fledged Web browser that shows actual Web pages. Games play amazingly smoothly, helped along by an nVidia GoForce 4800 graphics accelerator. Because of this, the V3xx aced the JBenchmark gaming frame-rate tests.

The V3xx's MP3 player also got a very necessary update. You can now search, sort, and view by album, artist, or title. In addition, you can upload MP3 or M4A files with bit rates of up to 256 kilobits per second to the phone at fast USB 2.0 speeds—about two seconds per song—using a standard mini-USB cable that you probably have lying around anyway. You can also transfer files over Bluetooth. Songs are stored on a microSD card under the back cover, though, thankfully, you don't have to remove the battery to get at it. My phone worked fine with a 2GB SanDisk card and played music in stereo over Plantronics Pulsar 590 Bluetooth headphones. There's still no truly elegant way to sync music with a PC, though. You have to drag and drop your music files, and you can't create playlists on a PC, as you can with the Samsung Sync.

Cingular's now-customary instant-messaging and OZ e-mail clients also come with this phone. The tabbed e-mail client handles AOL, AIM, Yahoo!, and SBC mail, but it isn't a generic POP3 e-mail program.

The V3xx is also the single fastest Internet handset I've ever tested, thanks to its 3.6-Mbps HSDPA modem. Hooked up to a PC with a USB cable, I got speeds that peaked at 1.6 Mbps down and 352 Kbps up. That's far faster than Verizon's or Sprint's EV-DO phones—or any other Cingular phone I've tested so far. (If you're browsing on the handset itself, Opera reports a more humble 272 Kbps down, because of limits on the processing power of the phone.)

Here's the big catch, though. You need a strong HSDPA signal to take advantage of the high speeds. Cingular's EDGE and HSDPA networks are completely different, and the company's HSDPA coverage, though it's available in many major U.S. cities, isn't as widespread as Sprint's or Verizon's EV-DO high-speed systems. Also, as HSDPA fades, phones can be programmed to grasp desperately for a fading HSDPA signal (which maintains data speeds) or switch quickly to a strong EDGE signal (for better voice quality). The V3xx is quick to drop HSDPA for a strong EDGE signal when HSDPA goes below about two bars—as opposed to the LG CU500, which hangs onto HSDPA until it can't hear a whisper. The V3xx also takes longer than the CU500 to recover back to HSDPA once it's reentered an HSDPA area. In one case, I had to reboot the phone to get my speed back. Voice callers probably won't notice this. That's because Cingular has gotten better about jumping from HSDPA to EDGE without dropping calls.

I'm also disappointed that Cingular has made it inconvenient to use third-party Internet software such as Opera Mini on this phone. (You have to click "allow" every time a program wants to get to the Net.) Fortunately, the built-in Opera Mobile browser and Cingular's support for programs such as Melodeo Mobilcast make this a bit less of a drag than it could be.

The V3xx's generally excellent performance lets me dismiss its so-so camera. The 1.3-megapixel still and video camera is a yawner, taking dull pictures with blur problems in low light. The 176-by-144, 14-frames-per-second videos are pretty usual for a modern cameraphone.

Yes, there are other Cingular phones that are better for certain tasks. The Sony Ericsson W810i has a better camera and much longer battery life. The Samsung SYNC connects to Windows Media Player for a better music experience. But all around, the Motorola RAZR V3xx delivers (and it's currently only $49 with Cingular promotions running!), so it's worthy of my Editors' Choice.

Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 3 hours 31 minutes
Jbenchmark 1: 3844
Jbenchmark 2: 447
Jbenchmark 3D HQ: 404
JBenchmark HD: 282 (9.4 fps)

Compare the Motorola RAZR V3xx with several other music phones, side by side.