I recently had a few weeks with the Droid Bionic and some accessories. In the spirit of full disclosure after about 4 days with the first Bionic, the device went dead because of the battery, and after a full night on the charger it wouldn’t wake up, it was totally dead. I browsed all sorts of forums and googled the issue, but no one seems to know what exactly happened. I received my second unit, and it has worked flawlessly ever since.
That being said, let’s get into the review. As usual, I’ll start with the hardware specs of the device. It packs a 1 GHz Dual core Cortex-A9, it’s got 1 GB of memory, 16 GB of storage with an included 16GB microSD card. It’s also got an 8 MP camera with LED flash and full 1080p video recording with a front facing VGA camera. It also has Verizon 4G LTE as well as wifi and the usual suspects of GPS, etc. It also does come with the latest version of Android which is Gingerbread.
One of the biggest gripes I have with this phone, even though it’s got 16GB of internal memory, roughly have of it is loaded with software you cannot delete, such as Citrix GoToMeeting, Quickoffice, VCast Music, Verizon Media Manager and Verizon Back Up Assistant, Blockbuster, MOTOPRINT, Let’s Golf 2, Zumocast and others. I can see how some people might want these, but I truly wish the carriers and manufacturers would let the consumers decide and offer them as an optional download.
The Camera is also a big disappointment in this phone. It was sluggish and took more than enough time to auto focus, which made it fairly unusable for quick shot situations. The video camera is a lot better, it can record at full HD, but in general clips are crisp and watchable.
One of the things I noticed with this hardware was that the screen always looked kind of grainy, and videos and movies looked awful. This is because it uses a PenTile display, which is a brighter screen than most phones out there, so this really isn’t a phone for people to watch movies and videos on. However you can plug it into your TV via HDMI to make it a better experience.
One thing, like most android based phones, the battery life was horrible. With all radios except bluetooth and wifi on, I got half a days usage out of it. If I turned of 4G I could usually last until the beginning of the evening, but you definitely want a car charger and if you can, take a charger with you to work, otherwise if you’ve got a long day planned, turn off all radios and features you don’t need.
That being said, they really need to reexamine these devices as far as battery life is concerned. Most android devices with normal to heavy use, only last for half a
I also got several accessories to use with the Bionic, one was the lapdock (299.97). This was a decent accessory, it boasts a full fledged version of Firefox, and you can do anything on this that you can do on your phone. You can do web browsing, mild document editing, and a couple other things, but try to do too much at once and it grinds to a crawl.day. I also know that most task killer apps for android don’t really make that much of a difference, so they need to look at the software or find a new battery. General consumers shouldn’t have to pay extra for a long lasting battery, it should be standard in all android devices.
I also had the HD Station, which can be used as a Webtop, but it makes more sense as a multimedia dock, you can hook up speakers and a display using the 3.5mm audio out and the HDMI output. It also comes with an IR remote to navigate the phone’s menus and control media playback.
The Bionic is a decent device, and the 4G is fast and speedy, but being a heavy user myself, and with the PenTile screen, I wouldn’t recommend this phone for power users. For the regular consumer, the phone is decent and comes with some great features.
The last thing I do have to say is that even though this phone was fast and usable in everyday situations, the more apps I had on it, the slower it got. At one point it was unusable, and I had to factory reset and selectively reinstall to just the stuff I had to use on a daily basis.
My suggestion on this one is to wait. The RAZR seems promising, and the Samsung Galaxy S II devices are supposed to be a lot better than this one. The Bionic just seems like it was pushed out way too soon.
