If you’ve been waiting for a no compromises, keyboarded super-phone the Droid 4 is for you. It blows away its competing smartphones, most notably with its excellent QWERTY keyboard. It’s not only our Editors’ Choice for keyboarded phones on Verizon; it’s the best keyboard we’ve seen on any phone, on any carrier.
Like most Android phones these days, the Motorola Droid 4 is a pretty large slab at 5 by 2.7 by 0.5 inches
(HWD) and a hefty 6.3 ounces, thickened by a large battery and that absolutely delightful slide-out keyboard. Carrying a Droid 4 is going to weigh down your pocket, no question about it, but it’s worth it.
The five-row rubber keypad is the best I’ve seen on a phone of this kind. The keys are well- separated, wonderfully tactile, and backlit. Yes, my fingers hit the top of the keypad sometimes when typing numbers, but I didn’t find the top row of buttons difficult. Like most sliders (and unlike most BlackBerrys), this is definitely a two- handed keyboard. But if you’re okay with the size, this is the best one you’ll get. The phone’s back cover peels off to reveal MicroSD and SIM card slots and a non-removable battery.
The Droid 4 is an excellent voice phone that connects to Verizon’s CDMA Rev A and LTE networks, with no global roaming. Reception was strong, and call quality was very good in my tests. The earpiece and speakerphone can both get very loud without distortion, and there’s a ton of sidetone (the reflection of your own voice in your ear to stop you from yelling). Transmissions through the mic let through a bit of background noise, but not enough to cause any real trouble.
Battery life was excellent. I got an awesome 11 hours, 47 minutes of 3G talk time on the 1,785 mAh battery. That should put the Droid 4 significantly above average for 4G Web surfing as well. And Motorola’s Smart Actions software, which does things like optionally turn data off while you’re sleeping, helps even more. With its 4G, the Droid 4 got around 10Mbps down on Verizon’s 4G LTE network, and the phone works as both a tethered modem and a Wi-Fi hotspot.
With the appropriate accessory dock, the Droid 4 can turn into a laptop or desktop PC, too. When plugged into a dock, Motorola’s Webtop mode reboots the phone into a desktop version of Linux running Firefox 8.0 with Flash, and also Android in a window. I tried the Droid 4 with Motorola’s $49.99 HD Dock and $249.99 Lapdock 100. The screen image looked a bit soft on the Lapdock 100, but I was able to do my desktop computing on the bigger laptop keyboard.
OS AND APPS
The Droid 4 uses the same 1.2-GHz, dual-core TI OMAP4 processor that we saw in the Motorola Droid Razr ($199.99, 4.5 stars) and the Droid Razr Maxx, and it performs about the same—that is to say, very well indeed, among the top rank of dual-core Android smartphones. The phone runs Android 2.3.6 “Gingerbread,” which is the primary reason we aren’t giving it a five-star rating, as Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” has been on the market since November. Gingerbread is still the most popular version of Android on phones, though, and Motorola plans a free upgrade to ICS some time soon.
MULTIMEDIA AND CONCLUSIONS
The Droid 41s an excellent phone for media playback. It handled every music and video file we threw at it, including playing them on a big-screen HDTV over an HDMI cable and piping audio out through Bluetooth. Watching 108 op video is no problem here. The phone has 8GB of available storage for media (as well as another 2.7GB for apps), and it accepts memory cards up to 64GB.
The 8-megapixel rear camera supports 1080p video capture, and there’s a 1-megapixel camera on the front. The main camera is fast, although as with most camera phones today you can take pictures before the autofocus locks in; I found the autofocus lock to take about o.8 seconds. Most of the shots I took looked quite sharp, although one taken just before the autofocus locked looked a little soft, and the camera has the problems with dynamic range that most camera phones do—it’ll white out a bright sky if most of the foreground is in shadow.
The front-facing camera captures 72O HD video, and the main camera captures io8op. They could both use some image stabilization (things can get wobbly) but video quality is fine at 30 frames per second.
Overall, the Droid 4 is the best keyboarded smartphone on any carrier. It makes no
compromises and delivers top-notch performance. Its top competitor is the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide ($199, 4.5 rating), which has pretty similar capabilities, but I’d note that the Droid 4’s keyboard and voice-call quality are both better, and Verizon’s LTE is about twice as fast as T-Mobile’s. (John R. Delaney)
Like most Android phones these days, the Motorola Droid 4 is a pretty large slab at 5 by 2.7 by 0.5 inches
(HWD) and a hefty 6.3 ounces, thickened by a large battery and that absolutely delightful slide-out keyboard. Carrying a Droid 4 is going to weigh down your pocket, no question about it, but it’s worth it.
 |
| Specs: Android v2.3.5; 4-inch display; 1.2GHz dual core processor; 1GB MB RAM; 16GB expandable. 127 x 67 x 13 mm |
The display is a 4-inch, 960-by-540 LCD panel. Its colors are less saturated than you’ll see on the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx’s ($299.99, 4.5 rating) Super Amoled Advanced screen, but it’s bright and sharp enough for indoor or outdoor use.
The five-row rubber keypad is the best I’ve seen on a phone of this kind. The keys are well- separated, wonderfully tactile, and backlit. Yes, my fingers hit the top of the keypad sometimes when typing numbers, but I didn’t find the top row of buttons difficult. Like most sliders (and unlike most BlackBerrys), this is definitely a two- handed keyboard. But if you’re okay with the size, this is the best one you’ll get. The phone’s back cover peels off to reveal MicroSD and SIM card slots and a non-removable battery.
The Droid 4 is an excellent voice phone that connects to Verizon’s CDMA Rev A and LTE networks, with no global roaming. Reception was strong, and call quality was very good in my tests. The earpiece and speakerphone can both get very loud without distortion, and there’s a ton of sidetone (the reflection of your own voice in your ear to stop you from yelling). Transmissions through the mic let through a bit of background noise, but not enough to cause any real trouble.
Battery life was excellent. I got an awesome 11 hours, 47 minutes of 3G talk time on the 1,785 mAh battery. That should put the Droid 4 significantly above average for 4G Web surfing as well. And Motorola’s Smart Actions software, which does things like optionally turn data off while you’re sleeping, helps even more. With its 4G, the Droid 4 got around 10Mbps down on Verizon’s 4G LTE network, and the phone works as both a tethered modem and a Wi-Fi hotspot.
With the appropriate accessory dock, the Droid 4 can turn into a laptop or desktop PC, too. When plugged into a dock, Motorola’s Webtop mode reboots the phone into a desktop version of Linux running Firefox 8.0 with Flash, and also Android in a window. I tried the Droid 4 with Motorola’s $49.99 HD Dock and $249.99 Lapdock 100. The screen image looked a bit soft on the Lapdock 100, but I was able to do my desktop computing on the bigger laptop keyboard.
OS AND APPS
The Droid 4 uses the same 1.2-GHz, dual-core TI OMAP4 processor that we saw in the Motorola Droid Razr ($199.99, 4.5 stars) and the Droid Razr Maxx, and it performs about the same—that is to say, very well indeed, among the top rank of dual-core Android smartphones. The phone runs Android 2.3.6 “Gingerbread,” which is the primary reason we aren’t giving it a five-star rating, as Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” has been on the market since November. Gingerbread is still the most popular version of Android on phones, though, and Motorola plans a free upgrade to ICS some time soon.
MULTIMEDIA AND CONCLUSIONS
The Droid 41s an excellent phone for media playback. It handled every music and video file we threw at it, including playing them on a big-screen HDTV over an HDMI cable and piping audio out through Bluetooth. Watching 108 op video is no problem here. The phone has 8GB of available storage for media (as well as another 2.7GB for apps), and it accepts memory cards up to 64GB.
The 8-megapixel rear camera supports 1080p video capture, and there’s a 1-megapixel camera on the front. The main camera is fast, although as with most camera phones today you can take pictures before the autofocus locks in; I found the autofocus lock to take about o.8 seconds. Most of the shots I took looked quite sharp, although one taken just before the autofocus locked looked a little soft, and the camera has the problems with dynamic range that most camera phones do—it’ll white out a bright sky if most of the foreground is in shadow.
The front-facing camera captures 72O HD video, and the main camera captures io8op. They could both use some image stabilization (things can get wobbly) but video quality is fine at 30 frames per second.
Overall, the Droid 4 is the best keyboarded smartphone on any carrier. It makes no
compromises and delivers top-notch performance. Its top competitor is the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide ($199, 4.5 rating), which has pretty similar capabilities, but I’d note that the Droid 4’s keyboard and voice-call quality are both better, and Verizon’s LTE is about twice as fast as T-Mobile’s. (John R. Delaney)