Motorola Droid X Review Part 3

Motorola Droid X Review Part 3

Web

Mobile-oriented sites and sub pages all loaded in three seconds or less; full HTML pages such as The New York Times between 5 and 10 seconds, depending on graphical content. We only encountered one connection problem wandering around midtown Manhattan, always the trial by ordeal for cell phones.

Camera

Outdoor photos taken with the Droid X look among the best we’ve seen from a cell phone, crisp and colorful, sans the usual edge fuzziness caused by digital interpolation often seen in even multi-megapixel imagers. Indoor shots, however, were often cloudy, and lack focus.

However, the Droid X’s still camera seemingly has a tighter lens than the other superphones. The EVO’s camera gave us a little more image, the iPhone 4 about a third more. We were unable to find out the exact lens focal range for each, but if I had to guess it looked as if the Droid X has the equivalent of around a 50mm lens, the iPhone 4 something like a wider 35mm.

While still images are impressive, HD video was disappointing. It looked choppy, with lower levels of detail compared to the EVO and especially the iPhone 4. The Droid X video clocked in around 24 frames per second, encoded at around 5 to 7 kbps second. The EVO video also was captured at around 5-7 kbps and 24 fps, but footage seemed smoother, and the iPhone 4 video out-smoothed them both, with nearly a full 30 fps at 10-plus kbps.

Battery Life

The Droid X has a 1540 mAh battery, with a whopping eight-hour rated talk time and nearly 10 days of standby. Sprint didn’t release battery life ratings for the EVO, but in everyday use, it seemed the Droid X lasted farther into the day with more juice than either the EVO or the iPhone 4.

Conclusion

With its superphone specifications, the Droid X represents the new bleeding-edge normal, and is the best Verizon Android phone yet. But this superlative may be short-lived. Its individual capabilities hover close to the iPhone 4 and EVO, and may be surpassed by the Galaxy S Fascination thanks to its superior AMOLED screen. You may want to wait and compare the two before making a two-year contractual commitment.