The Motorola Devour (running Android 1.6 with Motoblur on Verizon) made its here this morning, and we've had a couple minutes to give it the what-for. Despite playing second fiddle to the Motorola Droid at least as far as specs are concerned -- smaller screen, less powerful processor, etc. -- it's a very well-crafted smartphone.
The Devour has a Sidekick-esqe form factor. Instead of the keyboard sliding out, the screen slides up to expose four rows on which to type. Having letters on either side of the space bar is going to take some getting used to. And the base of the phone is carved out of a single piece of aluminum and (what isn't these days?) feels very nice in the hand. The slider mechanism isn't as stiff as on the Droid, which is a good thing.
We'll have a full review in a few days. In the meantime, join us after the break for a brief hands-on video.
Reader comments
Hands-on with the Motorola Devour, with Android 1.6 and Motoblur
This looks good, I think you said they both have mini-USB, but I believe it is micro USB.
M
Yes it's Micro... just like the Droid :-)
Lol... Brand new phone and already outdated...
And I don't get the empty space that's where the 4th button should be. It looks odd. Why isn't there the button?
why does the droid have two blank buttons? who knows what designers have in mind.
Saying this is outdated is a bit harsh. It's not the most up to date OS no, but MotoBlur does a lot for it in that department. I own both this and a droid and thus far I have only seen two negatives: yes the smaller screen gets to you after a while, and the fact that you can only use one GMail account.
If you want cutting edge get a droid or a Nexus One. This isn't intended to be the most cutting edge, but it IS a solid phone :-)
well if you are using the optical track pad, having a touch sensitive button right beside it would get very annoying very fast. thats my opinion on why there is nothing there.
it looks better then the droid but the droid is still far superior
I don't think that this phone looks anywhere near as good as the Droid. IMO - the Devour looks cheap - the Droid is a solid phone - takes quite a bit of effort to break the sliding mechanism. I really do not like the cavity that the keyboard lies within, and I'd rather have the sleek design of the Droid.
The phone looks pretty cool, but I'm not sure how I feel about motoblur over my android experience, I'm really glad they didn't throw motoblur over the Droid. As far as the devour looking cheap, its definitely not cheap on construction, I played with one at verizon and it is really solid, its made of all aluminum so it should be pretty durable. I don't think it is going to have gorilla glass though!!!
I think the Droid is an ugly phone , but this thing is far worse !!!
Are you serious? Who did this video? Does it strike anyone else as strange that for the first three minutes of a 5 minute video some monotone geek fumbles around showing us such exciting things as the Android settings page, wallpapers, and stumbles over his monologue not really knowing what to say for 5 minutes?
Dude, have a plan. If I am some Android newbie looking for info while I am fence sitting and I come across this page, I am heading straight to phandroid, cnet or someplace else, because it's painfully obvious that this is a second or third tier Android site, judging from this video. Very poor.