Saturday, January 8, 2011

Motorola Droid Bionic hands-on

If this is the direction high-power smartphones are going, we like what we're seeing. Though the software's still a bit raw (there's no Android Market, for example), the Droid Bionics on display here at Motorola's CES event this evening look and feel pretty blazingly fast. A spokesman we chatted with said that Motorola is actually doing some manner of software optimization (and yes, it'll launch with 2.2) to take advantage of the two cores out of the box, so it's a promising start -- as Jha says, it's "2GHz of processing power." We hope that's true in practice!

Physically, the phone feels smooth in the same way a Droid 2 does, though a bit lighter -- good news considering the LTE hardware and big display, but not entirely surprising when you take into account the lack of a sliding QWERTY keyboard. The patterned battery cover looks textured, but it's actually quite smooth with a slight soft touch treatment. The screen looks great -- in particular, the viewing angle looked superb, though all phone displays have a tendency to look a little better in this sexy lighting since they can't wash out as easily. Follow the break for video!

Motorola Droid Bionic hands-on