R2-D2 limited edition Star Wars version planned as well
US carrier Verizon has announced that it will be opening the pre-sale for the Motorola Droid 2 on 11 August.
The network, fresh from its launch last month of the Motorola Droid X, will be offering the Android 2.2 device for $199.99 (after a $100 rebate) on 2-year contracts.
The Motorola Droid 2 features a 3.7-inch WVGA multi-touch screen, and has a full slider QWERTY keyboard. There is also a virtual keyboard option (including Swype) for quick messaging as well as a speech-to-text feature too.
The Froyo device comes pre-loaded with Flash 10.1 and also supports tethering. In order to make your Droid 2 into a mobile hotspot, you'll need to pay an extra $20 a month and for this you'll be able to sync it with up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices.
The Droid 2 packs a 1Ghz OMAP 3640 CPU and has 8GB of storage on board. It will come with an 8GB microSD card in the box, so you'll have 16GB in total - but you can up this to 40GB with a 32GB card.
It has a 5-megapixel camera and videos can be recorded in "DVD quality".
"With the new Droid 2, we’ve taken a big leap forward from the original", said Bill Ogle, chief marketing officer of Motorola Mobile Devices and Home Business.
"We listened to consumers and are providing an even more robust experience built on Android 2.2 that includes a new keyboard, increased processing power, Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and 3G Mobile HotSpot capabilities to send, access and share information even quicker than before".
As well as the standard Droid 2, Verizon has also announced that in September only it will be offering a limited edition R2-D2 themed Droid featuring exclusive Star Wars content.
There are no plans as yet to bring the Droid 2 to the UK, although if Pocket-lint hears anything we'll be sure to let you know.
A week of toting around the new Droid X and reactions from friends remind me of the days I used to walk my Newfoundland dog around campus. "Woah, that thing is huge!" the boys would shout, followed by, "How much does he weigh?". The new Droid X is comparable to a Newfoundland dog: big, black, bold, smart and capable of jumping out of helicopters to save drowning fisherman. Well, actually, we do not advise throwing your Droid X out of a helicopter or submerging it in the ocean.
And while a Newfoundland dog weighs about 180lbs (80kg), the Droid X weighs 5.5oz (155g), which is still a paw heavier than the iPhone 4G at 4.8oz (137g). It's thinner and lighter than the original Droid, accomplished by getting rid of the Droid's slide-out physical keyboard, so while not overwhelming, it barely fits into the pocket of a technophile's skinny jeans.
The Droid X measures 65.5 x 127.5 x 9.9mm, while the iPhone 4's dimensions are 58.6 x 115.2 x 9.3 mm, which means the Droid X could swallow the iPhone 4 with room to spare. With a 4.3-inch high-resolution screen, the big friendly Droid X is one of the largest smartphones on the market, comparable to its twin brother the HTC Evo 4G. But with only 854 x 480 pixels on the Droid X display, the Apple iPhone 4's 3.5-inch display wins with 960 x 640 pixels (Evo loses by just a pinch with 800 x 480). A larger display is nice, but a higher resolution means sharper graphics and clearer text.
The Droid X is an evolution of the original Droid, which launched just over 8 months ago. The back of the Droid X reminds us of an early-90s calculator but it's still a dramatic improvement over the old Droid's battery cover design. Another great improvement: the front of the phone has four actual, physical, buttons including menu, home, back and search.
Also, the Droid X has a true multitouch keyboard, pre-loaded with Swype, which is a huge change in the way touch keyboards work. It's easy to use and it's incredibly efficient. Swype enables users to text at more than 50 words per minute using one continuous finger motion across the screen keyboard.
When the phone boots up, the Motorola-added Live Wallpaper features the iconic red Droid eye. The interface is confusing with seven screens of widgets, but it's easy to customise the home screen. Motorola widgets include airplane mode toggle, Bluetooth toggle, calender, contact quick tasks to set quick settings for favourite contacts, GPS toggle, messaging, news, a favourite photo widget, sticky note, weather and Wi-Fi toggle. It's also preloaded with a full suite of Google mobile services including the Android market, Google Maps, Street View, Latitude, Search and Gmail.
The music library on the Droid X is similar to the old Droid, although we had issues connecting the smartphone to a computer to load music onto it; third-party apps like Pandora may be your best bet to listen to music out of the phone's decent speakers.
The Droid's pull down screen to show notifications including recent downloads, missed calls, social networking updates and email is not so intuitive at first but it is extremely helpful. Also counter-intuitive is some of the phone's highlighting features: unread emails are white while read emails are highlighted with a grey purple.
With its massive display screen and full 720p HD video capture and playback via HDMI, "the Droid X screams video", says Verizon's CMO John Stratton. In fact, Motorola and Verizon are marketing it as a "pocket-sized home theater". The features encourage users to use Verizon's V Cast video-on-demand service in partnership with Blockbuster, NFL Mobile, and Skype Mobile. As far as we can tell you can't delete these preloaded programs.
There are four video modes: everyday, outdoors, narrative and subject, which adjust the settings of the device's 3 microphones. For example, everyday makes use of all three of the camera's microphones, outdoors reduces wind noise, narrative is best for capturing video while commenting on the scene and subject is best for capturing audio from the front of the camera. Camera effects include favourites like sepia, solarize and a variety of tints. The Droid's HDMI jack works well for plugging your phone into the TV and it features DLNA which enables users to download and stream videos from personal computers, although this wasn't easy on first try.
The Droid X features an 8-megapixel camera with built-in camera effects, 1/1000 second shutter speed, autofocus, touch focus, panoramic capture and a dual LED flash. It trumps the iPhone 4G's 5-megapixel camera and single LED flash, but won't replace your camera. The only aspect the Droid X lacks is the Evo 4G's and iPhone 4's front-facing camera which makes it a loser for video conferencing.
The Droid X runs on Google's Android operating system. The Android Market offers 65,000 apps in comparison to Apple's App Store which sells over 225,000 apps. The superphone comes with Android 2.1, which is more integrated into the OS than the original Droid and will receive the Android 2.2 update later this summer. It also features a brand new version of Motorola's MotoBlur software, which lets you stream content from social networking sites. The software is (thankfully) dramatically toned down from the original Droid.
You may have seen Motorola's Droid X advertisements recently (for US readers), which directly bash the new Apple iPhone 4 with the following claim: "And most importantly, it comes with a double antenna design. The kind that lets you hold the phone any way you like and use it just about anywhere to make crystal clear calls." Motorola's CEO, Sanjay Jha spoke highly of Verizon's high performance diversity antennas and the world's largest 3G network, saying jokingly, "People still use phones as phones". Calls on the Droid X are unsurprisingly clear due to Verizon's reliable 3G network. In fact, unlike the iPhone, the Droid never once dropped a call. Shocker.
And one of its coolest features, just like the Evo, the handset doubles as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to five devices including PCs for an additional $20 a month, which clearly beats the iPhone 4 in terms of connectivity.
The Droid X boasts 8 hours of talk time and 220 hours on standby, while the iPhone 4 gets 7 hours of talk and 300 of standby. The battery, which is comparable to the original Droid, dies after 24 hours of light use and the battery measure isn't totally accurate.
At $200 (after a $100 mail-in-rebate) the Droid X comes with 8GB of on-board memory and a 16GB card pre-installed, while the $200 iPhone 4G only has 16GB. The Droid X is expandable to 40GB with a pricey 32GB card, meanwhile the iPhone 4 maxes out at 32GB. It uses Texas Instruments' OMAP processor clocked at 1GHz like the old Droid, instead of the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor found on most Android phones including HTC's Evo.
Verdict:
As an added bonus for Mother Earth, Droid X is environmentally friendly, including a PVC-free handset, bromine-free printed circuit boards, mercury-free LCD display, arsenic-free glass and packaging made of 65 per cent recycled materials.
Still, it's not pretty like the iPhone. And it's huge. But due to its 8-megapixel camera and excellent video capture, you'll no longer have to bring out your Flip HD video cam saving you room in your purse or your pocket.
Verizon customers who have contracts ending in 2010 can upgrade to the Droid X without penalty. The Droid X begins shipping on 15 July in the States but there are still no details on when or, even, whether it will make it over the pond.
First there was the Motorola Milestone (or Droid as it was known in the US), but what if you didn't like a slideout keyboard? What if you wanted a touchscreen interface, but still wanted to stay Moto friendly?
Motorola has listened to those QWERTY keyboard naysayers and launched the Motorola Milestone XT720 or just Motorola XT720 depending on whom you talk to - but is it any good?
The Motorola Milestone XT720 is the company's latest flagship handset that hopes to build on the success of the Motorola Milestone, first launched in the UK in December.
Fast forward 9 months and the new handset has ditched the slideout keyboard, some of that thickness and weight and grabbed itself a facelift at the same time.
While you still get the same 3.7-inch screen, the front of the phone's design has been changed; with a rather strange sticky-outy-bit now protruding from the top right hand side when you look at it landscape mode.
That protruding bit serves no purpose other than to give space for three lights, which alert you to the camera option you are currently in (gallery, camera or camcorder), and presumably to extenuate the fact that there are dedicated camera and camera mode buttons to press.
We can see why Motorola is keen to shout - they've packed in an 8-megapixel sensor on board complete with Xenon flash, making this better than any other Android handset on the market - when it comes to camera capabilities. The HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S only have 5-megapixel sensors remember, but more on that later.
But the carbuncle isn't the only design difference, as the phone sits strangely between two different styles almost as if the front and the back weren't created by the same team.
The back, you see, is virtually identical to the Motorola Milestone complete with its hard edges, slightly rubberised feel and grill (albeit not gold). The front in contrast is all shiny chrome and glass with smooth curves and glowing lights.
Get past the curves and hard edges and there are plenty of buttons and sockets to get familiar with. The front offers four touch sensitive buttons; menu, home, back, and search while the sides offer the usual volume up and down, as well as dedicated camera and camera mode buttons that we've already mentioned.
On the socket front, the phone sports USB, a HDMI out (mini), and a 3.5mm headphones jack. Inside there is a microSD card slot that isn't hot swappable - in that you have to take off the back cover to access it - but you can access it without having to remove the battery. You'll get an 8GB card in the box.
The rest of the inside reads like your standard flagship mobile phone: Wi-Fi, 3G, HSDPA and Bluetooth connectivity. There is also GPS for navigation, an FM radio, 256MB of RAM, 512MB of ROM and an accelerometer for switching between portrait and landscape mode automatically.
On the multimedia side you get that 8-megapixel camera, and 720p video recording - very handy indeed.
But then Motorola goes and shoots itself in the foot by thinking they can get away with a 550Mhz processor, rather than a 1Ghz Snapdragon offering.
The result means that it's never got enough power, and never enough to cope with all the things that you'll want to do with it.
It's not that the Motorola Milestone XT720 is slow, it's just that it's never quite fast enough and that left us wanting.
Get over that - not that you ever will, but we've got to still tell you about the rest of the phone - and that 8-megapixel camera is pretty impressive offering you plenty when it comes to capturing your favourite moments.
That includes face detection, image stabilisation, the ability to set the ISO between 100 - 800, multi-shot mode and a series of scene modes like macro and portrait.
A mechanical shutter boosts capture performance times and the touch to focus feature is very easy to use, allowing you to drag the focus to where you want it rather than opt for the centre of the screen.
Pictures themselves are good with the camera coping well in most situations. This isn't going to replace your DSLR, but it will replace your basic compact from a couple of years ago.
While the colours are virtually spot on, it's the focus that lets it down as the XT720's capabilities with the images tend to come out soft in most cases. We also found a fair bit of noise in our images when there was a block of one colour. ?
As for the video you'll get 720p recording resolution, whilst the HDMI out means you can connect it to a HD-Ready TV and enjoy still images and video on the big screen. While that sounds great, in practice, it only serves to perpetuate the problems the camera has, as the camcorder element suffers from the same softness that affects the still photos.
Rather than install Motoblur as found in the company's other recent Android handset, the Motorola Flipout, the Motorola Milestone XT720 gets Android 2.1 without any fuss.
That means there is no built-in social networking, however you do still get a trial version of MotoNav and the company's new Phone Portal app that lets you access and manage your phone’s data from any browser through a USB or Wi-Fi connection on your PC or Mac.
Other software of note includes the HTML5 ready browser that supports multi-touch and voice search as standard. There is an MP3 player, but it's nothing to write home about.
Call quality was good with nothing out of the ordinary to report.
Verdict:
Had the Milestone XT720 packed a Snapdragon 1Ghz processor inside rather than the 550Mhz offering, this review would have ended very differently.
While the design won't be to everyone's liking, the camera and capabilities of the other tech included in the handset could have made this a fantastic phone to challenge the HTC Desire and the Samsung Galaxy S.
As it is, however, the Motorola Milestone XT720 comes across as an also ran, rather than a true competitor to the current cream of the crop.
It's a shame, because that camera has good potential.
Boiling it down, there are only a handful of form factors for the mobile phone. The full on touchscreen slab, the slide-out QWERTY keyboard, the candy bar (QWERTY or not), and the clamshell.
The Motorola Flipout is none of the above. You see the Flipout is a dinky square handset (67 x 67 x 17mm) with a very responsive touchscreen display on top, and a QWERTY keyboard that swivels (or as Motorola says "rotates") out from a central pivot in the top left-hand corner giving the phone its name.?
That swivel action (which is incredibly addictive for those always looking for something to play with in their pocket) is also the way to answer calls.
The idea is that most of the time you don't have to open the handset at all, but merely interact with its features via the 2.8-inch, 320 x 240 pixel resolution, display. But when you need to do some typing you can swivel out the keyboard and bash your thoughts down, without having to struggle with a fiddly on-screen keyboard, on what, it has to be said, is a screen smaller than most of its rivals."That display is responsive, easy to use, and although small, still big enough to punch numbers in or surf the Internet."
Aimed at the mid- to low-end of the smartphone pile, plastic is the key ingredient in the Flipout's casing although this does allow for a range of colours, from Fairway Green, Saffron and Raspberry Crush, as well as Liquorice, Brilliant Blue, Poppy Red, and White - and yes, they will be interchangeable.?It goes with the snappy, zippy appeal and no doubt will be loved by the phone's audience - the hip 20-something that the Microsoft Kin tried to get and failed.
The back of the handset gives you a 3-megapixel camera, without flash, but with digital zoom, while the sides offer little other than volume, power and screen lock - with Motorola opting to put all of the controls on the keyboard.
That QWERTY keyboard is easy to use?giving you everything you need when it comes to data input. The keys themselves are, spongy to touch and, although incredibly close when it comes to typing, good enough to bash out a quick email or type in a web address. This is helped by the keys being rounded rather than flat and that in turn gives you just enough space between them.
Punching in a phone number can be done either via the top line of numbers or via the on screen keypad (in phone mode), either way is simple.?
In the bottom left-hand corner of the keyboard is a D-pad for navigating around menus and the like. While it looks as though it could be optical, it's not. Frustratingly, rather than annoyingly, it isn't really needed. After all, the screen is fully touch responsive and Android is easy enough to navigate without yet another option with which to do so. It would have been nice to see the real estate given to something else.
Tech specs wise you'll get 802.11 b/g/n Wi-FI, Bluetooth, a 3.5mm headphones jack, GPS and 3G. There is also an accelerometer, swappable 2GB microSD card pre-installed, as well as ambient light and proximity sensors.?
The battery should last you around 4.5 hours of talk time, and you will be able to get through the day without the panic of having to find a charging station.?Of course, if you hit Twitter, Facebook, the web, and everything else hard that may not be the case.
Call quality was good, although many people we phoned complained that we sounded like a robot. Based on further calls we made, we suspect this is down to the Flipout doing some heavy noise cancellation. Our test call on London's Oxford Street was so successful that the person on the other end could only hear us, and not the mass of noise going on around us. Likewise, conversations on the train proved that people could hear us, but the payoff is that you might not sound like you.
But hardware is only ever half the story. What about software? In steps Android 2.1 with a Motoblur skin and feature set. So although it's not the latest Android operating system (2.2 is available for the Nexus One, but that's it) it's is still pretty up to date. For American readers, the software, incidentally, is the same as the also newly announced Motorola Charm.
As with other variants of the Motoblur Android interface from Motorola, you are presented with five customisable pages that you can thumb between. Each of these pages can be populated with widgets, folders, shortcuts, applications or contacts and so on. The widget selection is good too, covering most bases.
But the big focus with Motoblur is that it allows you to quickly manage your social networking life via a central hub. This allows the sorting of information, whether its from Twitter, Picasa, LastFM or MySpace, into the phone so you can access it quickly and easily without having to micro-manage every service thereafter. It also does a good job integrating it too, so you have one uber contacts list and one all powerful update stream.
That said, update stream is what Happenings essentially is. It will sit as a widget on the home page and pump updates at you.?Sounds great, and for light social networkers it is. For Facebook updates it works well, giving you the chance to see things happen and respond, without opening up a separate Facebook app.
It's a nice idea and it seems to work well enough, but it isn't without its problems. Occasionally we found the blur too literal: when Happenings just didn't update.?Heavy Twitter users might also find that having 500+ Happenings a day is a little too much to handle.
Fortunately you can filter the Happenings application (rather than the widget) to display only one of your streams, so you can then scroll through Twitter in a more traditional format."Of course, this being an Android handset, you could opt out of the Twitter integration and install Twitter's official app."As with the iPhone's App Store, new apps are always appearing and there is plenty of choice to make your handset do what you want it to.
Happenings aside, Motoblur gives you a great Contacts book. Taking your existing Google Contacts, adding in Facebook pictures (or Twitter pics) and mashing all that information together is impressive, and for the social butterfly a great feature that happily matches HTC's contact integration system.
Beyond contacts, the phone does multimedia as well.?In steps that 3-megapixel camera, which to be honest isn't that great. The pictures we took, both inside and out, were pretty ropey, while the video, which has three quality settings (the maximum resolution is 352 x 288) isn't that much better. Let's just say the camera is one of the phone's weaker points.
Elsewhere on the media front you get Media Share, an app that lets you turn your Motorola Flipout into a media streamer for your network. It's easy to operate and if your TV or hi-fi system is capable, lets you bring the music to the party.
Last but not least, Moto Phone Portal is also worth a mention as it enables you to access and manage your phone’s data from any browser through a USB or Wi-Fi connection on your PC or Mac. That means editing content and viewing phone information while at home or on-the-go.
This, combined with the media share feature, means that even if you haven't got the right cable you can still use the phone to share content be it a video, picture, or a presentation.?
But it's not all about apps, as one of the core elements of any smartphone is the browser. Here you get Android's stock browser offering, with multi-touch allowing you to zoom in and out of pages with ease. It's a good job too as you won't see much of any page at any given time.?Thankfully scrolling is responsive. ?
Verdict:
We are pleasantly surprised by the Motorola Flipout in that although it has its faults, on the whole it's actually a nice little handset.
The phone was zippy; as this isn't going to be a handset that you will push to the limit as you might with a Samsung Galaxy S or HTC Desire.?The keyboard is easy to use, while the swivel movement addictive enough to play with in your pocket.
The Motoblur implementation, if managed by you correctly, will connect your life and there are some nice touches like the portal hub feature.?On the downside the call quality wasn't that great, and the camera is pretty out-dated.
If you are looking to upgrade from your Nokia or Sony Ericsson, and hoping to get into the world of smartphones without going the full touchscreen or high-end handset way, this is one to consider.
