Razer's first phone has a gaming edge

The first phone from lifestyle gaming brand Razer wants to blow you away.  

It starts with a 5.7-inch screen that refreshes at a rate of up to 120Hz, which promises to make mobile gaming buttery-smooth. And it truly does.

And not just gaming, either: That 120Hz screen makes everything feel smoother and faster, whether it's swiping across home screens, scrolling down websites, or even tapping to launch apps or press virtual buttons. 

Audiophiles will also give the Dolby Atmos speakers along the top and bottom an appreciative nod. These puppies get LOUD -- and stay surprisingly clear. We've listened to them for hours now.

Here's what one of those speaker-filled bezels looks like up close.

Those big speaker bezels make for a pretty big phone, though.   

It's the size of an iPhone 7 Plus or 8 Plus.

The Razer Phone's sharp-cornered design will remind you of their laptops, down to the insignia on the back (we miss the bright green, too).

But Razer also outfitted its Phone with the modern trappings of a high-end device.

Like the 2,560x1,440-pixel screen resolution, which will be sharp when you're reading the news and answering texts.

Inside, it's powered by a fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset.  

You get two 12-megapixel camera lenses, one wide-angle and one telephoto.   

You can pinch and zoom the screen to switch between the two.

But unless you zoom just right, you'll get ugly digital zoom instead of crisp optical zoom, and the zoom you'll find on an iPhone 8 Plus still does a better job.

Also, the Razer Phone's HDR mode is painfully slow -- over a second for each shot -- and not worth the wait, since it makes your photos far noisier while barely improving their shadows and highlights.

The fingerprint sensor's conveniently built right into the power button -- and you can double-tap it to launch the camera. 

Do note, though, that it's a little tough to find the fingerprint sensor by feel alone. I often have to tap it a couple times to log in with fingerprint because I don't always hit it just right.  

There's an 8-megapixel camera lens up front.

The Razer Phone has a USB-C charging port, but no headphone jack -- unless you count the included USB-C to 3.5mm dongle. 

And that flat bottom means the Razer Phone can stand up all by itself. 2001: A Space Odyssey, anyone?

(Here's proof we're not using a stand to hold it up.)

(Oh, and the phone stands up by itself in landscape mode, too.)  

There's plenty of storage space for your games: 64GB onboard, with 8GB of user-accessible RAM, and up to 2TB of external storage through a microSD card. It'll only support GSM cellular, though, so CDMA carriers like Verizon and Sprint won't work.

It's still fairly thin despite a 4,000mAh battery -- but don't expect days of battery life. We made it to bedtime most days, but that's about it.

Here's a close up of those finely carved metal volume keys. They feel fantasticly clicky.

Razer Phone launches with Android 7.1.1 Nougat and will upgrade to Android 8.0 Oreo down the line.  

It's refreshing to see how little bloatware comes on the Razer Phone. Perhaps that's one of the reasons it's so speedy.

But there is a piece of Razer-specific software we do like: Razer's Game Booster app, which lets you set your processor's max clockspeed, the screen's refresh rate, and even enable antialiasing to smooth out jagged edges in game titles.

One last shot of the Razer Phone standing up on its own.

We lied. Here's one more monolith photo.