Motorola Droid X Review

We are just 3 days away from the release of the new, powerful, fun Motorola Droid X smartphone on Verizon Wireless. As stated in my previous post, I received one for review back on June 23rd. This is a really awesome device. It is very similar in appearance, weight, and specs to the Evo on Sprint.

Some stand out features of the Droid X include an HDMI port, 8mb camera, 720p HD screen, 8GB internal memory + microSD card slot & Swype technology to name a few.

Physical Attributes

Yes, it is pretty big, but the size does not bother me at all. It’s very light weight, but feels solid and well made. And, as I always say… it still fits in my pocket, and that is what is important. 🙂 Because Motorola wanted to keep the phone so thin, there is an odd bump at the top where the powerful camera is housed. Some might think it’s strange, but it actually seems to aid in holding the phone stable to me.

Specs:

• DISPLAY TYPE: TFT
• DISPLAY SIZE: 4.3-in.; WVGA (480 x 854)
• WEIGHT: 155 grams
• SIZE (H X W X D): 65.5 x 127.5 x 9.9 mm
• ANTENNA TYPE: Internal
• FORM FACTOR: Touch Tablet

The screen is very clear, and very bright. I love having the extra real estate over my iPhone to see what I am doing and watch videos.

The front has 4 physical raised buttons for the menu, home, back, and search. On the left side is the micro USB port and HDMI port. On the right side is the red camera button, and volume rocker. The top has the Power/wake button, and headphone jack. The backs shows off the double LED camera, and battery/micro SD compartment.

Still photos

Unlike the Evo, this Droid X does NOT have a front facing camera. But the camera that it does have works great. Picture modes include Self Portrait, Panorama assist, and Multi-shot. Scenes include Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Sport,  Night Portrait, Sunset, Macro, and Steady Shot. Effects include Normal, Black & White, Negative, Sephia, Solarize, Red Tint, Green Tint, & Blue Tint.

The camera does great in daylight. It does get a bit grainy if there is not enough light around. The flash does indeed light things up, but it does not really help the grain. Overall for a phone camera it is pretty darn good.

Specs:

• MEGAPIXELS: 8 MP
• DIGITAL ZOOM
• FLASH: Dual LED
• FOCUS: Automatic
• IMAGE EDITING TOOLS: Cropping, rotating, Geo Tagging

Here are a few more pictures that were taken with the Droid X:

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157624306822049″]

Video Recording

The video camera records in full 720p HD. The quality is good enough to plug the phone up to your HDMI TV and watch a movie. Video scenes include Everyday, Outdoors, Narrative, and Subject.  The phone has 2 microphones which adjust based on the scene chosen. The Narrative function turns on the mic closest to the person holding the phone to allow for a clear narrative while minimizing noise from other areas. The Subject function does the opposite. It directs the mic in back of the phone to capture audio from the Subject that has the camera pointed at them.

You can also zoom in and out of a scene by using the Volume buttons.

Here is a video that was taken of Mississippi River flooding while visiting St. Louis a couple of weeks ago. This was shot only using the Everyday settings. No changes.

Email

The email functionality of the Android OS is outstanding. I love the Google integration and I love the fact that I can do just about everything that I can do on the Gmail website in the Android Mail client. This includes labels, stars, checking multiple items, archiving, reporting spam, and searching. I love my iPhone to death, but the Android mail client is far superior.

You can install multiple exchange accounts in addition to having your Gmail account integrated into the phone. So, I have my 2 Gmail accounts setup, and also my work Exchange account. The integration is very smooth. When a new message arrives the phone chimes depending on what sound you have set, and display a new mail icon in the status bar at the top of the phone.

Web browsing*

The included Browser application is a full featured web browser that correctly detects mobile versions of most websites, and adapts other sites to fit the screen for easy viewing. Using the Menu bottom you can bookmark a site, open a new window, view windows that  you already have open, save a page, select text to copy, and more. I opened I think 5 windows before it yelled at me and closed the browser. Hmm…

*Supposedly Flash 10.1 will soon be available on Android which will open up a while slew of additional browsing options.

Apps

The Android Market is stepping up and definitely starting to compete with the iPhone App Store. You can find most apps that are available on iPhone, or a comparable one. There are free apps and paid apps, and it alerts you when there are updates available. Scrolling down the list you can clearly see which apps you have installed already and choose one to uninstall or upgrade. There is a separate tab for V Cast apps which does not excite me :), but you will notice that there are some repeats under the list.

Some of my favorites include:

• Advanced Task Killer
• eBay
• Facebook
• Seesmic
• Twitter
• Voice (more on integrating Google Voice later)
• Yxplayer (play more than just mp4 movies)

DLNA

This phone having DLNA is very, very cool. Using DLNA you can connect to your desktop machine (running Windows 7), DLNA enabled TV, or other DLNA devices to copy and/or stream media direct to and from your phone.

This will be really cool once more devices support the protocol.

Battery Life

• BATTERY TYPE: 1540 mAh Li Ion
• STANDBY TIME^3: up to 220 hrs.
• Usage Time: up to 480 min. (continuous)

Like most smartphones these days the battery life is  not all that great. Standby time is really good, but of course if I use the phone quite a bit, checking email, talking, web browsing, etc. I will have to charge the phone halfway through the day.

The phone charges via a Micro USB adapter.

Pricing & Release

The pricing of the Droid X will be $199 after a $100 mail in rebate with a new 2-year contract. Existing Verizon customers with a contract set to end any time in 2010 can upgrade at the new customer pricing.

• Voice plans range from $39.99 – $69.99
• Unlimited Data is $29.99 per month
• Mobile Hotspot: The phone can serve as a Mobile Hotspot for up to 5 devices. This service costs and additional $20 per month.

The Droid X will be released on July 15th on the Verizon Wireless Network.

Disclosure: I was invited as a blogger to Verizon to the launch press party of the Droid X. Upon leaving I was given a Droid X device for the purpose for review on a trial service plan. The service plan will soon be deactivated, but I get to keep the device.