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Motorola Devour: Droid’s Red Headed Stepchild

Posted by Brian | Comments : (0)

Category : Featured, Phones, Reviews

Tags: , ,

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I don’t know what Motorola was thinking when they decided to pit the Devour against their better option the Droid, they weren’t thinking clearly.

The DEVOUR is priced at $150 with a two-year Verizon contract.

What the Devour is

I thought the Devour was to be considered an alternative to the Droid, but that’s not the case, it’s got a smaller screen, but the phone itself is actually larger and heavier, but the form factor is a little better than the Droid and the slider feels a little springier than the Droid, and it’s keyboard has a nice little place to rest your thumbs when it’s open.

First Impressions

When I first turned on the phone the custom MotoBlur interface looked good and ran very fast, then you realize you are running an old version of Android, and it’s non updateable because of the custom Motorola build, plus there are quite a few apps some of them Google ones that don’t even work or show up in the Marketplace, and not having the choice to update the software version is not a very redeeming quality, even though it’s cheaper than the Droid, you should be able to upgrade to get the newest version of the Android software.

Verizon was actually the worst thing about this phone

I had network issues like crazy, I only had at the most one or two bars and dropped calls and had issues with internet apps not connecting on 3G, so I was mostly limited to wifi. It took 5 minutes over 3G to load a google map, and speed tests using the FCC speed test app on my iPhone 3Gs and the Devour in the same location pinging the same server confirmed that the 3G speed was awful. Calls were tinny and a lot of people couldn’t hear me very well, and places where other Verizon users had full signal and decent 3G I had none, this is definately a big problem for this phone and I did read other users had the same issues.

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Final Thoughts

If I were looking to upgrade to a smartphone would I pick the Devour? Simple answer is no. The Droid is a better choice and if you want a crippled version of Android that is non upgradeable then the Devour is for you, the Motoblur is nice, but not necessary in Android, and newer versions of Android have that capability. The battery life was ok, but I couldn’t get through a whole day without having to recharge, but the hardware is very capable and fast and it’s got a nice design. If you can afford the extra $50 go with the Droid, this one needs some work, and it should be able to upgrade to the newest version of Android.

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