Razer Phone 2 unveiled with Snapdragon 845 SoC and vapor-chamber cooling system

While gaming smartphones are far from the purpose built Nokia N-Gage of the good old days, it does not stop manufacturers from adding more bling to smartphones and repurpose what would otherwise be your typical premium smartphone into a loud gaming smartphone (that looks like a gaming laptop). Thankfully, gaming accessory and laptop maker, Razer took a more subtle route as compared to the blingy gaming smartphones that scream gaming with design but barely do anything to improve the actual gaming experience. Say hello! To the new Razer Phone 2.[caption id="attachment_5359371" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The Razer Phone 2 in Mirror and Satin finishes. Image: Razer[/caption]The new Razer Phone 2 is the successor to the Razer Phone which was a sharp looking device with its fast 120 Hz display as the highlight. The new Phone looks almost identical to the older device but in true Razer tradition also adds RGB lighting to the Razer logo on the back of the device.While the smartphones retains its dual speaker design, both speakers are now fed audio using two separate amplifiers. The 5.72-inch QHD IGZO LCD display also gets an upgrade and now supports HDR and the DCI-P3 colour gamut both in games and while watching video.[caption id="attachment_5359381" align="alignnone" width="1280"] The Razer Phone 2. Image: Razer[/caption]Inside the stealth black body is a brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC coupled with 8 GB RAM and 64 GB, which falls a bit short considering that most graphic-intensive games are quite large these days. Add to this the fact that the Razer Phone will also be used as a regular smartphone which will get loaded with plenty of apps.Thankfully Razer has added expandable storage letting users add up to 1 TB of storage using a microSD card, sadly all of this expandable storage can only be used for storing photos and videos.With ‘cooling’ being the buzzword among smartphone makers these days, Razor being a gaming brand, could not afford to miss out. The new Razer Phone 2 offers vapor-chamber cooling that like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 spreads out the heat all over the device, reducing hot spots that make it uncomfortable to hold.[caption id="attachment_5359401" align="alignnone" width="1280"] The Razer Phone 2. Image: Razer[/caption]Coming to the cameras, the Razer Phone 2 features a dual camera setup at the back with a 12 MP wide angle lens + 12 MP telephoto lens with dual PDAF. The front-facing camera is an f/2.0 aperture 8 MP unit.The device features the usual connectivity options including, Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac), Bluetooth 5.0, and 4G LTE bands and is powered by a 4,000 mAh battery that takes advantage of Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 4.0+ charging. The device supports fast wireless charging up to 15W and can be charged using the Razer Wireless Charger that also comes with Chroma RGB lighting.[caption id="attachment_5359411" align="alignnone" width="1280"] The Razer Wireless Charging dock. Image: Razer[/caption]More importantly, Razer claims that it will soon roll out a new Cortex app that will replace the standard Game Booster app. The new app will be useful to gamers in the sense that it will offer per-app optimisations letting gamers tweak the resolution, frame rates and even the CPU clock speeds while running a game.The Razer Phone 2 can be pre-ordered online starting today at $800 for the standard mirror finish with the premium-looking satin-finished model available at $900.