This is how Android should be known., July 9, 2011

This phone is so awesome, I don’t know where to start!

SIZE:
I’ll compare it to iPhones, since it’s what everybody seems to want. I have an iPhone 3GS and they’re almost same size, the Atrix is just a bit taller (2 mm) and wider (1 mm), although the screen is much larger (4 in, vs 3.5 in on the iPhone).
It’s thinner than the iPhone 3GS (10.95 mm vs 12.3 mm on the iPhone), not as thin as the iPhone 4 (9.3 mm) and not nearly as incredibly thin as the Samsung Galaxy S2 (8.49 mm)! I’ve played around with the Galaxy S2, it’s amazing, beautiful huge screen and unbelievably thin, but that’s another review!

DISPLAY:
Beautiful 4-inch TFT, qHD (540 x 960 pixels), capacitive multi-touch screen, 16M colors, protected by the scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass! Awesome for web navigation even on non-mobile websites, if you can see well, you’ll be able to read anything!

BATTERY:
Capacity is of 1930 mAh, which is a pretty large battery for a phone. Talk time of about 7-8h, stand-by of about 200-400h (that’ll depend on your settings, such as push notifications). I carry one spare battery around, but I’m a heavy gamer (lot’s of Galaxy on Fire 2 lately), and you’ll probably be too (at least occasionally), once you get to know the awesome power of the Tegra 2 chipset. Even so, I don’t usually need the spare, it lasts me my whole work day (I leave home at about 10 AM and return at about 8 PM). Obviously I don’t play much during work, but I do use it constantly for check-ins, web navigation, email, google talk, Facebook and Google+. Lots of people complain about battery life, but that’s what you pay for having a smartphone with the processing power of a laptop computer.

SOFTWARE:
Unfortunately, it still packs Android Froyo 2.2 (at least as I write), with no predicted date for an update to Gingerbread 2.3 or Ice-cream Sandwich 2.4. 2.2 is still pretty good, runs very smoothly and has nice features such as WiFi tethering natively. I’ve never seen Android OS run as smoothly on any other phone as it does on the Atrix, it’s beautiful! It comes with Motorola’s Motoblur UI, which is pretty interesting, but I did use home replacement Launcher Pro, making it even snappier and quicker.

CAMERA:
As a photographer and filmographer, I barely use my Atrix’s camera, I always carry my Canon around, but it has a 5 MP camera with dual LED flash, autofocus and geo-tagging. It captures video at 1280×720 @30fps and is supposed to have a firmware update that unlocks 1920×1080 recording @30fps. It isn’t the best camera I’ve seen, even on phones… I’ve tried the Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc, and it seemed much better than the Atrix, specially in low light situations.
It has a VGA front-facing camera which I’ve barely used, since I’ve never video-chatted with anyone, but I can let you know that the quality isn’t great either.

CPU:
This is where the Atrix shines the most. It’s packed with a Dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor, ULP GeForce Graphics and the Tegra 2 chipset. It’ll run smoothly anything available for Android (as I write)! I’ve been playing all of the Tegra 2 games, such as Dungeon Defenders, Backbreacker, Fruit Ninja THD, Great Battles Medieval, Pinball HD, Riptide GP, Samurai II Vengeance, Galaxy on Fire 2… am I forgetting any? =P
You definitely need to see Riptide GP and Galaxy on Fire 2, they’ll easily blow your PSP out of the water!
A lot of people ask me this: yes, it runs Angry Birds… smoother than on the iPhone 4. ¬¬

If that last part got you interested, consider buying spare battery!

It has HDMI out, but does not mirror the phone, it simply goes to a sort of media center Motorola has preinstalled, where you can watch your movies, photos and displays album, artist, song title, etc, as you listen to music (great for parties). You can sort of mirror the phone on the Webtop functionality, which is when you dock the phone, plug the dock to an outlet and HDMI out to a TV or monitor. It will run another OS based on Linux where you can run Mozilla Firefox among other things, and you get to see your phone’s screen on a window based view. You can maximize your phone view, sort of mirroring it to your TV, but you’ll get performance issues on some apps since you’ll be running this Linux based OS on top of your Android/Motoblur.

You can actually connect a USB keyboard and mouse while connected to the dock, and use it as a desktop PC. Otherwise, you can still connect a bluetooth keyboard to the phone by itself.

I’m extremely happy with this phone, I’ve always dreamt of Android running as smoothly as iOS, and this is how it happens.

If you want to know anything else I haven’t mentioned, just let me know in the comments section below (YouTube anyone?). ^^

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]]> https://lap-tops.net/motorola-atrix-unlocked-4g-cell-phone-with-android-2-2-os-4-inch-hd-touchscreen/smart-phones/#comment-837 Jackie W. Mullins "kb5ynf" Thu, 13 Sep 2012 13:51:46 +0000 http://lap-tops.net/motorola-atrix-unlocked-4g-cell-phone-with-android-2-2-os-4-inch-hd-touchscreen/smart-phones/#comment-837

Best Android Phone and Possibly the Best Phone Period, October 26, 2011

By 

Jackie W. Mullins “kb5ynf” (Arkansas) –

  

I’m a corporate smart phone user and IT Director of my company. Consequently, I actually oversee the cell phones for our company and get the chance to try out a lot of good phones. To date, the Atrix has been the best I’ve ever used (that includes iPhones by the way). I don’t dictate what phones our users carry because I see that as a personal choice; I just make suggestions as to which phones work best with our backend systems. Because of this openness, I see almost every high-end phone that hits the market at some point. The Atrix has been the best up until the recent release of the Atrix 2! Both are excellent phones.

I use AT&T Premier to manage our phones and one of the benefits is I sometimes get new phones before the actual release date; that was the case with the Atrix. I got my hands on mine a week or two before the official release and I have nothing bad to say about it. When it first released, there were a couple of annoying limitations that either AT&T or Motorola had implemented. For one, they had disabled the standard Android side load feature and the other was a limitation on the hot spot feature that caused it to only work when the phone had a 3G connection. A subsequent firmware update removed both issues. Neither issue was a major concern for me (I could still use Android ADB to load apps and I am almost always in a 3G area when I need to use the hot spot) so I was very happy with the phone and even happier with later improvements. The only other somewhat negative attribute of the phone to me was that the back plate was very slick when I first got the phone. I’m a person who basically never drops my phone but I dropped this one twice early on because it was so slick. My previous phone was the Nexus One which had a rubberized feel and I had to get used to the Atrix’s case. Again, not a major issue; I mentally and physically adjusted to the phone and haven’t dropped it since. Plus, over time, the back has gotten a little scuffed which resulted in nullifying the slick factor.

I didn’t read all the other reviews here but I did notice that most of the key features are covered, system specs and such. I’ll try to avoid repeating stuff that has already been covered and give you my impressions and responses to some negative comments I’ve seen concerning this phone. At the time I’m writing this, I’ve been using the phone for well over six months and know it very well.

This phone is an excellent phone and at the time of release, was in my opinion, the best Android phone on the market… possibly even the best cell phone on the market. Obviously, I haven’t used every phone available but of the many that I have used, the Atrix takes the top spot. The specs of the phone were a step above everyone else at release and it has been an excellent phone. The call quality is great and operation is smooth and very robust. I have a bad ear and have struggled for years to find a phone that is loud enough for me to use comfortably; this has been an issue for me pretty much ever since the industry switched over to digital cell phones. The Atrix is the first phone I’ve had in years that I have no problems hearing; it is quite loud enough for me to use comfortably. And other than the two issues I listed above (which were corrected), this has been the ideal phone.

Some people complain about the camera on this phone. I find the camera to be perfectly adequate. I don’t buy a phone for its camera and there’s probably not a phone on the market today that doesn’t have a camera that would satisfy me. I know others put more stock in cameras than I do and that’s their prerogative. The phone takes very good photos and the video is very good as well. I have no complaints here.

I’ve heard people complain about the battery life of this phone. Well, the battery life is actually one of the areas where this phone absolutely shines! I’ve been using smart phones for a long time and as long as they’ll get through a full day without dying, I’m satisfied with them. Every smart phone I’ve had and/or setup or supported over the years has had to be charged every day (with one exception besides the Atrix). This is usually a shock for feature phone users who get their first smart phone because feature phones can usually run for several days on a single charge. The difference is that smart phones are constantly updating over the internet throughout the day which drains the battery and most have massive touch screens these days that also drain the battery; so, you pretty much need to charge them daily. Very few will run for 24 hours and most will die well before the 24 hour mark; but I regularly get 36+ hours of life out of my Atrix and that’s without using the night saver mode. I still usually charge it every night, but when I forget, I don’t worry too much because I’ve only completely ran it dry once or twice since I’ve had it. Most of the time, it’s…

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]]> https://lap-tops.net/motorola-atrix-unlocked-4g-cell-phone-with-android-2-2-os-4-inch-hd-touchscreen/smart-phones/#comment-836 Thomas M. Taylor "runman" Thu, 13 Sep 2012 13:06:45 +0000 http://lap-tops.net/motorola-atrix-unlocked-4g-cell-phone-with-android-2-2-os-4-inch-hd-touchscreen/smart-phones/#comment-836

Really Nice Android Phone, April 27, 2011

By 

Thomas M. Taylor “runman” (Phoenix, AZ) –

  

When I first saw the Atrix, I was mesmerized and had to wait a few months to get my hands on the phone. The specs of the Atrix is awesome and I have hope that the phone will live up to the promise that has been made. I have never used an Android phone before this one, but have used the Iphone since it came out and have the Iphone 4. I have used the Palm III, treo, BlackBerry ect… you get the point.

What comes with the phone? You get the phone, USB cord, A wall plug and the HDMI cable, instruction manual and battery. Everything one need to step off into the Atrix Android world.

One thing the iPhone user will notice that the Android software is more difficult to use. It may take a few hours just to get the basics down, but after the few hours a whole new world starts to open up. Unlike the Iphone who’s software is easy to operate, the more you learn about Android, the more powerful the phone becomes.

Just a quick comparison Iphone 4 VS Atrix, the Iphone 4 display is way clearer and the screen is a little more responsive. The Artix has a user replaceable battery and the phone can be taken a part and fix for a lot less money than the Iphone. Now, I have never tried to take apart either phone, but the instructions and professional review of the taken down is on line.
One thing I would like to say is that the finger print reader works very well.
The world of Apps…
In Apps, Apple wins. Not much else to say there. The Apps that I use mostly are iHeart Radio (does not work on Atrix), Scrabble (Not found on Android store), Farkle (Android has but quality is lacking), Bloomberg and Fox News.

Wall Paper…
Android leaves Apple in the dust. The active wall paper cannot be beat by apple, you can have multiple home screens with live wall paper. I love knowing the time, temperature and forcast. If you are like me, the Android system, cannot be beat.

Ease of use…
Apple is a lot simpler to use. Just like pen and paper is easy, but if you are in the computer world, than a pen and paper just won’t due, and this is where the Android system comes in. I cannot honestly say which system is best, Android or IOS. If you want simple, but lacking power, Iphone is the way. If you are a person who likes to play, Android is the choice.

Display:
The display is bright and colorful, but the diplay is not nearly as nice as the iPhone 4. The lack luster display is noticed especially noticed when reading texts and PDFs.

Camera and Flash:
The camera takes pretty good pictures. The LED flash works really good. I was able to take a picture in a nearly dark room and the subject came out clear and in focus. The LED flash filled the entire room. As a side note, there is a forward facing camera. I have not used and more than likely won’t.

Speaker:
Very loud and clear when using to make calls, talk radio and listening to music. It is a small speaker so you will not get a lot (if any) bass from this little speaker.

Operating System:
I have never used Android before, so I have ability to describe between the Android, the Moto Blur, and if ATT messed it up I can’t tell. The user of the Atrix must use the one app store that ATT backs, and the icon for the store comes preloaded. It would be nice to have more access to more stores, like Amazon, but if you get this phone, you are going to be stuck. The few apps that I have downloaded all seem to work fine and most of them were free. It would be nice it ATT did not pull the apple store garbage with this phone though.

The Atrix comes loaded with lots of software, commonly known as bloatware, but you get a lot of it. The software that runs on the computer is called “Motorola Media Link”, this is kind of like “iTunes” in the sense that the Media Link software is a way for your computer to communicate with the Atrix. This nifty program will take you itunes music (Not DRM protected) and place the music on your new phone. You can also transfer your pod casts too. The Media Link is automatic and does not need to be messed with. I had no problems with the installation or use of the software. The Software is stored on your phone and will try to load on any computer that the Atrix is hooked up to.

Some of the really things about the Atrix that I like is the Micro SD slot (32BG max) for added memory and the user can remove the battery without having to go find apple support. I was also able to keep my unlimited data package, although a lot of AT&T customers have not been so lucky. AT&T also offers their $5.00/ month warranty on the phone as compared to the Iphone, and you do not have to hook the phone up to a computer the first time you use it. You do need to sign up for a MOTO account, nut it only takes a few seconds and you are able to use you new cell phone.

Things I do not like. I do not like the feel of the phone. My Iphone 4 feels…

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