Motorola RAZR: longest lasting 4G smartphone

The Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx, which boasts the longest battery life of any 4G smartphone. (Laptopmag.com)

If smartphones are so smart, why can't they last longer? At least one phone can.

Although much faster than their 3G competitors, 4G LTE phones have suffered from notoriously short battery life. How short? Try less than four hours in some cases.

Fortunately, Motorola’s new Droid RAZR Maxx is set to change the LTE’s power-gulping reputation, as the Android handset lasted a full 8-hours and 25 minutes on the LAPTOP Battery Test. This test involves continuous surfing over 4G with the phone set to 40 percent brightness.

As you can see from the above chart, that’s the longest endurance we’ve seen on any LTE phone, a full 3 hours and 40 minutes longer than the original Droid RAZR (4:45) and 1 hour and 43 minutes longer than the previous LTE leader, the Samsung Droid Charge.

Not only is the Droid RAZR the longest lasting phone on Verizon’s 4G network, but it’s easily the longest lasting LTE phone we’ve ever tested with its default battery. None of the phones on the AT&T’s 4G LTE network came close. The Samsung Skyrocket S II’ Skyrocket’s 5-hour and 42-minute time was the longest we saw on a network where the HTC Vivid (4:21), LG Nitro HD (3:53), and Pantech Burst (4:10) all lasted less than 4.5 hours.

To achieve this kind of epic battery life, Motorola has added a whopping 3,300 mAH battery to the design of its ultrathin RAZR phone. However, even with all that juice, the RAZR Maxx is only a mere .35-inches thick and 5.1 ounces, which is hardly bigger than the .3-inch, 4.5-ounce original RAZR.

The Droid RAZR Maxx smarks the beginning of a new era in smartphone longevity, but does it have more to offer than sublime battery life? Stay tuned for our full review of the Motorola Droid Razr to find out.