Motorola Droid 4 hands-on: Awesome keyboard, blistering 4G LTE

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

CNET - At CES earlier this year, Motorola dropped a trio of new Verizon handsets offering welcome improvements over the company’s existing device selection. They were the now legendary Droid Razr Maxx, Droid Razr Purple, and Droid 4. Out of that lineup, it was the Droid 4 that initially grabbed my attention.

Why, you ask? The simple answer is that it melds dual-core processing, a quality keyboard, Android, and Verizon LTE in one phone. That’s the holy grail to some, at least for Android addicts who can’t seem to live without a real physical QWERTY keyboard. Motorola seriously disappointed Droid fans with its Droid 3, which lacked the final puzzle piece, LTE data. Enter the Droid 4.

Design

It’s clear to me that the Droid 4 takes its design cues from other devices in Motorola’s current 2012 lineup. The phone sports the black obelisk motif, complete with slightly rounded corners and beveled edges, as do the Droid Razr Maxx and Droid Razr. It’s a classy look sure to fit in equally at the office or out on the town. There’s no getting around, however, the large size of the Motorola Droid 4. I mean its girth stares at you right in the face practically begging for trouble. This bruiser measures 5 inches tall by 2.65 inches wide with a full thickness of half an inch. Weighing 6.31 ounces, the Droid 4 is also hefty. Compared with the wafer-thin trend modern smartphones are taking, this handset stands out.

The trade-off for all that extra mass is just what makes it appeal to a very vocal set of Android users, a superb keyboard. Sliding the phone open reveals a gloriously engineered typing surface. While I admit keys are tightly packed together, travel is deep and buttons provide a deliciously rubberized tactile feel. Consisting of five rows, not merely four like on lesser devices, it has a dedicated number row on top. I also really dig the way the backlighting traces the outline of the Droid 4′s squat rectangular keys. The spacebar goes on for what feels like miles and is easy to hit without looking down. The Droid 4′s directional pad is nice as well and something you don’t see often either.

To be clear, though, some things about the keyboard do bug me. First, there is no special key for “.com” or an emoticon button. Those are just minor quibbles, especially since there are keys for often-used punctuation marks such as comma, period, backslash, and equal sign for all you math nerds out there (just kiddin’, computation is cool). The majority of keys serve as secondary symbols too. One detractor is that to activate secondary functions, you need to hit the Shift key twice. This would be fine except that the button isn’t marked yellow like all the secondary symbols are. At least a light on the left indicates when secondary functions are engaged.                 More

Motorola Announces Droid 4, Droid RAZR MAXX on Verizon Wireless

LAS VEGAS—At CES 2012, Motorola and Verizon Wireless have launched the Motorola Droid 4 and the Droid RAZR MAXX, two 4G LTE-powered smartphones for Verizon’s network.

The two companies are billing the Droid 4 as the thinnest 4G LTE QWERTY smartphone on the market—4G LTE and QWERTY being two things that usually lead to thicker phones. The Droid 4 measures 5 by 2.7 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 6.3 ounces. That’s no Droid RAZR, but it’ll certainly do given what’s under the hood. The new version looks a little softer and classier than the Droid 3. In addition to the five-row physical keyboard, which features sharp-looking, edge-lit keys, the Droid 4 also includes a 1.2GHz dual-core processor (bumped from the Droid 3′s 1GHz)and 1GB RAM.

The 4-inch qHD (540-by-960-pixel) display features “scratch- and scrape-resistant” glass, but is otherwise similar to the Droid 3′s panel. Motorola says the entire Droid 4 is enclosed in a water-repellant nanocoating as well. There’s still an 8-megapixel camera on board with 1080p video recording, plus 16GB internal storage, a microSD memory card slot, and a useful mirroring mode to throw images or video on a living room or hotel HDTV.



One annoying downside: The Droid 4 ships with Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread), instead of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Motorola is promising an upgrade to ICS in the second quarter of 2012, but we’re moving past the point where at least high-end phones should come preloaded with Android 4.0.

As a Motorola Android phone, the Droid 4 is another device that works with Motorola’s increasingly large array of convertible accessories, including the 10.1-inch Lapdock 100, the 14-inch Lapdock 500 Pro, the Vehicle Navigation Dock, and the HD Docking Station, plus Motorola’s Webtop mode, which runs a desktop version of Mozilla Firefox and sports task automation features. The keyboarded Droid 4 also keeps up Motorola’s business end of the equation, with support for government-grade FIPS 140-2 encryption for data security and a Citrix Receiver for Android client preloaded. It also sports a 4G LTE mobile hotspot mode that works with up to eight devices simultaneously with the appropriate Verizon Wireless plan.

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All told, the sharp-looking Droid 4 gives the Droid3 the LTE radio it should have had, but is now stuck on an OS that the world is already moving away from, at least for a few months—presumably thanks to Motorola’s relatively heavy UI layer and all that Webtop mode stuff, it has to move over to ICS.                        More