Now,with Motorola's position as the world's No. 2 cell-phone maker injeopardy, it has brought out a thoroughly reworked Razr, and jazzed upits Q with more music-oriented features.

I tested samples of the MotoRazr2 and Moto Q music 9m for a few weeks, taking help from colleagues whowere or are users of the original Razr, which was launched in 2004.Overall, we weren't seriously tempted with either of the new phones,though some improvements are noticeable.

We started out with one Razr2 from each of the three largest carriers: AT&T Inc., VerizonWireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. AT&T charges $300 for the phone with a 2-year contract, the others charge $50 less.

The Razr2 is thinner than its ancestor, but slightly longer. One former Razr user said it felt "too big," but this is mostly an illusion. It's created bythe Razr2's sturdy feel, which is reinforced by heavy-duty metal hinge and by its heft. It weighs 4.6 ounces, about an ounce more than the Razr, depending on the model.

Overall, it does feel slightly less pocketable than the Razr, and it's harder to flip it open elegantly with one hand.

The other immediately noticeable difference is the large color LCD screen on the outside of the clamshell. At 2 inches diagonal, it's just slightly smaller than the inside screen. It's not exactly a touchscreen, but it does have three touch-sensitive areas, with different functions depending on the carrier-specific model. For instance, the Sprint phone has buttons for the mobile TV, music player and camera functions.

Sadly, the outside screen is a mostly wasted feature,though one of us liked it for controlling music. The touch-sensitive buttons are vexing to use, and poorly programmed. For instance, you can activate the 2-megapixel camera and take pictures, but only of yourself, because both the screen and the lens will be facing you. Andthen you can't get out of camera mode using the outside screen -- you have to open the phone and hit a button.

And what is it we like about clamshell phones anyway? That's right -- that we don't have to lock their keypads before slipping them in our pockets or bags. Withthe Razr2, you do have to lock the buttons on the outside screen (by pressing and holding a button), at least if you were playing music before closing up the phone. On several occasions, a closed phone started serenading our pockets before we figured this out.

The rest of the interface is clunky, but works. We didn't really take tothe TV and music-downloading features that rely on the carriers' cellular broadband networks. The video clips are still small and jerky,and the music selections hard to navigate.

The best part of theRazr2 may be CrystalTalk, a technology that improves incoming and outgoing sound quality in noisy areas like restaurants and trains.  Another nice feature: you don't need to teach the phone to recognize specific phrases for voice-activated dialing -- just read out a phone number or say the name of a contact.

The rated standby time for the Razr2 is 330 hours, or two weeks. That might be true under the best of circumstances -- in light use, we recharged the phones every four days. The Verizon Wireless model, however, wouldn't hold a charge for more than a few hours, so we got a replacement. It only held a charge for 24 hours. This is worrisome, but it appears to be a fluke --neither Motorola nor Verizon said they had heard reports of power problems. Certainly, if a brand new phone acts like this, return it to the store.