Showing posts with label Motorola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Motorola. Show all posts

Saturday, February 11, 2012

AT&T's New Android Phones: From Awesome (Motorola Atrix 2) to Weird (Samsung DoubleTime) [Android]

By Brent Rose Oct 11, 2011 12:01 AM 25,270 33

AT&T's New Android Phones: From Awesome (Motorola Atrix 2) to Weird (Samsung DoubleTime)Sweet Jesus. AT&T is adding five new Android phones to their portfolio this week. That will bring them up to 19 Android devices in for 2011. The 'droid is strong with this one.

Here they are in order that you probably care about them:

AT&T's New Android Phones: From Awesome (Motorola Atrix 2) to Weird (Samsung DoubleTime)

When the original Morola Atrix was announced at CES back in January it had as calling it the best Android phone in the show. It was a real beefcake, and it could power a laptop dock (which we thought was cool for like five seconds). It really was an excellent phone (full review). Truth be told, the Atrix 2 isn't the most monumental upgrade we can image. The biggest difference is that it has AT&T's answer to 4G (HSPA+) which should give you theoretical download speeds of 21Mbps. It's no LTE, but it's significantly faster than 3G. It's camera has gone from 5 megapixels to 8 megapixels, and it's now capable of recording 1080p HD video. And the screen has been stretched to 4.3 inches from the original Atrix's 4 inches. While more screen real estate is good, they both have 960x540 pixels, which means pixel density will actually be worse on the new bigger screen. Hrmm... that sounds a lot like the screen on the Droid Bionic, which we were none too keen on.

AT&T's New Android Phones: From Awesome (Motorola Atrix 2) to Weird (Samsung DoubleTime)

Not content to let Verizon have all the Samsung QWERTY keyboard fun today, AT&T brings to the table the Samsung Captivate Glide, a sequel to AT&T's first serious Android phone. It's a 4G (HSPA+) phone with a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen, and a slide-out keyboard. The kicker with this one is that it has a dual-core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, to Verizon's phone's (the Stratosphere) just has a single-core 1GHz Hummingbird processor. I'll take two cores over one every day, however, balancing out the scorecard is the keyboard on the Stratosphere looks way more usable (five rows of keys vs. four on the Captivate Glide) and Verizon's 4G LTE is faster than AT&T's 4G HSPA+.

AT&T's New Android Phones: From Awesome (Motorola Atrix 2) to Weird (Samsung DoubleTime)

This phone is significant because it's only the second Android phone to be available on GoPhone, AT&T's pre-paid network (the first being the LG Thrive). For a pre-pare (which are lower-end, by definition, basically) the AT&T Avail (made by ZTE) ain't bad. It's got a 3.5-inch touch screen, 5- megapixel camera and runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). No mention of processor speed, but if I were a betting man I'd gamble on... 800MHz. We'll update when we know for sure. I will say that this looks like it's the nicest pre-paid phone you can get on GoPhone.

Now, here's where the phones start slowly devolving into weirdness.

AT&T's New Android Phones: From Awesome (Motorola Atrix 2) to Weird (Samsung DoubleTime)

"Fat boy on a diet, don't try it. I'll check your ass like a looter in a riot." -Cypress Hill. So, here's an odd duck. The Pantech Pocket has a 4-inch screen and it's pretty slim from back-to-front at only 11.3 millimeters. But check out the width on this thing. Sucker is wiiide. That aside, it's a pretty decent mid-range phone with 4G support, 5MP camera, and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Again, no mention of processor here, so I'd bet on 800MHz. Maybe 1GHz.

AT&T's New Android Phones: From Awesome (Motorola Atrix 2) to Weird (Samsung DoubleTime)

I bet this poor phone got teased in high school. It's kind of a wimpy weirdo. Whereas the Pantech Pocket was wide, the DoubleTime is thick. That's because it has not one but two screens (both low-resolution 3.2-inch touch screens), and a clam-shell fold-out keyboard. It's got a 600MHz processor, a waifish 260MB of RAM, and it runs Android 2.2 (Froyo). This phone would have been awesome two-and-a-half years ago, but it's pretty terrible by today's standards. It's also got a lot of pink on it. Basically, this is a glorified feature phone aimed at high school girls. There, I said it.

These monkeys should all be out of their respective barrels by Q4. Who's excited about what?

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Sunday, February 5, 2012

And Here Is the Motorola 4G Atrix 2 [Motorola]

And Here Is the Motorola 4G Atrix 2This is a big day for Motorola, huh? This Is My Next has new details and screens for the Atrix's upcoming successor. Most importantly, it's confirmed to have a lovely 4.3-inch qHD screen, an 8MP camera, and 8GB of on-board storage.

It's also, of course, going to have Motorola's Webtop interface. And yes. It'll have 4G. THIS might be your Android phone of choice by the time it comes out. [This Is My Next]

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The Government Is Taking a Closer Look at Google Eating Motorola [Google]

The Government Is Taking a Closer Look at Google Eating MotorolaWhen ginormous companies try to buy gigantic companies, there's always cries about monopolies, anti-trustiness and all those nasty words. So it's really no surprise that the Department of Justice is now making a "second request" for more information about Google swallowing Motorola.

Google, to their credit, is still confident that the deal will still go through, saying:

While this means we won't be closing right away, we're confident that the DOJ will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile ecosystem will remain highly competitive after this deal closes. We'll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.

But that's what they're supposed to say! The WSJ reports that the DOJ isn't saying that they'll block the deal but rather there are antitrust issues that are worth a second look. $12.5 billion dollars, Google making Android and Motorola making Android phones, yeah it all seems like fair grounds to ask for more information. We'll see what comes out of this closer look in time. [Google Public Policy Blog via WSJ]

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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Apple Wants to Halt All Motorola Patent Lawsuits [Patent Wars]

Apple Wants to Halt All Motorola Patent LawsuitsOne of Apple 3rd Reich's patent war fronts is Motorola. Out of desperation, Motorola sued Apple first; then Apple sued Motorola. Now, Apple has asked the court to halt all Motorola patent suits, alleging they can't defend themselves.

Since Motorola is in the process of being acquired by Google, Apple says that they don't have standing to sue them anymore because that would be a job for the company buyer, Google. Right now, if the Google-Motorola deal goes through, Apple always loses. If Motorola wins, Apple would lose a lot of money in the process to a company that doesn't have a standing anymore. And if Apple wins, they could be sued by Google again. [TechCrunch]

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Motorola Droid Bionic Review: It's Superfast, But... [Video]

Motorola Droid Bionic Review: It's Superfast, But... Motorola Droid Bionic Review: It's Superfast, But... It's funny, the way that Motorola keeps awkwardly scraping away at the future of computing. The Atrix was a phone with a dual-core processor-like your laptop!—that also turned into a laptop. The Droid Bionic is the next step—a dual-core transforming thing of a phone, but it pulls down real internet from the sky.

Verizon 4G LTE + dual-core processor. That's why it matters. This thing hums like Frank Sinatra with his lips sewn shut. Verizon has had 4G LTE phones, and it's had dual-core phones, but this is the phone that has both. It's also the thinnest LTE smartphone on the market—and did we mention it turns into a laptop? In short, Motorola's giving us another taste of the future of computing, even if it manages to ensure the experience of using the whole thing still crashes back to here, in 2011.

The screen does not look good. It's grainy and has an oddly visible cross-hatch pattern, thanks to the PenTile display. What it lacks in clarity, though, it makes up for in brightness. The Bionic has the brightest screen I've ever tested, which makes it extremely usable even in bright sunlight. I definitely wouldn't recommend it for watching movies or viewing photos (though you can always use this to stream video to an HDTV via HDMI or DLNA), but if you spend a lot of time outdoors, this might off-set that.

Battery life, like on all 4G LTE phones, is not so hot. With medium to heavy use the phone was usually dead by mid-afternoon. If you switch LTE off, though, and just use 3G/CDMA, it should last you into the night. For that reason I say leave it in 3G then use a toggle app to switch to 4G when you need it——even though it does kill half the reason you're buying this thing. Still, if you aggressively micro-manage, you'll get the speed when it counts and you should make it through the whole day on a single charge.

The software side of things is a weird mix. It's Android 2.3.4 with Motorola software that runs slightly more than skin deep. They don't call it MotoBlur anymore-you can call a dead raccoon Jessica Alba, but that won't make me want to make out with it. In the video you can see I put LauncherPro on it, and the user experience improved by 200 percent. Which, you know, consumers shouldn't have to do to their phones. It comes with some great software if you're a business user, and a lot of useless bloatware if you're anybody else-which you can't remove unless you root it. (And yes, Android nerds, the Bootloader is locked down.)

The camera is decent, but isn't as good as those found on Sony's and Samsung's high-end devices. Pictures tended to be a bit washed out, and colors weren't as rich or accurate as they could have been. In video mode, the camera has a lot of trouble finding its focus and correct ISO, which is a shame, because the 1080p video just doesn't look as good as it should.

This is, hands down, the fastest phone on Verizon. It's not as fast as Samsung's Galaxy S II—but that's not coming to Verizon, so this is your best option. The screen is crazy bright. Download speeds of 13Mbps and upload speeds of 3Mbps in NYC—faster than my Time Warner cable internet. Like most of Moto's high end phones, it actually feels like somebody cared when they put it together.

Oh, and it's a phone, so I should mention that call quality is excellent. You can get some serious talk time out of this bad boy—made it past 10 hours when LTE was off, which is among the best CDMA devices ever. Also, Google Talk video chat is awesome-I was able to video chat over 4G with my buddy on a computer (logged into his Gmail) and it was nice and smooth. 32GB of storage right out of the box (expandable to 48GB).

The PenTile screen, bright as it may be, hurts my eyes, with grainy, grainy pixels everywhere. The new Moto skin is unwieldy and messes with things that weren't broken-I shouldn't have to install a launcher replacement to make my phone's software functional and attractive.

The Webtop Laptop. This thing really just shouldn't exist. The hardware on the outside is nice and ultrabook-like, but as soon as you open it up things fall apart. The keyboard is cheap and awful and the track pad (with its buttons that constantly stick) is unusable. It was actually easier to compose documents on the phone. It's extremely slow and buggy on top of all that-it runs Firefox 4-with weird anomalies all around (like the on screen keyboard popping up for no reason, when it's completely useless, as you can see in the video).

Motorola Droid Bionic Review: It's Superfast, But...

If you're on Verizon and are dying for a new phone, this is easily the fastest and best Android on Verizon. If you can get over the pixilation of the screen, and don't mind constantly toggling between 3G/4G modes to make it through the day without constant recharging, at any rate. If you're not squarely in the Android camp though, you should probably hold out a little bit longer to see what iPhone 5 and the next crop of Windows Phones are gonna deliver. And then there's a longer term consideration: Now that Google owns Motorola, is this still what the future of Android—and Motorola—is going to look like?

Update: After some discussion, the Bionic gets a rating of 3 stars.

Specs
Motorola Droid Bionic
Price: $299
Screen: 4.3-inch 960-by-540 Pentile TFT qHD
Processor and RAM: TI OMAP 4430 1.0 Ghz dual-core processor / 1GB RAM
Storage: 16GB internal + 16GB micro SD (can swap in a 32GB SD)
Camera: Back: 8MP/1080p HD, Front: VGA
Dimensions: H: 5 inches x W: 2.6 inches x D: 0.4 inches
Weight: 159 grams / 5.61 ounces
Battery: 1735 mAh
Rank: 3 Stars

Video music credit: Keven MacLeod/Incomptech You can keep up with Brent Rose, the author of this post, on Google+ or Twitter. Related Stories

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Thursday, September 1, 2011

Did Google Only Get "Crap Patents" When They Bought Motorola? [Patents]

Did Google Only Get "Crap Patents" When They Bought Motorola?When Google ponied up $12.5 billion to swallow Motorola Mobility, many people thought it was to snare some patents to protect Android from the likes of Apple and Microsoft. But according to a patent expert, all Google got were some "crap patents".

David Martin, the founder and chairman of patent consulting firm M-Cam, says that spending $12.5 billion on Motorola Mobility was "an immense mistake" because Motorola had sold off a lot of its good patents years before. According to Martin, all Google did was paint an immense target on their back.

Google snagged 17,000 patents in the Motorola acquisition (18 of 'em were supposedly very important in protecting Android) but if they didn't do their homework, like Martin claims, they just pissed off Android manufacturers (like Samsung and HTC) for no reason. I think, or hope, Google has a better understanding of patents than that. We'll see what happens as this Cold War of Patents continues. [Bloomberg via WinSuperSite]

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