Shadow Fight 3 on Razer Phone 2.
Shadow Fight 3 on Razer Phone 2.
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Razer Phone 2 hands-on review — Holding its own against Apple’s best

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Razer unveiled its second-generation Razer Phone 2 earlier this month in a bid to beat Apple in providing the best smartphone for gamers.

The $800 device has a 120-hertz display and an 8-millisecond response time, making it faster than Apple’s most-competitive iPhone XS and XS Max phones when it comes to refreshing the screen for fast gameplay. I’ve had the Razer Phone 2 for 11 days and have also played with the iPhone XS Max.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.