Today, Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. announced their return to Costa Rica, with the launch of the Motorola RAZR XT910. The phone will be available through Claro beginning in early May. The Motorola RAZR seeks to displace the Samsung Galaxy SII as the hottest smartphone on the market. It will priced around 370,000 colones ($740 USD), which is close to the current Samsung Galaxy SII price of 365,000 colones ($730 USD). Of all the smartphones that have tried to challenge the Samsung Galaxy SII, the Motorola RAZR XT910 has the best chance of succeeding. A comparison of the phone specifications shows that the two phones are very similar, in most respects.

With a thickness of 7.1mm, the Motorola RAZR is the thinnest smartphone available in Costa Rica. The KEVLAR fiber body makes the phone durable, but not bullet proof. The splash-guard coating with an aluminum hatch pattern provides a degree of elegance. The micro HDMI, micro USB, a 3.5mm head phone jack are located on the top of the phone. The volume rocker and lock/power button are located on the right-side of the phone. Access to the micro SIM and micro SD are located under a flap on the bottom left corner of the phone. When it comes to design the Motorola RAZR XT910 is sleek, elegant phone.

With its 4.3 inch screen and 540 x 960 resolution, the Motorola XT910 has excellent colors and sharpness. Since it has a dual-core processor and 1 gigabyte of internal memory, the phone is fast and moving between applications is almost seamless. The phone is one of the few that supports dual-band 802.11n for high-speed Wi-Fi access. The phone can act as a Wi-Fi hotspot, and supports DLNA. It does not have an FM radio, but does support stereo music.

The phone has an 8 megapixel rear camera, with auto-focus, and LED flash. With a resolution of 1080p at 30 frames per second, you can shoot HD quality movies. The camera software supports touch focus, geo-tagging, face detection, and image stabilization. The front-facing camera is a 1.3 megapixel camera that does support videos up to 720p. Overall, the Motorola RAZR XT910 is superior to the Samsung Galaxy SII, but does not compare to the camera capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy Note.

The Motorola XT910 comes with Android Gingerbread (version 2.3.5). At this time, there is not a scheduled update to Ice Cream Sandwich. When it comes to apps, the Motorola RAZR has some great ones. Smart Actions is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) app that seeks to continually optimize the phone settings, and conserve battery power. Smart Actions automatically detects where you regularly use the phone, and allows you to build a profile for that location. Once you arrive at the location, Smart Actions automatically switches to that profile. The MOTOPrint app allows the phone to connect to a wireless printer.

The phone comes with five different home screens, with pre-installed apps and widgets for each screen. The 1st home screen is for the Gallery app, and just requires that you point to your various photo galleries. The second home screen contains the music player widget, the Google Search Widget, and the News widget, with shortcuts to the Motoloud and Google Maps apps. The third (center) home screen has the contact widget, with the top three contacts displayed. It also has the Calendar widget, and shortcuts to the browser, Gmail, Google Play, and Google Talk apps. The fourth home screen is devoted to Social Networking widget, with continual updates, and includes shortcuts Alarm & Time, and Camcorder apps. The fifth home screen allows you to toggle Airplane mode, and enable/disable Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS. For some reason, the YouTube widget is also on this screen.

The phone does have several drawbacks. The location of the micro USB port makes it difficult to use the phone, while charging. Like the iPhone 4S, the Motorola RAZR XT910 uses a micro SIM card. If you are upgrading from another phone, this means that you will need to purchase a new SIM card. Since the phone uses the relatively new micro SD, you may have have a difficult time finding them in Costa Rica. Like the iPhone, the Motorola RAZR XT910 uses a uni-body construction, which means you cannot access the battery. Under heavy use, you can expect about nine hours of battery life. It is a slow charging battery, so expect to put it on the charger every night.

Even with these drawbacks, the Motorola RAZR XT910 joins the small group of the best Android phones on the market. On May 3, Samsung announces their new phone. Although Samsung is being really coy about the new phone, the general opinion is that it will be the Samsung Galaxy SIII. If so, the game for top phone starts all over. Until the Samsung Galaxy SIII arrives in Costa Rica, the Motorola RAZR XT-910 is an excellent alternative to the Samsung Galaxy SII, and much cheaper than the iPhone 4S.