DROID Bionic
by Antonio Wells
Jan 6, 2011 10:02 AM –
DROID Bionic is the next in the DROID saga of Android smartphones for Verizon. Motorola showed us how fast it was (vid coming soon) for no waits. DROID Bionic ships with Android 2.3.4, huge 4.3-inch qHD touchscreen display, 8 megapixel camera with front facing camera, dual core processor with each core running at 1GHz (delivering up to two GHz of processing power), 1GHz RAM, HDMI out full 1080p HD video, and can reach Verizon’s 4G LTE mobile broadband Internet speeds that’s up to 10 times faster than 3G.
Price: $299.99/2 year contract
Carrier: Verizon (Exclusive)
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Bottom-line… it’s fast; both in terms of general phone operation and mobile Internet!
- Plenty of internal memory storage!
- Bold & large screen that’s scratch resistant!
- Slightly heavy yet solid design!
- Mobile hotspot to connect up to 8 devices!
- Mini HDMI port for mirroring display to HD television!
- Pre-loaded with enterprise grade security and device recovery features.
Cons
- Mobile hotspot disables 4G Internet.
- Sub-par battery life.
- Would expect more from the rear camera. Picture quality is average.
Design:
When this phone first debuted at CES 2011 it looked different, so after more than nine months of hyped waiting among the tech community, Motorola finally launched it with a refresh. This design seemed to have lead the way for the sibling DROID RAZR and DROID RAZR MAXX which take on the rear camera bump contour.
One thing you notice about the DROID Bionic is that it is a fairly heavy phone in the hand, yet it feels very sturdy and made of solid materials. No need to regurgitate the specs to you as it is confirmed to be constructed of solid internals and externals. Those with small hands may notice the obvious difference in form factor, but this is becoming more non-issue as more Android smartphone customers are conformed to larger devices.
Features:
Fast 4G Internet
Watch on Mobile
We put this phone to the test in a 4G face-off to determine which wireless carrier had the fastest 4G speeds in Chicago. I assumed this phone, being on Verizon, would champion the others, but surprisingly our T-Mobile device (an HSPA+ 4G phone) was crowned winner. All the techno lingo aside, in layman’s terms, this phone really blazes through web pages on Verizon’s 4G LTE network (consistent at 10-20Mbps downloads); making for faster web browsing, faster music downloading, faster video streaming… a better mobile experience.
One gripe I must add is how the phone swifts you down from 4G to 3G speeds when you turn on the mobile hotspot. 
Plenty of space for Android Apps
If you ever had an Android phone with puny internal memory for Android apps, then you understand the frustration of running out of space for apps. Of course there are ways around this by installing supported apps to SD card (developers control this feature), or root your device to take control of this feature. I really appreciated the 16GB of on-board memory, well… just above 8GB after the phone’s system consumes half. Add that to the 16GB SD card (expandable to 32GB) and you’ve got more than twenty gigabytes of space for apps, games, music, videos and more.
The Camera
I love and hate the camera. Don’t get me wrong, it takes decent photos and even shoots in 1080p full HD on the rear camera, but I expected more as far as advanced settings and overall photo quality. Many of my test shots had a lot of noise and unwanted grain; even in well lit areas. Maybe I’ve been using way too many Samsung optics or spoiled by the results of the iPhone 4S, but I honestly expected more from this 8 megapixel camera. To be honest, to the average Joe, they may never notice the quality difference so it works.
Performance & Battery Life:
Fast Dual-core processor
A faster phone means it can handle more simultaneous tasks and even high end gaming. This feature along with the fast mobile Internet speeds are what I enjoyed the most about this phone. For the average consumer, this boils down to the phone holding shelf life to last a full two years without being inferior to the slew of Android devices bound to be released by every week.
Sub-par Battery Life
With all this power, in my experience, came sacrifice… in the battery department. I would consider myself a heavy user and this phone only lasted 7-8 hours before thirsting for a charge. So there are Android apps to help stretch battery, in addition to the built-in Motorola profiles software, however, I tested this device as an average consumer would; thus they would assume their phone should at least last the entire day.
Pictures of DROID Bionic:
DROID Bionic
DROID Bionic Angle View
Videos of DROID Bionic:
Watch on Mobile
Specs for DROID Bionic:
- Powered by Android™ 2.3.4 Gingerbread
- Dual-core 1 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM
- 4.3-inch qHD screen using scratch-resistant Corning® Gorilla® Glass with dual-layer anti-reflective coating
- 8-megapixel autofocus camera with flash and 1080p HD video capture
- Front-facing camera for video chat over 4G LTE, 3G or Wi-Fi
- MOTOPRINT app to print via Wi-Fi-enabled printers
- Mirror Mode with HDMI out (HDMI cable required) supporting 1080p HD video playback
- Multi-window options for multitasking with ease when using the Webtop application
- Business Ready with advanced security policies; resizable and scrollable email, calendar and task widgets; device and SD card encryption; and Citrix®GotoMeeting® and Citrix Receiver™ for Android
- Adobe® Flash® pre-loaded
- HTML 5 capable
- 32 GB memory: 16 GB on board and 16 GB microSD™ card pre-installed (actual formatted capacity is less)
- Support for up to 32 GB microSD cards
- Supports wireless charger
Tags:
4G,
Android Smartphone,
CES 2011,
DROID,
DROID Bionic,
DROID Bionic Android Apps,
DROID Bionic Apps,
LTE,
MOTOBLUR,
Motorola,
Verizon,
Verizon 4G LTE
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