Cell Phone Review 2011: Motorola Atrix 4G review (www.drmobiles.co.nz)

It was the alliance with Android that put Motorola out of the woods. Like every partnership, it’s been a series of peaks and dips but every now and then the relationship between Motorola and Android goes beyond a mere marriage of convenience and well into a simmering love affair.

They did it with the MILESTONEs and the DROID X, the BACKFLIP and the DEFY. With the ATRIX 4G, Moto says it has no plans to live in the shadows of other big makers.

   
Motorola ATRIX 4G official photos

The Motorola ATRIX 4G is the first dual-core smartphone in the Motorola line-up. It’s also the first to flaunt a qHD touchscreen. That’s as solid as credentials get. Add the fact it’s the first handset for Motorola to support the fast HSDPA+ network (hence the 4G moniker) and you’ve got yourself a Droid that’s not afraid of what comes next.

Dual core is certainly the next big thing in mobile phones and the Motorola ATRIX deserves credit for being among the first – our bad really, this review isn’t exactly on time.

But there are other bold decisions that Motorola had to make. The HD and laptop docks for one – though the concept is not exactly original, Motorola is trying to make it mainstream. The added fingerprint scanner is not new either but well forgotten old does just as well. Plus, it will satisfy the privacy freak in all of us.

Anyway, the standard package is what we’re interested in and this is what our review will focus on. The optional extras can wait. The ATRIX is more important to us a phone (a dual-core smartphone, to be precise) than a wannabe laptop or a potential entertainment dock. Let’s waste no more time and take a glimpse of the ATRIX 4G’s key features.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G with HSDPA and HSUPA
• 4" 16M-color capacitive touchscreen of qHD (960 x 540 pixels) resolution, scratch-resistant Gorilla glass
• Dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 proccessor, ULP GeForce GPU, Tegra 2 chipset; 1GB of RAM
• Android OS v2.2; MOTOBLUR UI (update to Gingerbread planned)
• Web browser with Adobe Flash 10.1 support
• 5 MP autofocus camera with dual-LED flash; face detection, geotagging
• 720p video recording @ 30fps (to be upgraded to 1080p Full-HD )
• Wi-Fi ab/g/n; Wi-Fi hotspot functionality; DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS; Digital compass
• Fingerprint scanner that doubles as a power key
• 16GB storage; expandable via a microSD slot
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP
• standard microHDMI port
• Smart and voice dialing
• Office document editor
• Active noise cancellation with a dedicated secondary mic
• DivX/XviD video support
• Lapdock and HD Dock versatility
• Web browser with Adobe Flash 10.2 support

Main disadvantages

• Not the latest Android version
• No FM radio
• Screen image is pixelated upon closer inspection
• Questionable placement of the Power/Lock button
• Poor pinch zoom implementation in the gallery
• No dedicated shutter key
• Doesn’t operate without a SIM card inside

The ATRIX 4G is certainly the most powerful phone Motorola has made so far. With a 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB worth of RAM and the ultra low power GeForce GPU under its hood, the ATRIX 4G is set to win the hearts and minds of power users.

    
Motorola ATRIX 4G live photos

Garnish all this premium hardware with a 5MP camera with dual LED flash and a 4-inch capacitive touchscreen of qHD resolution of 540x960 pixels, and the ATRIX 4G is more than ready to play with the other dual-core kids.

This post is sponsored by:Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
    

Google Trend: Mobile phone usage report 2011 (www.drmobiles.co.nz)

Did you ever wonder what kind of phone usage is normal? We seem to have a pretty good idea. Are cell phones still mostly used for making calls or has web browsing already taken over? The answer is right here.

In some places, more people use their phone as a wakeup alarm than they do to make calls. More people use music recognition in North America than in any other place on Earth. You told us what features are used daily and what are only needed once in a while. We also know which are the most wanted but, for various reasons, still not widely used.

Before we go on though, we’d like to thank you for taking part in our survey so actively. More than 15,000 people responded, 10,000 of which clocked in the first 24 hours alone. As you could imagine, the results should be representative enough given the number of respondents representing various age groups, both genders and different continents.

And while the results can most probably apply to mobile phone enthusiasts all over the world they are hardly accurate as far as the whole world population is concerned. The thing is you, our faithful audience, are not exactly the average phone users. Being so informed and passionate about cell phones (why would you else be here reading all those long reviews) you tend to spend more time with your phone and use most of the features.

Here are some numbers that prove this further: 96% of all respondents browse the web on their mobile phone and more than 88% have a Wi-Fi enabled handset. You won’t be able to bring those numbers to the next class reunion, but you might just learn what your fellow commenters do on their handsets.

One final note before we begin: about 30% of the voters chose not to provide personal information but we still have plenty of feedback to be able to tell how the results vary across the different gender/age/location groups.

Most used daily

We start with the most important features, i.e. the ones that are used most frequently by most users. And the winner here… couldn’t have been more obvious… is voice calls.

What came as a slight surprise however is the actual percentage – we expected results more in 95%+ range, so much so that we even considered leaving it out of the poll. Glad we didn’t, because we now see that not everyone use their phone as a phone. And in some user groups, the voice calls are even less popular – less than 65% of the teenagers talk daily on their phones.

In fact, voice calls only rank sixth in popularity in that group and it also loses its top spot among users aged 18 to 24 (though the feature retains a respectable 83% of daily usage there).

In terms of location, voice calls are most popular in Africa (89.5%) and least popular in Oceania (5th place at 77.6%).

The second most used feature worldwide was a bit of a surprise to us – with 83% it is alarm clock that snatches the silver. The feature even tops the chart for several user groups – women (81.3%), ages 18-24 years (83.5%) and South Americans (86.5%). It loses some ground with the users older than 41, but its popularity is consistently above 60%.

Sending texts might be in decline, but it still retains third position in daily usage. Its overall share is 78.7% and it even gets the number one place in Oceania with 87.7%.

SMS is also enjoying higher than average popularity with Asians (83.8%), where it’s just a tenth of a percent behind alarm clock usage. Surprisingly, only 75.8% of teenagers send SMS daily, which is less than average. Which is not to say that teenagers are no longer responsible for most of the SMS traffic. One possible answer here is that some teens are already switching to instant messaging – our data shows that one third of them are already using this feature daily.

Web browsing only loses a place on the podium by a whisker, which actually tells us how popular handheld browsing is (a mobile version of our site is in the works). 78.6% of the users open their mobile browsers daily. The champions in mobile web browsing category are Oceania (83.3%) and North America (80.9%) with browsing the second most used feature there.

This feature is less often used by women (70%) and users over 50 (63%).

Essential features

The chart we’re about to look at shows the features that are used by the largest number of people. Although not necessarily needed daily, they are the most likely must-haves for users shopping for their next handset.

The obvious leader again is voice calls: 99.5% of you make calls at least ones every few weeks. In Oceania the feature which gave cell phones a reason to exist scores a perfect 100%, while the US gets pretty close with 99.9%.

In terms of overall use, SMS moves up to second place with 99.2%. And it’s another perfect score here from Oceania.

Taking photos is every bit as important as we expected – it grabs the third spot here with 98.5%. It means that less than one in 66 users never use the camera at the back of their cell phone. And half of those have answered that they would use that feature if they could, which suggests that their handsets don’t have a (decent) camera at all.

The two features that only just failed to make in to the medals are calculator (98.4%) and alarm clock (97.8%), while web browsing to sixth with the very respectable 96.2%.

At the other end of the spectrum is video calling, which is only used by 26.6% of all users. Only 2.3% of you make video-calls on a daily basis.

Audio books (33.5% total and 3.8% daily) and podcasts (33.8% and 3.7% daily) are not too popular either but they are still head and neck above video-calls. Streaming content over DLNA or TV-out only just avoided relegation with 34.1% users doing it at all and only 3.9% needing it daily.

This post is sponsored by:Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
    

2011 Tech News Update: Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo Review (www.drmobiles.co.nz)

It’s a sequel. Same cast and the same story but with a new lead and a new director. Shot in HD. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo is to settle some unfinished business at the box office. A year stands between the Vivaz and the Neo and Android does make all the difference.

   
Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo official photos

The XPERIA Neo is part of Sony Ericsson’s new droid lineup and takes advantage of all the new features – the LED-backlit Reality display with Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine, an 8 megapixel Exmor R camera sensor, 720p video with continuous autofocus and the latest Android – 2.3 Gingerbread.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 3.7" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit LCD touchscreen of FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels) on Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine
• Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread
• 1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset
• 512 MB RAM
• 8 MP autofocus camera, LED flash, geotagging
• 720p video @ 30fps, continuous autofocus
• Front facing VGA camera, video calls
• Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS
• microSD slot (32GB supported, 8GB card included)
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Voice dialing
• Adobe Flash 10.2 support
• microHDMI port

Main disadvantages

• Display has poor viewing angles
• The competition has dual-core CPUs, 1080p video
• No smart dialing
• Loudspeaker has below average performance
• No DivX/XviD support
• Memory card slot under the battery cover

The Neo benefits from new technology but it does well to focus on the important stuff: imaging. It’s not the 3.7 touchscreen that makes this phone, nor is it the 1 GHz CPU or the latest Android Gingerbread. And hey, these are all fine features to have. But in the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo the HD-enabled cameraphone comes before the all-round droid smartphone.

   
Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo at ours

The short list of downsides gives away a well-focused device. The XPERIA Neo is spared the predicament of a flagship too. While the Arc might be unsettled by the new dual-core beasts – the Neo doesn’t need top specs to be good at its main job. The previous generation hardware is less of a disadvantage.

Having met the Neo, this review doesn’t look as such a tough challenge. All it needs to do is cement the good impression it already made. Such kind of safety can be deceptive though. Let’s hope the Neo didn’t let its muscles soften. 

This post is sponsored by:Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622
Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000
Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr
    

HTC ChaCha now available in the UK, free on a two-year contract

The HTC ChaCha is now available for purchase through the Phones 4U dealer in the UK. The Facebook-centric messenger can be yours for free on a two year 20 quid a month Vodafone contract or a whopping 300 pounds if you'd prefer to go pay-as-you-go.

Update: It seems that Carphone Wearhouse is also listing the HTC ChaCha as available in the UK. Prices are similar to those of Phones 4U, save for the sim-free price of 230 pounds.

The  controversial ChaCha is a 2.6-inch HVGA (320x480) full-QWERTY messenger phone with a dedicated Facebook button and Gingerbread 2.4 on board. The HTC Sense on it is also socially integrated to make your day-to-day life more involved with your online peers.

This post is sponsored by:Dr Mobiles Limited
1 Huron Street, Takapuna, North Shore 0622Tel: (09) 551-5344 and Mob: (021) 264-0000Web - Map - Email - Posterous - Twitter - Blogger - Flickr