Hands-on with the Motorola Droid 3

I love Android, but I honestly think there are too many fan-boys out there that demand everything to be well... TOO much. Yes there are people out there that use there phones for takes that require 4G speeds or giant 4.3+" screens. Okay so you don't like Blur, or Sense, or TouchWiz, that is all fine, but I'm telling you this is a wonderful device, so what if it isn't 3D, honestly 3D is just a gimmick to get more money out of consumers that need to be up to date. I love this phone it's speed is great, it's graphic quality is great, and it's overall friendly usability is outstanding. I recommend this phone to any ORDINARY phone consumer that needs a multitasking capable device at an affordable price.

This phone is very tempting for me , loved, my D1 and after going to the DX I honestly miss having a physical keyboard. The bloat isn't too it of a deal breaker for me as I usually install GoLauncher or LauncherPro or something. I can hide the bloat. But might use that blacklist on apps that I would not use. The thing that really is the option that would have had me at the store right now trying to get one is the 4G that omission is going to be the main factor for me at least waiting for the bionic. ( I'd consider the thunderbolt but dual core is the way to go) its a pity that Moto and Verizon had to have their way with the Droid line. The OG Droid was perhaps a simpler phone but it was that simplicity that made it way better. oh BTW anyone else notice, this has the TV style screen lock animation? Its pretty early on, but its there. That was one of the things omitted from the DX's gingerbread update.

ok i have use slurr in all its forms and revisions and im still in love with stock. my beef is not with blurr so much as with uncle googs. i feel mr moto makes great hardware even in the razar days but software is lacking but thats ok to each its own. for my hard earned money i just want stock and a keyboard and up to date specs but its in short supply when u consider how many android phones are in the world today. now my beef with uncle googs where is the support for the end users that love your products and your wonderful ui? clean,crisp,fluid,vanilla,stock ui? that dont wanna root or have never used a launcher? where is the support or love for us that early adopted the G1 and og Droid because it was pure and had a keyboard? where is our freedom from skins and carrier bloat? i know you got the nexus line but they dont come with keyboards. i would never root stock the only reason i did was the og Droid would never see a gingerbread update(btw was extremely difficult,folks rooting doesnt always go smooth)by you or vrz. thats why im upset about the new trend because everything that made android so anti icrap is disappearing. but look at us for a change we are all tied in to all google products(waiting on a google+ invite star2k2@gmail.com)tablets and such to only get overlooked for believing in the pure google experience. take a look at us the ones thats champion ur pure product over sense,touch wiz,blurr(motorola application platform), the true faithful that feel stock is flawless,sexy,free of lag(be honest it takes oems a months to get there skins to work on android updates)fluid. the reason i left tmo for vrz was becuase of android not because of service and definitely not because of pricing. i broke my contract with tmo to get my hands on the next android to slap icrap and brought many family,friends,co workers along for the ride only to be slapped with skins(many of my android selling or talking points only deal with pure google things not how skins make android better. FAIL!) and bloat. so where is the love or the selling points from the i dont ads? keyboard, micro sd, vanilla android,color notification leds? so yes im am little sensitive because after 3 years of waving the android banner,converting the minions,and sticking up for android from a wave of attacks from icrap fans i cant pay for the android phone i want. wow! every phone site swears icrap is the utmost standard all smart phones should be judged by and for all my arguments uncle googs is sort of ditching me leaving me in the cold with all the things that made android stand on its own now it seems like a keyboard and stock android is for mid to low range phones. so ill run my og into the ground and when my contract is up i hope there is an worthy option or i might have to give into the other platforms. its a shame too because many people dont care about whats at the core of all android phones they just want a droid lol(not knowing that that means only vrz). and lets all be honest there has never been another time in history were a gadget was so widely used for everything like in todays world. hell my og droid is my daily planner keeps my apts,keeps all my media,tells me the weather,keeps all my people contacts, all social networks,and when i turn the screen off before bed its my alarm clock. yes i love how stock android looks in dock mode at least in a landscape dock.

Sprint will always have the best devices at AFFORDABLE PRICES and people on anyother network plainly are fooling themselves if they are not on sprint by now.

TAKE A CLOSE LOOK AT THE SPECS OF THE INDUSTRY LEADING HTC EVO 3D ON SPRINT AND COMPARE TO THE MOTOROLA DROID 3 ON VERIZON AND ASK YOURSELF WHICH IS TRULY CUTTING EDGE IT'S 2011 FOLKS...

SIZE Dimensions
126 x 65 x 12.1 mm
Weight
170 g
DISPLAY Type
3D LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size
540 x 960 pixels, 4.3 inches
- Multi-touch input method
- Touch-sensitive controls
- Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
- Gyro sensor
- HTC Sense UI
SOUND Alert types
Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
Loudspeaker
Yes
3.5mm jack
Yes- SRS virtual surround sound (via wired headphones) And they sound great.

MEMORY Phonebook
Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records
Practically unlimited
Internal
1 GB storage, 1 GB RAM
Card slot
8gb microSD in box , up to 32GB
WIMAX, 14.4 Mbps; WIMAX, 5.76 Mbps
WLAN
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth
Yes, v3.0 with A2DP, EDR
Infrared port
No
USB
Yes, microUSB (MHL) v2.0
CAMERA Primary
5 MP, 2560х1920 pixels, autofocus, dual-LED flash
Features
Stereoscopic photos (2 MP only) & videos; geo-tagging
Video
Yes, 720p@30fps (2D), 720p@30fps (3D)
Secondary
Yes, 1.3 MP
FEATURES OS
Android OS, v2.3.3 (Gingerbread)
CPU
1.2 GHz dual-core processor, Adreno 220 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8660 chipset
Messaging
SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
Browser
HTML
Radio
Stereo FM radio with RDS
Games
Yes Spiderman and Green Hornet movie installed
Colors
Black
GPS
Yes, with A-GPS support
Java
Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- TV-out (via MHL A/V link)
- Digital compass
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail
- YouTube, Google Talk, Google Voice integration,Picasa integration, Qik video chat
- MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA player
- MP4/Xvid/H.263/H.264/WMV player
- Facebook, Flickr, Twitter applications
- Organizer
- Document viewer/editor
- Voice memo/dial/commands
- Predictive text input
BATTERY: Standard battery, Li-Ion 1730 mAh
Stand-by
/ Up to 620 h (3G)
Talk time
Up to 9 h 20 min (3G) / Up to 7 h 45 min (4G)

Also please check out this article on screen quality I think it may surprise a whole lot of people:
http://www.infosyncworld.com/reviews/cell-phones/top-5-big-screen-phones...

I have no problems with the screen quality of my Droid X2 or my Droid 3.

I Benchmarked my Droid 3 when I received it last Friday. The Droid 3 pulled 2500+ in the Quadrant Benchmark, it pulled 58.5 FPS in Neocore, in Smart Bench 2011 it was tied or slightly ahead of my Samsung Galaxy S2, and it was between 44-45 MFLOPS. This is a BAD ASS QWERTY packing Android phone.

Just because there isn't a physical SD card doesn't mean there isn't plenty of storage.

If 16GB internal storage isn't enough, there IS a slot for a micro SD Card which can fit an additional 32GB on top of that 16GB.

People don't seem to realize the storage offered is superb, even if it doesn't come with the $25 micro sd card.

This is not the greatest phone ever. If you are looking for the greatest phone ever, please keep looking.

These are the elements that are state of the art or cutting edge:

+Dual core processor
+Global phone
+qHD display (pentile) with very low power consumption and excellent outdoor visibility
+16GB internal memory
+8MP rear camera
+Front facing camera
+1080p video recording
+HDMI mirroring
+Gingerbread 2.3.4
+The best physical keyboard available on a phone

There are the elements that are not state of the art:

-No 4G LTE
-No unlocked bootloader
-No AOSP
-No bundled SDcard
-512MB of RAM
-Excessive, unremoveable 3rd party applications
-No physical camera button
-Slight pixelation inherent in pentile display

Note these pluses and minuses may not be important to you. If the pluses are a big deal to you, and the minuses are no big deal, then this is probably a good phone for you. The reverse applies as well.

I ordered mine as soon as it was shipped. It's great so far :)

You can't add an SD card to this? Or does it not come with one in the box?

Have had this phone since last Friday. My last device, and first smartphone was the Incredible. I like the size a lot. 4'' seems to be the ideal for me, I don't really want a 4.3 or 4.5 device in my pocket. I never really understood the 'cheap plasticy' feel people were talking about the DInc until I got this phone. Very solid feeling. I used HTC Sense for a little but but a majrority was using Launcher Pro. I lasted about a day and a half with Motoblur or whatever they're calling it and downloaded LP again. Blur seemed to be a little laggy for me and I wasn't a fan of the lighting changes when you swipe across different screens. LP seems faster, and I like customizing the dock, and it can be in landscape without the keyboard out.

Battery life is noticeably better than the DInc, I have no qualms with the screen resolution, the keyboard took some getting used to (T9 and only portrait virtual keyboards in the past) but it's great. Slider definitely loosens up. Music player was significantly better on the DInc in my opinion, but I'll probably download a different player. I live in a big city and 4G service is still bad so I don't care that it's not LTE. Let's face it, everyone has an SD with all their music and pictures on it anyway and I don't care that one didn't come with it. Not a big camera/video guy but it looks sharp. Calls are probably the last thing I use a phone for these days and it seems adequate.

Ugh. . . Is everyone not sick and tired of the copy and paste "I hate motoblur" or "motoblur is a fail" troll rants. Ok, not everyone loves motoblur. But it's hardly a reason to disregard a phone.

Of course, when the Bionic comes out, those same know-nothings will popup again to chant "but it has motoblur-- FAIL" !

three major fails on this phone. 512 MB of RAM, no SD card, and no 4G LTE = don't buy this phone.

Whats the point of 16gig if you only get 2gig for apps. they pulled a og incredible move on us. horses%&t....

This is a great update from the past Droid, only problem with all the power sucking add ons running 512 MB of ram just isn't going to cut it. How can you only give a dual core phone with all those great features only 512 MB of Ram??? That will slow this phone down, guaranteed. They probably saved themselves about 50 cents and this phone will suffer severely due to that. You need more then 512 MB of freaken RAM.

The TI OMAP4430 has the SGX540 GPU which is on par with the Tegra GPU. Nice to see someone other than Samsung using it. Looks like a great phone. Though there seems to be a lot more bloat than what's on my DX 1. I think Verizon should keep things like their crap Mobile IM client off it.

bought this phone an hour ago

I'm really not getting some of these comments that every phone has to be a tri-core, 5GB of ram, 8" screen with hi-def display, 5G LTE v3 with T3 line speeds and NFC that hooks into the Federal Reserve capability. It's a MOTO with probably a locked boot loader. It's got a custom skin. It has physical keys. So what to all of this. If you live in a non LTE area as a majority of the country does and will for the next 1-2 yrs this phone will be fine. And Verizon will sell a bunch of them even if they don't promote it heavily. You got to get over this obsessive need for more, more, more power. The software from Google on board is the key. This phone has Gingerbread out of the box so that's a HUGE win.

Thanks for the quick review! For the full review please include camera info: how fast does it take a photo and whether video chat through gtalk is available with 2.3.4. Thanks! Btw the Droid 2 global also has the task manager with auto end, and it comes with swype, volume rocker for zooming camera in/out, video modes like fast forward and slow motion. I came from the ogdroid and all of these were unique to me. They may be common by now, but if not I think they make this line of phones really well thought out.

Hardware

CPU: The TI OMAP4430 dual core 1ghz per core processor is arguably the most advanced processor out in the market right now. Webpages load quickly, and home screens swipe with ease. Moto’s blur seems to have an effect on going back to homescreen (more on that in a moment), but you can definitely tell that this beastly processor has power to spare.

RAM: 512 of DDR2. Is it enough? Let’s just say you aren’t going to cry about it. Apps switch seamlessly unless they have been closed a while, but it will still stay in memory just enough to remember where you were, and the OMAP wastes little time in loading things back up quickly. Would be nice to have a bit more, but you’ll hardly notice.

3g. Not having LTE on here is an omission to be sure, but the OMAP4430 will really speed up your downloads. And you are guaranteed to NOT have the battery problems that the other LTE phone have suffered thus far. So honestly, I’ve not been missing LTE, and it’s probably a technology I’d like to see mature before I make the leap.

Screen: Pentile display looks good. Better contrast and brightness than D1, and the Pentile tech saves battery better than D1. Pixels are juuuuust noticeable though, but only in a psycho-stickler sort of way, and only on certain colors (like pure green). Overall, without squinching your eyes and holding the phone right up to your face like a maniac, the screen IS an improvement over the D1 and pretty to look at with excellent viewing angles.

Keyboard: Physical keyboard is a VAST IMPROVEMENT. No more reaching around with thumbs. Keys feel good, solid, differentiate-able. Having a number row is the cat's pajamas. Arrow keys instead of rocker is a definite improvement over OG Droid. I sort of miss having the "?" key NOT being an alt function, but this is such a minor niggle I can't even believe I mentioned it. Thoroughly loving the physical keyboard. Little tough to get loose initially, but in the last week of use it has loosened up a bit to a level that I am comfortable with. Soft keyboard and swype included, and great too additions.

Camera: 1080p shooting and 8mp camera make this Droid vastly superior to its previous Droid installments. Shooting in 1080p can get a little choppy when shooting fast moving scenes, but nothing any worse than any other PHONE’s. Picture clarity for video is very reasonable, even when hooked up to your big screen through HDMI mirror mode. Lines are sharp and artifacting is minimal. The camera stills look good in daylight, but at night is when you can really tell that an improvement has been made. The light sensor is able to gather significantly more light that previous models, and you can really tell the difference. Definite upgrade from hardware and the camera software is very stylish and intuitive as well. Camera sometimes kills the home launcher though, but the OMAP4430 makes little time of getting everything back in order.

HDMI: Mirror mode works effortlessly. Just plus it in and go. There is a minor glitch that may have not been completely thought out though. If you want to listen to music from your phone (assuming your big screen is HDMI’d to your receiver), everything works great until you set the phone down and the screen times out, thus cutting the audio. So unless you have the screen timeout to “never”, you will not have music playing. I have not found a setting to fix this. Hopefully this gets ironed out in an update.

Battery: I have my apps on reasonable settings, aka I don’t have them to autoupdate every 15 minutes. With this phone I am able to get about 15-20 hours of battery life with moderate use. With lighter use I’m betting I could get through a day and a half at least. There are some battery saving options such as turning off 3g and wifi radios when not in use after 15 minutes, which would theoretically propel the battery even further, but I have mine set to “performance” which leaves everything on all the time and I have not had an issue.

Software

Launcher: With the stock launcher I SOMETIMES notice a slight delay (honestly maybe like a half second versus instant for LauncherPro) when returning to the homescreens (which does not happen at all with the speedy LP), but the Moto widgets are so nice that it makes the stock launcher almost worth it. And the stock launcher is really stylish, nice screen transitions, a cool screens preview, but just simply is not as fast or customize-able as LP. If LP would come out with the ability to run some of these gorgeous widgets, or if stock was coded to be as speedy as LP, I'd be in Heaven. The stock launcher also does a cool lighting effect when you change screen, a subtle touch that just makes you feel good about yourself. If the stock launcher's code would improve a smidgen, and offer the ability to scroll vertically (instead of swiping side to side like a cotton picking i*hone) through the app drawer then we'd have a surefire winner. For now, I’ve settled into LauncherPro, spruced up with the honeycomb theme from the market for some of the excellent LP widgets. I’ve been a happy camper.

Widgets: Moto has included some outstanding widgets that really add to the wow factor of the phone. The Quick Contacts widget is my personal favorite. Swiping down on the widget produces a nifty 3D effects revealing all your favorite contacts. The problem with some of Moto’s widgets is that they don’t play nice with 3rd party launchers. Which puts you in a choice quandary. Why can’t we have out cake and eat it too??

One minor omission in terms of widgets is the stock Google News widget. Moto includes a news widget to replace it, which looks better, and has a nifty 3D effect, but you can't add custom topics like you can on Google's offering can add custom RSS feeds from your favorite website. Maybe it'll get updated for custom topics....maybe.

Apps: The included gallery widget is a nice improvement over standard AOSP Android. It has the ability to pull in all your photos from your various accounts over the cloud (picasa, facebook, flickr, photobucket, etc) and all your friends facebook photos as well in addition to all the photos stored on your phone.

The business class apps included here are very forward thinking and a boon to business types. GoToMeeting and Citrix, Exchange, Citrix, Motoprint, Quickoffice, are all included here, and really advance this phone as one that should be in serious consideration for those that need to do business on the go.

There are two music apps included. Moto’s music app, which is just a re-skinned AOSP music app, and ZumoCast, which is Motorola’s cloud based music solution. You must create an account and then you can access all your music, video, and picture files from your home computer (assuming it’s on) on the go. I would anticipate that you can upload some stuff to their servers in the cloud, but I have not verified this.

Bloatware is upsetting. There is crap on here waking up and filling itself in memory that I've never even heard of. "Social Status?" Seriously??? Do I need a widget to update my FB status every 5 seconds??? Hundreds of megs of crapware, oceans of it really. The sooner we can get some sort of root access to get Tibu on here the better, and the better this phone will run, you know, assuming it's be loading up apps you ACTUALLY USE into memory to make the apps you ACTUALLY USE quicker to get to. But what do I know, I'm just a random idiot. BUT, some of the pre-loaded apps like the business class apps are stellar. So you are certainly taking the good with the bad in this department. You can uninstall Let’s Golf 2 and Nova, but the rest is on there for the long haul. If they are too much of an eyesore you can make an app group through the stock launcher and only put apps that you use there. Or you can hide crapware through some 3rd party launchers, but the crapware still manages to load itself into RAM I’ve noticed. You can use the built in task manager to kill it off, but task managers generally do more harm than good, and it remains to be seen whether this one is an exception.

Should you buy?

If you like a keyboard this one is a no brainer. If you aren’t dead set on LTE this is a no brainer as it will certainly best any LTE handsets battery life thus far by a country mile. Otherwise the Bionic is around the corner, the Galaxy S II should be arriving sometime this summer, and of course there are the rumors of the mega-showstopping Nexus Primer this Christmas. I am in a family plan that has multiple upgrades coming up, so I will have some options, but even when those options come up, I will have a hard time giving up the D3. It is definitely a hot phone and is worthy of your bucks.

I noticed from the video that the phone has similar NFC contact points under the battery cover like those on the Nexus S. Can you confirm whether or not it is NFC capable?

Haha loved the City ID bit.

Benchmark it!

Why does he say not to touch the auto-end list? Before I messed with this my battery life was maybe a half a day. Now it is a day and a half.

512 mb of RAM is fail. Motoblur is fail (even if you don't call it that anymore, Moto). I don't get it. Are they going for the mid-range market here? Some specs are flagship and others are previous generation (meaning a few months ago in Android time). All of the Droids seem to be incremental upgrades to me. Definitely not something to get excited about.

That wallpaper is so hideous WTH is wrong with Moto! And can people change it when they do reviews!! No? AHHHH!!! Anyway, the phone itself looks BOSS! Wish I had an upgrade...

Wow.. another "Droid" with no lte? ?? Just wait for the bionic... This phone is no Buenos especially with all the pre-loaded aps!

After I finally made a switch from two years of bb use to the Atrix I will never go back to any physical keyboard devices :)

great video as always Phil.

It's def an awesome device!

That is a great phone for VZW. Best of both worlds. Maybe you don't want it but for any BB convert who doesn't want to mess with the on screen keyboard or the battery life issues apparently with all 4G devices this is a great choice. And it's global.

Love the battery life estimate! 300 hours of standby time. I'm guessing that means if you remove the fully charged battery from the phone and put it into a drawer.