motorola: droid 4 + razr maxx at CES 2012
the motorola ‘droid 4’ slide smartphone
at CES 2012, motorola debuted its ‘droid 4’ and ‘droid razr maxx’, both serviced by verizon. while the ‘4’ offers a better keyboard and increased processing power compared to its predecessor, the slim-profiled ‘razr maxx’ offers among its other features a battery length of 21 hours of consistent talk time with a single charge.
both devices feature motorola’s ‘motocast’ applications, interfacing with cloud storage for multimedia files.
view of the ‘droid 4’ closed
running a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, the ‘droid 4’ features a 4-inch qHD (940×540) display screen, with 1.3-megapixel HD front camera (at 720p) and 8-megapixel rear camera (1080p). the device measures 2.65 by 5 inches and is 0.5-inches in depth (67.3 x 127 x 12.7 mm) when closed; when slid open, the five-row QWERTY keyboard simplifies input. testers of the model have reported prominent, well-separated keys– which are also edge-lit– compared to most smartphones.
‘mirror mode’ lets users seamlessly display images and video from the device onto compatible HDTVs.
the ‘droid razr maxx’
of a similar form factor to the ‘droid 4’ but featuring more powerful specs, the ‘droid razr maxx’ measures 5.1 by 2.7 inches (130.7 x 68.9 mm). its most impressive feature is its battery, featuring an alleged 21.5 hours of talk time on a single charge; in standby, the phone’s battery lasts 380 hours (over two weeks). while slightly thicker than the former ‘razr’ at 0.35-inches (8.9-mm), the phone is still one of the thinner options on the market and weighs only 5.1-ounces (145g), topped by a 4.3-inch 540×960 super AMOLED screen. the device also features corning gorilla glass in its production and a coating of water-repellent nanoparticles.
‘droid razr maxx’ in use
while pricing for the ‘droid 4’ has not yet been revealed, the ‘droid razr maxx’ is expected to retail at 300 USD with a two-year agreement. simultaneous to the releases, motorola announced the availability of the previous generation ‘razr’ in purple, for the cost of 200 USD.
side view comparison of the ‘droid 4’ (left) and ‘droid razr maxx’ (right)
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Microphone icon on the keyboard looks just like this from iPhone’s Siri ( http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/apple-siri.jpg )…
disgusting lack of creativity
It´s very interesting to have a 21 hour battery that lasts 2 weeks in stand by, but let me guess: “it´s too expensive to manufacture right now” and we will only see them when some competition decides to put it on the market…
When I see it, i´ll believe it…
wicked nice form. verizon trumps all. iPhone doesn’t offer slide-out keyboards. I don’t know what is up with you people but these are great.
@What, they’ve already apparently arranged with verizon and delivered pricing for the razr maxx at 300 dollars so while I don’t see an official date listed, I think it’s probably pretty definitely coming in the not far far off future.
@adam
That icon has been a fairly standard microphone icon for as long as I can remember, Apple certainly didn’t invent it…
I would like to add something to this discussion that I think is important in our current state of industrial and technological design:
in general, for a phone, laptop, etc., I would much prefer a streamlined, functional, well-supported model over a super-creative design or one that uses experimental but buggy software. Yes it should look good. Does it have to reinvent the wheel? For me, no. Better that it’s just a really great wheel, one of the best so far. And from what’s going around the tech blogs these seem to be pretty solid phones hands-on.