Motorola Atrix 4G: Review + Video

The main problem of any smartphone on Android is power consumption. No matter how tricky you are with AMOLED screens and other battery-saving technologies, this voracious system still does its job: it pulls all the juice out of the battery! For those who are actively using their android phone, he rarely lives to the end of the working day - you have to plug it into the power outlet at least once ... The solution to this problem came from nothing at all - Motorola took and introduced a dual-core smartphone capable of in very hard mode use to survive for more than 10 hours without recharging - Atrix 4G.


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Design

Atrix 4G is something subtly different from the devices we are used to recently. It seems to be the same: a plastic parallelepiped with rounded corners and a screen, but look! - Feelings some other. Despite the size (especially impressive thickness - 11 mm by today's standards - this is quite a lot), it is convenient to hold it in your hand. Mystic…



At the same time, all elements are where they are needed. The power button (it also performs the function of a fingerprint scanner), for example, not the upper end, not the side, and not on the back cover, but somewhere in the middle. The index finger lays down there itself when the gadget appears in a hand. It is pressed, however, tugovato, but you can get used to it.



On the left, there are already two traditional connectors: microUSB and micro-HDMI, on the right - the volume buttons hidden under one thin rocker, and on the top - a 3.5-mm jack. For my taste, only a separate key for the camera is missing, but for some reason all the manufacturers are suffering now ...



The back cover is painted "under the carbon", but it is certainly not carbon fiber, but simply an illusion. This panel is quite easily removed without any latches and effort from the owner. Of course, there is no fear of losing the lid - it sits tightly - but there is still a gap between it and the body, and all sorts of villi from the pocket will inevitably be stuffed there.

Display

Still, many people do not give rest to the laurels of the iPhone 4 and in particular its freaky display! But at the same time, no one except Motorola decided to join this race, limiting itself to a resolution of 800 x 480 in its flagships. In MOTO, apparently, they decided: why are we worse? And they gave a resolution close to Retina of 960 x 540 pixels. In itself, this is certainly cool, but the display turned out, frankly, not as bright and contrasting as that of a competitor. However, the latter can be easily explained. The fact is that the Atrix 4G screen uses PenTile technology, when less subpixels are used to create one whole pixel than in the traditional RGB model. This technology, like many others, is based on the imperfections of human vision: our eyes best perceive the green color, so the number of red and blue subpixels in PenTile is reduced by one third, ostensibly without loss of quality. This is in theory. In practice, this matrix produces a rather juicy picture when viewing photos and videos, but during the reading it can be seen that the border between the background and the font is not as clear as it could be. I suspect that this is the second reason why Motorola decided to increase the display resolution :)

Iron

Atrix 4G is built on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform and is equipped with a gigabyte of RAM, which means it is capable of a great deal. Three-dimensional games, Full HD movies, heavy sites, and so on and so forth - everything works without brakes. I had claims to the LG Optimus 2x, which also has Tegra 2 inside, in the sense that all this power quickly kills the battery, and it would be good to solve the problem by optimizing the software, but Motorola did not wait for software developers, but took and increased the capacity battery Not the most elegant solution, of course, but it does its job, so I fully approve of the presence of this chip in Atrix 4G!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! The results of the synthetic test Quadrant Standart - 2563 points. Slightly more than the LG Optimus 2x.

Camera

I wanted to show photos and videos that are obtained with the Atrix camera, but in the confusion I accidentally formatted the flash drive on which they were stored. Therefore, I urge everyone to turn on their imagination and present the average pictures and videos taken on the average five-megapixel camera. Yes, not bad, but still not up to the quality of a good soap dish.

BY

The situation with the software is as follows: all the interesting services remained with the AT & T operator overseas. And without them, the Motoblur shell is just a shell - one of a number of others that look alike as two drops of water. Only widgets seemed interesting, the size of which can be changed by moving the reference points on the screen. However, before Sense, all this is clearly not enough.

Now about binding to the operator. So that I could at least test something, the smartphone was unlocked for me. But, apparently, somehow not completely, because when launched, the gadget stubbornly offered to enter the login and password from the Motoblur account (the service is similar to HTC Sense - it also allows you to manage content on your phone and track it in case of theft). Okay, no question, I created an account. I enter - it says: the login and password do not match, hinting that the device is tied to someone else's account, and to finally unlock it, you will have to do a hard reset. In the end, it was quite easy to defeat the system, but it took hours to find how to do it.

In most forums, Atrix 4G owners and similar resources offer to hold down the camera key before turning on. But there is no camera button! In general, I rummaged around hundreds of sites and finally found a solution: first you need to hold down the volume down button and turn the phone on without releasing it. When Fastboot appears on the screen, you can release the volume button and use it to get to the necessary procedure - Android Recovery. To confirm the choice, you need to press the volume up button. The Android logo and a yellow triangle appear on the screen. And then you need to do no obvious thing - touch the lower right corner of the screen! After that, a black and blue menu should appear with options for rebooting the handset. To erase all data, select wipe data / factory reset and click OK.

After that, the smartphone quietly "ate" the newly registered account and loaded the same main menu interface. But Motoblur services did not work - the system said that my operator (MTS) was not like that :)

Working hours

Several times above, I have already mentioned an extremely capacious battery. I turn to numbers. 1930 mAh allow you to drive the gadget in the tail and mane for 10 hours.



I remember that in the same dense testing mode, the LG Optimus 2x stayed with me for no more than six hours.

Competitor

The rival of Atrix 4G is only one for the time being - the same notorious Optimus 2x from LG. The characteristics of both are comparable: the same powerful NVIDIA Tegra 2 and the same Android 2.2 not optimized for it.



That's just LG in Russia will be sold, and to buy a Motorola Atrix 4G, you will need to either go to the States, or have friends there.

Bonus

Together with this smartphone, Motorola introduced several docking stations with which it can be turned into a desktop computer, multimedia player and laptop.



I was given, perhaps, the most interesting thing of all presented - Lapdock. The name and the external accessory hint that the tube can be magically turned into a laptop, but in reality there is no miraculous metamorphosis. The thought that this is not a laptop, but only an accessory, did not leave me, and it is impossible to do what I used to do with a laptop - either the power of Tegra 2 is not enough, or Android 2.2 is annoying. The dock doesn’t have its own stuffing - it’s just the keyboard, the display and the battery. In general, the idea is good, but for the implementation fails!

Summary

Atrix 4G I really liked. Now there are few such powerful, technological and, most importantly, balanced gadgets in our market, and it would become a real breath of fresh air. It is a pity that Motorola left Russia. Hope to come back sometime.

TTX

GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900
WCDMA: 850, 1900, 2100
Processor: NVIDIA Tegra 2
RAM: 1 GB
Built-in memory: 16 GB + microSDHC up to 32 GB
Screen: TFT, 4 ", 960x540
Communications: Wi-Fi a / b / g / n, Bluetooth 2.1, USB 2.0
Connectors: micro USB, HDMI, 3.5mm
OS: Google Android 2.2
Shell: Motoblur
Camera: 5 megapixel, 720p video
Navigation: GPS, A-GPS
Battery: 1930 mAh
Dimensions: 64 x 118 x 11 mm
Weight: 135 g
Price: not for sale in Russia