The phone itself is a mix of aluminum, Kevlar and Gorilla Glass. However, it may seem tough, but the back of the phone is quite slick, so I was always afraid of dropping it, and it seemed like it was just a tad too big to feel comfortable in the hand.

On the inside, it has a 1.2 GHz dual core processor, it’s also running Gingerbread 2.3.5. It’s got both a 3G and 4G radio, as well as the usual WiFi and bluetooth. Motorola claims that the non-removable battery will get up to 8.5 days of standby time and 12.5 hours of talk time, but in my use, it didn’t even survive half a day with heavy usage. With moderate to light usage, I could squeeze a full day out of it, but as with all Android based phones, make sure you have a charger with you and plug it in when you are in the car or at your desk, and forget about getting a second battery to have with you, you can’t swap them out.

The screen is better than the bionic, but it’s still not there. There was a dark tint on videos, and it just made them impossible to watch.

The camera is like most cameras on Android devices. Photos were decent, but not great. It is capable of shooting 1080p video which is quite good. It also takes very good macro shots.

There are still some things I don’t like, and that has more to do with the carriers and manufaturers, rather than the device, but stop loading it with crapware. Luckily, most of it you can uninstall, but those branded with Verizon or Motorola you are stuck with. Please in the future let me decide if I want those apps, or let me uninstall them if I don’t intend on using them.

All in all, the RAZR is one of the best on the market. It’s far more stable than the Bionic, and I believe once it gets Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich, it’ll be a lot better. If you are in the market for a new Android device, the RAZR is the one to get right now.

RAZR Specs in a Nutshell

• Screen: 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED Advanced
• Processor: 1.2GHz dual-core
• Storage: 32GB included
• Radio: CDMA and 4G LTE
• Cameras: 8MP Rear-facing; 1.3MP Front-facing camera
• Price: $300

The next big phone is the Galaxy Nexus. I’ll wait and see how that one compares.

		RAZR VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

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.

It has a 4.3-inch, 800×480 display, but inside it only packs a single core processor. It does seem to be somewhat responsive, but I had to kill tasks quite a bit, and it seemed to need a reboot more than any other phone I’ve used. It comes packed with GPS, WiFi and a Verizon 4G LTE radio.

If you rely on GPS and location based services, it was very slow to get my location and gather the information.

The good thing about it is the LTE service. I was very impressed by the speed, I was consistently getting 12-15 Mbps down and between 2.5-4 up.

The biggest disappointment about this phone was that it was only running Android 2.2 Froyo, so no Gingerbread love for this one, unless you root. I didn’t like the Samsung interface so much, but it’s usable and it was responsive to everything.

I’m not going to make this a long review, as this is one device that leaves a lot to be desired. It’s expensive, outdated, and in my opinion, it’s one to pass on. If you had a choice, there are a lot better phones out there, however, the battery live was better than some of the other choices, and if all you are concerned about is that, than take a look at it over the other ones.

My final thoughts:

Pros

• Very good AMOLED Plus display
• Good battery life
• Light weight

Cons

• Single-core performance
• Cost
• Feels very plasticy

Hardware

It comes packed with a Tegra 2 1GHz dual core processor, sports a 1280×800 touch screen, with built in WiFi, and a 4G LTE radio. It comes with Android Honeycomb 3.1, and is a fairly fast device.

This tablet was the closest in design to the iPad 2, and it felt good to hold it, it wasn’t very heavy, and it was easy to carry around for a long time.

Performance was very good with Android 3.1 versus the 3.0 on the Xoom. I was able to move around and select things a little bit quicker. Animations were quick, and transitions were slightly faster. Web browser performance was a lot better, and when I pinch to zoom or double tap on a page to zoom it responded a lot faster than on the Xoom.

Battery life was good, with minimal usage it would’ve lasted me 3 days, with normal to heavy usage you can get a full day out of it.

Software

As with all ieterations of Android, you can customize the home screen with widgets and app shortcuts. The browser is a lot better, and it’s more chrome like, as it syncs with your google account, so if you use Chrome as your desktop browser and have sync set up, you’ll have all your bookmarks. It also supports flash, but browsing and watching flash videos and sites put a strain on battery life, I do wish there was a way to block it and enable it on demand like the flash block extensions for the desktop browsers.

The updated google maps is good and supports 3D, it was easy to use and find places, I wish it had better integration with 3rd party navigation apps like waze, but it was good. I like the google talk app with voice and video, as it was decent quality, and Skype video doesn’t work. Tango woked fine with video calling, and is the option of choice for cross platform video calls.

The camera was decent, but I still don’t see the need for a still camera on a tablet, but with the video calling it’s necessary, I just don’t think holding up a tablet to take a photo is very nice.

There is no Netflix, hulu plus or HBO GO apps for the Android tablet, and I am an avid user of Netflix and HBO GO, so we would love to see those on the Android Tablets and not just the phones, as it would make sense for the bigger screens to have those apps.

Final Thoughts

The Good

• The display is crisp and clean
• More standard 16×9 aspect ratio on the screen
• good battery life
• very responsive accross all apps
• audio is good
• Android 3.0 updated google apps are very good

The Not So Good

• No HDMI out
• No standard usb cable
• no major entertainment apps (Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO/Max GO)
• charging time is abysmal

My final thoughts on this one are that if you are a die hard android person and are tied to that ecosystem, than this is a good option for you. The display and audio were good, and it does support Flash in the browser if that’s important to you. The 4G was fast it was always getting at least 10MB download speeds, so I hardly ever had to use the WiFi, but if you have caps on your connection then you’ll want to use WiFi as well.

This is a smart buy for Android phone owners who already own android apps, but for people buying a tablet for the first time, I still recommend the iPad 2 for the ease of use, as Android can be a bit complicated to get to know.

		Galaxy Tab 10-1 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I recently had time to look at the HTC Trophy, Verizion’s first Windows Phone 7 device. Let’s dive in:

Hardware

If you’re looking for the fastest phone, then this probably isn’t for you, but it does come with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, it sports a 3.8-inch capacitive touch screen, 802.11n Wifi, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, GPS, FM Radio. It also comes with 8 GB of fixed flash storage with 512MB ROM, and 576MB of RAM. It also has a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, and is able to take video in 720p. The bad thing is no front facing camera.

The phone is small, and it was easy to hold and use, and felt natural in the hand. The battery was good, as I could get a good 24 hours of usage out of it, and with minimal usage I could get a couple days usage.

I really liked this phone, and all in all for the people who are afraid of smartphones, this is one of the best for a beginner.

Sofware

This phone is running Windows Phone 7, and it’s a good looking phone OS. The UI is tile based, and the tiles are always updating based on the app they are for. The mail tile shows unread counts, and so on. The phone was easy to navigate, as there is the main tile home screen, and to the right is an alphabetical list of installed apps.

All of the apps navigate pretty much the same, and they all look good. There is no multitasking, so when I was listening to Rdio, and needed to send an email it stopped playing and that was kind of frustrating. The sofware keyboard was easy to use and was big enough that most people won’t have a problem with it.

The one thing that people are adamant about is their contacts. Regardless of if you are a Google person or a Windows Live user, the phone will grab your contacts, it’ll also sync your Facebook contacts. The one thing is, it’s not called contacts, it’s called the People Hub. It’ll sync contact photos and other photos with Facebook and Windows Live, but there is no Twitter integration whatsoever. So if you have a lot of contacts it can be somewhat of a mess.

The calendar is lacking in a lot of ways, it’ll sync your Windows Live and Google calendars (You’ll want to set those up as Exchange) but it’ll only sync your primary calendars, no secondary ones, which was a no go for me, since I am a heavy Google calendar user and have multiple calendars. For the basic user though, it’ll be fine.

The mail app is nice and clean and easy to use, but no threaded messages, it does have a unread view which is helpful for email triage, but it has no universal inbox, so if you have multiple email accounts you have to open the inbox separately for each one.

Windows Phone 7 uses Internet Explorer, and for most Web sites it worked great, and I have no complaints about the browsing experience. There is no Flash or Silverlight support, which for me wasn’t a big deal, but there is no HTML5 video support.

To get media onto the device you now use the Zune software on Windows and the Windows Phone 7 app on the mac. The Zune software worked flawlessly, and the wireless syncing worked great on my local network. The mac software however never did sync anything, so I had to use the Zune software to get stuff on the phone.

There are a lot of third party apps available now, and most worked great, they are also releasing apps on a daily basis and the marketplace is growing. They have all the Office apps available, so you can edit word and other documents.

Wrap Up

All in all, this is a great device, and a phone I would recommend to someone who is tied to Windows and wants an easy to use smartphone. With software updates coming, it’ll just get better, and I was really happy to use and show off this phone.

Guts

The Xoom has an impressive set of hardware specs, as noted above, but there is one thing I didn’t like all that much, the sound quality was average at best. It sounded tinny at times, and if you turned the volume up all the way, it sounded like the speakers were going to burst.

The battery life is very impressive, even with location services and a bunch of widgets running, I got a whole days use out of it, and even then, the battery was only at about 40%.

The display was decent, but if you are outside in the sun, it was really hard to see.

The camera was nice to have, but like the iPad, I didn’t see a use for a rear camera on a tablet device. It’s a 5 megapixel camera with a LED flash, and it’s able to shoot video at 720p. The front camera was decent for video chat, and worked fine for that.

Software

The biggest thing about the Xoom is that it’s running Android 3.0 or also called Honeycomb. While this version is aimed at tablets, it’s far from complete. It offers all the same basic features as other versions, but this version places the status bar on the bottom, and the buttons are all software based.

The notification system has also changed, it’s on the bottom and it pops up with notifications and quick settings. The only issue was there was no way to clear all notifications, if you had a bunch of them, you had to clear them one at a time.

Most of the applications ran fine, and there are only about 30 apps that are made for the tablet, but most of the other ones ran fine at double resolution. The browser was good, and it felt more like Chrome which was good. The only thing I didn’t like was that even though it was more like a desktop experience, the browser still identified as an Android phone, so sites with mobile versions came up that way.

Gmail was redesigned for the tablet, and was easy to use and work with, that’s about it for mail. Google Talk is also a very nice app, and it integrates voice and video chat.

Final Thoughts

All in all, with more tablet based apps, and some work under the hood, I would recommend an Android tablet, but until the quirks and bugs get worked out, I think someone should wait.

Is the Xoom an iPad competitor? I think it is, but until the Honeycomb experience is polished and they get more apps for the tablet, then I think people will migrate to the iPad.

Hardware

The Tab has a 7-inch form factor, and it feels pretty good in one hand, it doesn’t have a Super AMOLED screen like the Galaxy based smartphones, but it does have a 1024 x 600 resolution LCD that looks really good, and has great viewing angles (i.e. the color doesn’t distort when you tilt the screen). It’s also fairly responsive, although more than a few times I had to tap on something more than once to get it to launch, which was somewhat frustrating. It packs a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, and has 512MB RAM, 2GB built-in storage and a 16GB microSD.

Software

Most of the core Android features are there, and I do have to admit that videos look good on this device, and I have to admit I did watch quite a bit of videos on this thing, but the rest of it is not ready for a tablet. Web browsing was ok, but very slow with flash enabled, and Samsung has almost tried to turn this into a big phone minus the phone part.

The core apps are ok, I never used Samsungs email app, in favor of the native Gmail app, the Calendar was nice and it looked really good and was somewhat similar to the calendar on the iPad, but it was nice. Contacts was pretty much the same as on most Android phones, and they sync to Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Most third party apps also scale nicely and most of them look good. I do have to say that it was nice playing Angry Birds on a bigger screen, but it would be nice if all apps could be native to the tablet resolution. This is said to be fixed in the Android Tablet based Honeycomb release, so we’ll see how that goes with the next generation.

The Tab has dual cameras, a front and back one, and they are fairly decent, but trying to take a picture of a baby, it was blurry, and the auto focus wasn’t really that great, but for the most part it works fine, and when making a video call, it was decent enough to make the call.

The Rest

The battery life was pretty decent, with just general use such as web browsing and reading, it would last about a day, or at the end of the day I would have about 20 percent of the battery left. With watching video, I would get about 5 to 6 hours of battery life, so you can get a full day out of it even with 3G and wifi on.

It’s nice to have an always on connection with 3G, but there was more times than not that it would take way to long to load a website over 3G. This product all in all feels a little rushed to the market. I think they could’ve waited until the actual tablet version of Android came out, but the manufatureres are trying and mostly failing to get something out there that competes with the iPad.

The other thing is the deplorable price, it’s $599 off contract, and the iPad starts at $499 wifi only, but for a 3G version of the iPad it does ring in at $629, but the screen is bigger and there is no data contract you have to agree to.

Final Verdict

If you are in the market for a tablet based device, stick with the iPad, it’s easier to use and if you are already an iOS user, the thing is way to easy to sync your media to. However if you are already an Android user, you are used to the software, but I’d still wait a bit until the actual Android Tablet based OS comes out.

The phone is a nice size, it’s 2.5″ wide, 5″ tall and about 1/2″ thin, so it’s very comparable to most smart phones. It feels ok in the hand, but just a little tall, there are 3 physical buttons on the side of the phone, a volume rocker, the power and a button on the right side that is preset to go to the calendar application, but you can change it to whatever you want, the headphone jack is on the top center, which I didn’t like because when I put it in the newest Griffin car dock, I couldn’t use an aux cable with it. The screen is is a 3.1-inch TFT LCD touchscreen, and it was very usable in all conditions.

The keyboard is very small and cramped, but it was usable, the keys have a slightly raised part on them to help with typing, but it was still somewhat difficult to type more than three sentences, but for blackberry users, it wouldn’t be that difficult to get used to.

The Droid Pro is also a powerhouse, it’s got a 1GHz TI OMAP processor with 2GB of ROM and a 2GB microSD card that can be swapped out for up to a 32GB card, basically yes, you can play Angry Birds without any issues.

The battery was somewhat better than the Droid 2 or X, giving me a full days use, but at the end of the day it was usually dead or nearly dead, and that’s with push enabled and some calls, messaging and browsing, but if you go to flash based sites, then it kills your battery a lot faster.

The Droid Pro ships with Android 2.2 Froyo, so it’s updated, and it’s pretty much the usual Android apps that come standard, and if you are on Android and aren’t using AppBrain to manage your apps, then it’s time to do that, because one click on the website and I had all my apps back.

Final Thoughts

• Has Enterprise or business potential
• Keyboard is nice, but could be bigger
• Phone is very responsive and doesn’t stall
• GPS was very responive and didn’t lose signal
• Battery is decent, but only about a days use

It’s got a 4.3-inch 854×480 screen, 1GHz OMAP processor, 512MB RAM, 24GB storage, 8-mega-pixel stills, 720p HD video, DLNA w/HDMI Micro out, three mics for noise cancellation and wireless N with 3G hot spot capability. It’s powerful, and it’s got a good design, but there’s more to the story.

I don’t like the fact that Motorola has to push their blur bits out, and it’s running a fairly outdated Android 2.1. It does come packed with 7 home screens and they are mostly filled with stuff you don’t need and won’t use, so you waste time removing all of it and getting it the way you want it. It has it’s own built in contact system for Twitter, Facebook, Picasa, MySpace and more, and this is to help you update across all networks, but it kind of clashes with the apps for those services, and I’ve gotten to the point where all I want is Android and none of the other junk that the carriers and manufacturers put on the phone, let me decide how I want to customize it, don’t make me use your crap.

The phone itself is great, it’s display is nice, but again it was nearly impossible to see outside, and it’s a bigger phone than most. With the lack of a hardware keyboard, I was surprised how I could use the software one with no issues, and typing was virtually the same as on iOS and an iPhone 4.

The camera was less than impressive to me, and it seemed to produce a lot of blurry photos, and it took forever for the camera application to launch, and by the time it did, I lost the shot.

I also noticed that the touchscreen even though it was nice, it sometimes took two taps to open an app, and even then it was hit or miss, This phone should have shipped with Android 2.2 Froyo, but even if you try to install it yourself, your phone will no longer work until you downgrade back to the stock version thanks to a chip that Motorola added that makes sure you only use official versions of the software.

I was also excited to try the mobile hotspot app, but was instantly annoyed, it would constantly drop the connection, and was not very reliable at all, I would have to constantly turn it back on and reconnect.

The battery life on the phone was decent, but I sometimes struggled to get through a full day, and at times with normal usage, it would be dead by 3pm and I would have to charge it.

In my opinion, I think the people who make the Android phones need to keep it simple and just put Android on there and let the users decide how they want to customize it. Leave it alone, I don’t need your widgets or apps, if I want them I will install them, I don’t have a problem with you customizing the market with a page for the carrier or manufaturer which Verizon does, and that’s fine, it gives me the choice to install your apps if I want to.

Again for me, the biggest hiccup this phone had was being on Verizon, I had horrible service, and would drop 1 out of 3 calls, I would also have to constantly refresh internet enabled apps because the data service would drop, and the speeds of Verizon were horrendous.

In the end, this is a good phone but I would say if you like to root or keep your phone manually updated don’t buy it because of the chip that Motorola put in it because you have to use their approved software, if you like to customize and keep your phones updated, then go with the HTC Droid. If you are a regular person then I would say you would love this phone and you will be happy with it.

Here’s the cost comparison:

I would say if you are able to switch, get an iPhone 4, it’s display is better, the camera is better and it’s cheaper in the long run, but if you are staying with Verizon then the Droid X is a smart buy, but they really need to work on their pricing plans, as they are fairly expensive.

Illustration Nikki Cook

I had time to look at the Kin One and Two over the past couple weeks, and I have to say, Microsoft really knows how to screw up a phone. It’s not quite a smartphone, but it’s also a little more than a regular phone, as it ties into the major social networks, has no app store, and they still charge you for a smartphone plan.

That being said, I got used to not being able to do anything but look at and update my status on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Windows Live, but that’s about all you can do, besides email.

Both phones feature hardware keyboards, and the One is small and squat, while the Two is a more standard size, both keyboards were difficult to type on, but were usable none the less.

The Kins also feature something that I can’t believe Microsoft has done is that it’s a new OS for them. Kin’s are labeled as a Windows Phone, but have nothing in common with Windows Phone 7, or Windows Mobile, it’s a totally new OS design. It’s got a bunch of panels that include all your updates and feeds and contacts, it’s kind of hard to explain, so I’ll show you in this short video.

The interface is nice, but all in all the phone is very flawed, it was very slow, again, I had no Verizon signal at my house, and I’m getting to the good part now, it’s an expensive phone to own (Now that Microsoft has killed it, I don’t know if you can buy one from Verizon) here is the breakdown of the Kin vs. the Palm Pre Plus a true smartphone.

Palm Pre Plus
Price: $30
Baseline voice with texting: $60
Unlimited Data: $30
Total cost of ownership: $2190

Kin One
Price $50
Baseline Voice with texting: $60
Unlimited Data: $30
Total Cost of Ownership: $2210 with a Zune Pass, $2570

I think calling this phone a smartphone is not the thing that worked for it, as it’s not a true smartphone, but since Microsoft decided to kill it off and have the Windows 7 phone team work on it, I think with the merger the interface and the new features could work for the new Windows phone 7. We’ll see how it all works out in the end, but my final word is to avoid these phones.