First Thoughts

The idea of the Droid X2 made me smile, I really like the droid x and though that the 2 maybe the one that fixes a few glitches. I also figured a huge boost in power would be in order, some of these things came to fruition, some… not so much, why am I still interested in this phone?

The Looks

Let’s go this route, it LOOKS like a droid X. There isn’t much by way being different here. There are a few subtle things like placement of the power button (same as the droid 3) and HDMI output. Red text on the back of the battery, they are the exact same size though. The screen is obviously more clear, but I won’t talk about that just yet.

The Hardware/Screen

The phone is dual core, that is a major difference from the original Droid X. They also went from an IMAP processor to the nvidia Tegra 2. I personally do not notice much difference yet, that will come with future upgrades surely, one of them being Gingerbread, and then other things like games will be a factor in the speed. The ram is still the same at 512 MB. They also upped the built-in memory a bit to 8 gig it seems.

The screen carries a noticeable change, it is now a QHD screen instead of the standard from a year ago. You can now view pictures and the web even crisper with a 540 x 960 pixel screen. It is still 4.3 inches which was never a bad thing, it was something I liked about the original and I am glad they kept it the same, much bigger and it is not comfortable anymore.

The Battery

They kept the battery the same and from what I can remember, the battery life stayed, dual core does not matter here, it seems there isn’t much extra killing the battery, I am thinking the second core only works when needed. I used this device for twitter, facebook and of course google+ and got a lot of good life out of it, ranging from 6- 8 hours depending on how much I had going on. Mind you, I am a true power user. Most would probably get quite a bit more out of this phone and every phone I review for that matter. I put it through gamut for you!

The Operating System/Software

Blur is back! It never actually went away, it just got better, a new version of blur is packed in. I feel it is way better than the 2.1 version of blur on the droid x, this one is 2.2.2 and user are getting upgraded to 2.3 as I type this. Blur feels a bit better in this device, then again, I feel the same way I do about skins that I do about getting hit with a hammer, it may be a bigger or smaller hammer, but it’s still a hammer and it still sucks.

The Keyboard

There is no physical keyboard here, it is all software again, they brought back the multitouch keyboard and it is of course very nice on the huge screen. Swype is also back as could be expected.

The Browsing, Camera and Video

Browsing is nice with Verizon’s network. The internet is fast and is what you would expect from android, everything is situation normal here. There is a bit of a blur skin on the internet as there is with most Motorola devices now.

The camera is an 8 mp as was the predecessor. The pictures are great and the QHD screen only makes them better to view!

You can capture 720 p video, hoping that changes in the future as newer devices like this one would be expected to capture 1080 p, quite a few already can.

There is no front camera, that is on major gripe I have.

The Call/Data Quality

Calls were good, data wasn’t awful, but it also wasn’t great, this is a 3G phone. There is no 4G to be seen and there won’t be either. It will not get an upgrade. This is something that is confusing to me, phones from 6 months ago have 4G but this does not, worst of all is that Verizon just upgraded my market to better 4G and I would love to test it for you.

Summary

Pros:

• The screen is QHD
• Rear camera is 8 mp
• HD Video is nice
• Dual core 1ghz processor
• Multitouch Keyboard

Cons:

• Dedicated camera button is gone
• There is no LTE
• Motorola Blur is meh

Conclusions & Final Thoughts

I find myself telling people who if they want an upgrade from the Droid X, this isn’t it and so that is what I am telling you. It is nice, sure, but there are better phones coming very soon that are a better upgrade. However, if you are going from a droid 1 and don’t mind a lack of LTE 4G, sure this may just be for you!

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