Mobile-Net

Motorola Atrix 4G Review

Since 1984, when Cell Phones hit the shelves, thier functionality has been expanded only a few times. In the nineties these milestones were first smartphone, and then the PDA based on Windows Mobile. Finally, in January 2011, another milestone was the product from Motorola. What's next - is not known and not so important in the context of this material. Now we're talking about a future that has already become real - on the Motorola Atrix 4G.

• Processor: Dual Core, NVIDIA Tegra 2 with a frequency of 1 GHz
• Memory: 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal memory
• Memory Card: microSD, up to 32 GB
• Display: 960 by 540 pixels, 4-inch diagonal (PenTile)
• 5-Megapixel Camera with video recording in HD
• The camera on the front side of the phone for video calls
• Fingerprint Scanner combined with the Power Button
• Two microphones. Noise reduction technology used in conversation
  Built-in codecs for video
• HDMI output and miniJack for headphones and headsets
• MOTOBLUR Shell, as well as proprietary software from Motorola that allows you to use your phone as a "brain" or "system unit" for the various docks.
• A good set of accessories and even includes a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
• All the benefits of Android 2.2

In appearance Atrix more like a small tablet, rather than phone. In modern mobile phones, most of them, the screen is slightly shifted vertically relative to the center hull. Such a decision caused by the presence of the front controls. In the case of Atrix display is located exactly on the center, which, in my opinion, it is more convenient when typing on the keyboard in landscape mode.

The main body material is a sleek, black, not glossy plastic. Fingerprints are not particularly visible on it, and can be removed without any problems with a piece of soft tissue. The back side is simulating carbon texture. Plastic does not feel expensive; however, it cannot be called cheap. All the edges are rounded and it almost has no sharp corners. The size of Motorola Atrix 4G is not much different from other devices that are now present on the market. The front side is completely covered with protective Gorilla Glass. There are the frontal camera and an opening of the earpiece on the upper side. Under the display, there are usual touch keys for Android (Menu, Home, Back, Search). At the bottom you can see the microphone.

There is a fingerprint sensor on the back side, and it is combined with the power switch. It is situated at an angle of 30 degrees.

Build quality at a good level. Backlash and squeaks body was found. One of the benefits, according to many, is the fingerprint scanner, which, as I said above, combined with the power key. You can activate it and set up for the index fingers of the left and right hands. Immediately you will be prompted to install four-digit code to unlock the device in case when unlocking via the scanner is not possible. When you press the power button screen lights up and then you just hold your finger on the scanner - after half a second (time needed for identification) device is unlocked. I can't say that this solution is suitable for everyone, it is necessary to consider several things. For example, swiping finger at certain speed, and it's not always convenient. Unlocking the device by pressing the power button and swiping display will work much faster. But that's not all. Note the location of the button, it is easy to use only if you hold it only in certain way, otherwise, if you hold it upside-down it won't be so convenient.

Volume control buttons are small, but have Very Good feel. They have a short stroke, a muffled click, and yet easy to use. Touch keys are also not satisfactory, they work with every touch, however, and they are pretty far from the screen itself so you won't miss it. One of the main advantages of this device is four-inch display with qHD resolution (960 * 540 pixels). It uses PenTile technology but its quality is not great.

Instead of the usual location of RGB (Red, Green, Blue) subpixels PenTile uses different order: Red, Green, Blue, Green. In terms of area green subpixels are two times smaller than red and blue ones, so the amount of green, and hence colors have not changed. It would seem that there is nothing terrible in this, but due to the asymmetric colors, it change the way horizontal and vertical lines are displayed. If you closely compare displays of Atrix and Milestone the difference will be evident. It is easily seen on the green battery icon in the top status bar. It consists of green rectangles, arranged in a checkerboard pattern, which would not have been on conventional RGB technology display.

There is also problem with displaying fonts on the new display. Fonts on Artix compared with the usual display are not as crisp, but here high resolution and screen size come into play. The difference is not very noticeable. Sometimes fonts can turn to unclear mush, and it is perfectly clear when it is on a yellow background.

This is all the disadvantages of technology PenTile, which can be seen on a lot of phones with AMOLED Super-AMOLED or screens of (Samsung Galaxy, Galaxy S, Wave, HTC Nexus One, and so on).

The viewing angles are pretty standard for the market and raise no objections. Brightness is also quite enough for any type of light, it is comparable to the brightness of the iPhone 4 display. It is necessary to tell about incorrect colors of new Motorola Atrix. Indeed, the color gamma is slightly shifted, and it is perfectly visible on the photos of the screen. For example, yellow color is a bit dirty, with a little touch of green. The same goes for other colors. After a couple days of using this gadget this problem is no longer evident. Moreover, you simply don't notice after a few days of use. In the end, the difference for you as an owner of Atrix will be noticeable only in direct comparison with similar phones.

A distinctive feature of the Motorola phones for the U.S. market is MotoBlur shell, which primarily focuses on work with social networks and services. When you first start the device it offers you to create an account with MotoBlur, and it is impossible to skip this step of setup. You can connect the following social networks: MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm, Twitter, Email, Corporate Sync, Picasa, Photobucket, LinkedIn, Yahoo! Mail, or only connect to Gmail.

In addition to some changes in standard applications (which we'll discuss later), they have also created a few branded widgets.

Despite the existence of a standard for Android wireless networks management widget, Motorola set up its own - it has airplane mode, Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi. Their advantage is that they are separate and are much larger than standard ones.

There is a calendar widget. Its main advantage over other existing for Android is that it can be scaled. It can take as a single line or all the free space on the desktop.

Date and time widget can occupy a single cell (shows only time) and all 16 cells. In full screen mode it also shows the date, month, day of week and calendar.

Weather widget is not as easy to use and not as informative. In addition, the maximum size of weather widget is only four cells. But when pressed on it a window appears with more information.

The same applies to other widgets. For example, the standard size of a contacts widget has only two cells, which can fit buttons for phone call, SMS, email, instant messengers, social networks. But once it is stretched to full screen it then fits eight cells for shortcuts. If you want you can get quick access to all modes of communication with the selected subscriber.

Messages widget can display incoming SMS messages and messages from Facebook and Twitter. If you like you can change the name of the widget, such as Twitter and display information only from this social service.

News from RSS feeds can be displayed on the desktop via its own widget. You can make more of these widgets, subscribing to various channels and giving them correspondent names. Clicking on these will bring out pop-up window displaying more information and a link to the source.

Photo widget is virtually no different from the standard in Android, but it can also be scaled.

There is a much more interesting widget - Picture Frame Puls. In addition to displaying images, it also contains camera button, gallery button and a button to run a slideshow right on the desktop.

There is a special social networking widget that displays a text message and the avatar of its author. When clicked on it pops up a window where you can reply to the author, add message to your favorites or retwitt.

Notes widget deserves our attention too, simple and great tool for every day. Its size can also vary depending on your needs. You can change the title and color of the "paper". In my opinion, this is the most simple, beautiful and right tool of this among all other available in the market.

Impressions from the Motorola Atrix 4G widgets are generally positive. At first it is a bit difficult to use them due to their high functionality, however after some time you will actively use them with ease. Their distinctive features are scalability, which is very convenient, simple and concise in design. It is a pity that they are not on the market.

For music function Atrix uses standard android Android 2.2 player. It is possible to sort tracks by artist, album or track names. There are also Random and Shuffle functions available, as well as a number of equalizers for headphones and for speaker.

Atrix today produces the best sound, among other phones (including iPhone). If it is a merit of NVIDIA processor we would like to hear LG Optimus 2X in future.
Video

Motorola Atrix 4G supports two most used codecs: DivX XVid, and processing power is enough to decode FullHD video. Therefore user will not have any problems viewing most videos. However, the built-in player has not much functionality. Play/pause buttons, rewind slider and a button to show the parameters of the video clip. However, it is not tragic, as there are free video players in app market that have functionality that will satisfy most users.

I must say that Motorola phones with cameras have always been bad, except for the Motorola Motozine ZN5 which was developed in conjunction with Kodak. As you might guess Atrix has not changed the situation. Its camera is pretty average as it has a lot of digital noise, pale color transfer, plus the flash like "light up" subject, if it is close.

It is possible to automatically upload video clips to different online media services. Pictures can be stored to phone memory and on to microSD card.

Video quality is not much better. It is quite slow to react to changes in the brightness of environment. In comparison with the iPhone 4 and photo / video is much worse.

Effects identical to those that we could see in the photo. Flash work as a flashlight while shooting video. Resolution of the front camera is only 640 x 480 pixels, so the video in this case is recorded in VGA quality.

The device is based on dual-core (Cortex A9) NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor with a frequency of 1 GHz. This allows the unit to encode and decode FullHD video (corresponding to the specifications) on the fly. Power of this solution in 3D graphics will be gradually implemented through games designed specifically for Tegra 2. Already there are few applications with an interesting graphics; however there are still ways to go in this direction.

Based on the synthetic tests, the performance of solutions from NVIDIA is twice as high as other top Android devices that you can buy now.

Later this year Motorola Atrix's operating system will be upgraded to Android 2.3 (which also does not support dual core processors). New OS will have a certain increase in speed and possible "supplements" in functionality. But let's talk a little about our impressions of the performance.

Definitely we can say that the interface is faster. Lists scroll more smoothly (compared with the HTC Desire) it also takes much less time to download and install applications. The browser Works Great, you can even try to play flash games. Of course, you should use the application from the Tegra Zone. But at the same time there is one problem. Sometimes (very rarely) it takes 4-5 seconds to start the browser. This is definitely a glitch of the firmware, and there is no doubt that it will be corrected.

The American version of the device is not much different from European and, as it turned out, Motorola Atrix 4G works fine with any 3G network. Supports the following standards: WCDMA 850/1900/2100, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSDPA 14Mbps (Category 10) Edge Class 12, GPRS Class 12, eCompass, AGPS.

Work in 2G, including GPRS and EDGE connections are not satisfactory.

Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR module has the following profiles:

• A2DP 1.2 - transfer of stereo audio over Bluetooth
• AVRCP - control music playback via wireless headset.
• Hands-Free Profile 1.5 - Profile is used to connect a wireless headset and the phone
• sends mono sound in one channel.
• OPP - basic profile for sending "objects" such as pictures, virtual business cards etc.
• HID 1.0 - Provides support for devices with a HID (Human Interface Device), such as mice, joysticks, keyboards and so on.
• PBAP - profile lets you share your phone book entries between the devices.
  (Supports profiles: A2DP 1.2, AVRCP, HFP 1.5 AG, HID 1.0 Host, HSP 1.0, OPP, PBAP PSE)

Wi-Fi (802.11 a / b / g / n) - there are no complaints in this modules functionality. The device automatically connects to known networks. The phone can operate as a router and supports simultaneous connection of up to five devices.
Having such a capacious battery the phone does show a record time for Android-devices. In normal operation it will last for two days. With my fairly hard usage scenarios the device worked for a full day - a great result. You will probably not see this result anywhere else. Battery lifetime can be increased by adjusting the power saving mode that disables the data update and adjusts the brightness of the display.

First, let us recall the strengths of Motorola Atrix 4G. This is of course NVIDIA Tegra platform 2. Highest battery capacity among similar devices provides a better lifetime. Perhaps this is one of the greatest benefits among similar products. Fingerprint scanner in my opinion is a more convenient solution than input of a four-digit code. The presence of 16 gigabytes of built-in memory and microSD slot allows users achieve the maximum amount of memory - 42 GB. Entertainment Center turned out to be far from useless. It is very convenient to watch videos from the device on your TV. It has a unique set of accessories - a mouse and a keyboard and a Docking Station, including a remarkable Laptop Dock. Screen is, admittedly, not a plus, despite its resolution. Traditionally Motorola's advantages are voice quality and signal reception. There really is no problem - everything is at the highest level. The speaker volume is more than enough. Phone Portal is also its advantage since it is really a handy feature. Well, the quality of the music of Motorola Atrix is considered the best Music Phone to date. As minuses I note minimalist design and lack of metal casing and display.

It is up to you to decide whether to buy this phone, or look in the direction of the competition. If display problems are not critical for you the phone will work great for you. It's really a good quality product.

Despite all the shortcomings, Atrix is a unique device on the market, forming a new phenomenon, a new scenario for using your phone as a computer. I have no doubt that such decisions sooner or later appear in other manufacturers products. Surely, their implementation will be better, but we must admit that Motorola has been and remains a pioneer in its field.

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