Yesterday was a smartphone lovers delight, to be sure. Piling on earlier announcements from other companies, Motorola had an event where they announced three cool looking new smartphones to add to their wildly popular Razr line-up. They updated the Droid Razr with
Here are the basics:
• DROID RAZR M: An impossibly compact smartphone that puts the world in the palm of your hand. A 4.3 inch edge-to-edge Super AMOLED Advanced offers 40 percent more screen space then the leading competitor.
• DROID RAZR HD: This ultra-thin device shows you everything in stunning HD detail that beats the competition. Movies, photos, magazines, and even websites shine through with vibrant clarity on its 4.7-inch Super AMOLED Advanced display.
• DROID RAZR HD MAXX: With an incredible 32 hours of battery life, this smartphone allows you to browse the Web with 4G LTE speeds for eight full hours, watch 13 hours of your favorite shows or talk the day away with 23 hours of continuous talk time.
Now for a few more details.
DROID RAZR M: The Full-Screen Phone
DROID RAZR M is an unbelievably compact smartphone that puts the world in the palm of your hand with an edge-to-edge 4.3-inch Super AMOLED™ Advanced display. Customers will be amazed with the DROID RAZR M’s design, which is significantly shorter and narrower than the original DROID RAZR, yet includes the same size display, making it the most compact 4.3-inch 4G LTE smartphone.
DROID RAZR M also features powerful Web browsing capabilities by combining Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network with the speeds of Chrome™ for Android™ mobile browser for an unrivaled mobile Web experience.
The DROID RAZR M’s SMARTACTIONS™ feature maximizes battery efficiency with every charge, allowing customers to browse the Web and watch videos without worrying about draining their device’s battery.
The big draw of the Razr M is that it has a 4.3″ screen in a very compact package, and features some high-end specs in a budget phone that will be selling for $99 on Verizon starting September 13th.
DROID RAZR HD: Performance and Power
Building on the DROID RAZR legacy, the new DROID RAZR HD expands the innovation with a new 4.7-inch Super AMOLED HD display that allows movies, photos, magazines and even websites to appear with vivid clarity. DROID RAZR HD provides customers with 78 percent more pixels for a more vibrant display and features 40 percent greater battery capacity than the original DROID RAZR.
The viewdini app is at its best with the HD display and 4G LTE speeds to watch movies, television shows and other video content. Viewdini brings the power of Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network to the screen by streamlining access to videos from a wide range of content providers, including cable operators, websites and other popular video sources. The viewdini app can be downloaded from Google Play.
The Razr HD has seen significant updates, the most obvious being the amazing 4.7″ HD screen. It is not a small phone … but that is the price to pay for that type of screen.
DROID RAZR MAXX HD: Long Live the Battery
Packed with the same leading features as DROID RAZR HD, the DROID RAZR MAXX HD raises the industry standard for battery life with 32 hours of normal use. The DROID RAZR MAXX HD is remarkably thin, yet packs sufficient battery power for 13 hours of straight video playback, enough to watch a movie trilogy without needing a charge. Customers also have enough battery life to talk the day away with up to 21 hours of continuous talk time or browse the Web on 4G LTE for up to a full eight hours.
Compared to the Droid Razr HD, the MAXX has a single differentiation feature – a HUGE battery, just like its predecessor. You pay for that with a bit of added thickness and weight, but it is not terribly significant for an all-day battery.
All of the new Droids come with speedy 1.5GHz dual-core processors, 1GB of RAM, and of course full LTE coverage courtesy of Verizon. Having used a 4G Moto phone for more than 6 months, I can attest to the speed and amazing coverage. They also are the first phones to launch with Google Chrome as the default pre-installed browser, which is a great – and overdue – move.
The single criticism I have is that the phones launch with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) which is the previous OS release. They are promising Jelly Bean (4.1) by year-end, but Motorola has traditionally been the slowest of all vendors at releasing OS updates, so if I was getting a new phone I would either want the latest release or to be sure I was happy with the current version – and Jelly Bean is something I would definitely prefer based on my use.
You can pre-order the Droid Razr M now, and the Razr HD and MAXX are scheduled to arrive in plenty of time for the holidays. Head to the Motorola Mobility site for more details!
“but Motorola has traditionally been the slowest of all vendors at releasing OS updates…”
As they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results. This is a different Motorola than the traditional Motorola – a new management team, new ownership (which, I am sure, has a strong desire to see Motorola stay on the current Android release ASAP going forward.) I have no idea if they will or will not meet the target deadline, but I’d hate to estimate the future of the new Motorola based on the old Motorola.
Sure, I get what you are saying, but … if that was true then WHY would they even be shipping something with ICS at this point? Moto has essentially been part of Google for close to a year, therefore the development efforts have been known.
I have had a Droid of one type or other since the weekend after the first one launched 3 years ago, and frankly love the Moto hardware. But I also know that they have historically been very slow to update. Maybe that will change – but I will take data over speculation anyday. And since ‘post Google’ Data point #1 is releasing with ICS … my data-based inference is made even more robust. 🙂