Motorola Droid Bionic
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It’s been said that absence makes a heart grow fonder, so it was with very willing and eager hands this week that we received the Droid Bionic, Motorola’s latest high-octane, robot-themed assault on Verizon Wireless subscribers. The phone was first announced at CES in the beginning of 2011 and we got to see it in the flesh just an hour later… but then the story took a tragic turn. The Bionic was attacked,killed and then reborn with all new internals.
Phoenix-like, the thing is now available for purchase on Verizon Wireless, $300 for a supposedly top-shelf device that packs both LTE connectivity and a dual-core processor. That makes it a first for Verizon, and it also happens to be the thinnest LTE handset yet to cross that carrier’s airwaves. Oh, and it has the biggest battery yet, too. Was it worth the wait, then? Maybe.
Hardware
Users of the Droid X or Droid X2 will feel right at home here. Those phones and this one definitely share some design DNA and a similar layout. On the lower-left is the micro-USB and micro-HDMI ports, needed to power many of the wide array of accessories for this thing. On the upper-right lies a solitary volume rocker (no camera button here), while the power and headphone port can be found up top. Finally, an eight megapixel camera sits around the back — packing the same number of pixels as its predecessors, but now able to manage 1080p video recording.
So it’s familiar, then, but different. One big difference is the deletion of the physical buttons below the display, which we always liked but found a little too firm. The bigger change is the girth. The Droid Bionic is, at its thickest, 13.3mm (just a tick over half an inch) and it only tapers down a bit to 11.3mm (.45-inch). The X2 is less than 10mm at its thickest, and of course it goes way down from there. So, while this is Verizon’s thinnest LTE phone, it’s far from wafer-like. But, at 159 grams (5.5 ounces) it is at least not considerably heavier than the X2.
Indeed, in the hand it feels solid but not heavy, refined but not dull. It’s definitely traipsing along a fine stylistic line that divides sophisticated and boring, but we’d say it’s leaning more toward the former than the latter. The only bits of brightwork are the chrome volume rocker and power button, while a subtly polished metal ring wraps the screen and stretches out a bit below it. That screen itself is Gorilla Glass, as you’d expect these days, and it has an interesting beveled edge to it that means the extents of the surface are very subtly recessed below the edge of the phone’s body. This serves as an excellent collection mechanism for pocket lint.
Up front is what looks to be the same 4.3-inch qHD display that wowed us on the X2, and it’s still impressive here. Very impressive. It doesn’t quite offer the eye-popping saturation of Samsung’s Super AMOLED Plus displays, but that’s not to say it’s lacking in contrast, brightness or, indeed, resolution. Viewing angles are as close to 180 degrees as you need, and ultimately this is a screen that has the pixel count and the picture quality to stand up with the best of them.
Situated above the display is a front-facing VGA webcam and an LED status indicator, so you can be sure that if you have an unread email this phone will be blinking at you.
It’s all powered by a 1GHz processor, which again sounds like the Droid X2 but this one is rather different. It’s a TI OMAP chip, still dual-core but a bit of a departure from the more common Tegra 2 chips. As to why Moto made a change in maker here compared to its many other phones (including the recently released Photon 4G) we’re not sure, and Motorola reps didn’t have a solid answer for us, but it does do the business, and a 1,700mAh battery promises decent longevity. More on that in a moment.
Read more at: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/08/droid-bionic-review/
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