What's hot: Lovely design and quality, fast, strong reception and good voice.
What's not: No front camera and no 4G.
Reviewed May 31, 2011 by Lisa Gade, Editor
in Chief
The Motorola Droid X was an extremely popular Verizon Android phone that won our Editor’s Choice award in 2010. It boasted top notch specs, excellent call quality and an elegant casing. The same can be said of the sequel, Motorola’s Droid X2, but it leaves out two hot features: 4G LTE and a front-facing camera. We know not all of you are into video-chatting over Mister Blurrycam, but Verizon’s supremely fast 4G is hard to pass up. For the time being though, it seems that you can get a phone with LTE or a dual core processor, but not both in the same package. So the Droid X2 is for those of you who have a need for processing speed more than lightning-fast downloads.
The Droid X2 looks nearly identical to the Droid X. The color has changed to black from a dark gray and the dedicated camera button has gone missing (a shame), but it’s otherwise a dead ringer for the first X. What’s inside has changed though: the display is brighter and runs at a higher resolution, and the 1GHz TI CPU has been swapped for the trendy dual core 1 GHz Tegra 2. Those are mighty appealing improvements, but we doubt it will send those of you who bought a Droid X less than a year ago running to stores for an expensive out of cycle upgrade. For those of you whose renewal times are nigh, the Droid X2 is worth a look.
Motorola’s latest Droid has EV-DO Rev. A 3G on Verizon’s network and it runs Android OS 2.2 with Motorola’s less over-the-top version of Motoblur software. Unlike lower end Motoblur phones, the software doesn’t hog nearly every square inch of home screen real estate, but you do get the fairly useful social networking integration with support for all sorts of online accounts (Facebook, Twitter, mySpace, MS Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Photobucket, Picasa, Flickr, LinkedIn and Google).
Call quality is excellent and reception is among the best on Verizon Wireless. As a phone, the Droid X2 passes with flying colors. The X2 averages a 5db strong signal than Android smartphones on Verizon from HTC and Samsung; if you’re in a weak reception area, the X2 should be a strong contender. The speakerphone is loud, clear and full, though it doesn’t quite beat the original Motorola Droid’s phenomenal speakerphone. Data download speeds were faster than average among Verizon EV-DO Rev. A 3G phones, and the Droid X2 averaged 1.39 mbps downloads and 45ms ping times, perhaps thanks in part to its better than average reception.
The LG Revolution and the Droid X2.
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The Moto is quick and responsive, and handles Adobe Flash 10.3 video playback well thanks to the dual core Tegra CPU with Flash hardware graphics acceleration. According to the Quadrant benchmark test, it’s one of the fastest Android phones: it scored 2703. That’s twice as fast as the phone it replaces in terms of raw numbers. The phone scored an also very solid 37.1 on Linpack. We found the X2 as quick as our GSM Google Nexus S in daily use, and the Nexus S is one of the most responsive Android phones thanks to its pure Google roots and clean OS.
Verizon ships the phone with an 8 gig microSD card, and the Droid X2 has 6 gigs of internal storage with 4.3 gigs available and 1.5 gigs of application storage.
Video Review
Here's our Droid X2 video review:
Thanks to a large, sharp qHD display running a 540 x 960 resolution and strong CPU and GPU performance, the Moto offers a great video playback experience (including 1080p), be it locally stored MPEG4 videos or streaming video. The Droid X2 has HDMI out (micro HDMI, cable not included) that can mirror whatever is on the phone’s display to an HD TV, monitor or projector. Verizon includes Blockbuster but not their recent favorite BitBop for more TV and movie-watching options, and the phone has both Flash and the usual YouTube player. The display has extremely high contrast that improves sharpness and it’s very bright at higher settings. Color saturation is good but won’t wow you like the Samsung Droid Charge’s Super AMOLED Plus display. The display has a mild cool color cast (toward the blue), and that means whites look very bright rather than the warm almost off-white of warmer biased phones.
Battery life with the Tegra 2 dual core CPU and large, high resolution display are surprisingly solid. Motorola has innovative power management settings: for example you can set the phone to sync data less often during overnight hours. We had absolutely no trouble making it through the day with moderate to heavy use that included voice calls, push email, web browsing, 30 minutes of video playback and downloading a few apps from the Android Market. Motorola went with the same 1540 mAh capacity as the Droid X, and unfortunately you must pull the battery to insert or remove a microSD card.
Conclusion
Motorola has smartly updated the original Droid X, one of our favorite 2010 phones, in just the right ways. They’ve left the excellent industrial design and quality materials while improving display resolution and quality, CPU performance (nice dual core punch) and adding HDMI. The Droid X2 by Motorola is a solid Verizon smartphone pick: 3G speeds and reception are very good, voice quality is excellent, the phone is fast and the 4.3” display is quite sharp. If you’re not hankering for an LTE 4G phone, the Moto is worth a look.
Display:4.3", qHD 540 x 960 pixel capacitive touch screen. Has accelerometer, ambient light sensor and proximity sensor. Has micro HDMI 1.4 port, cable not included.
Battery:Lithium
Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable.
1540 mAh.
Performance:1 GHz Tegra 2 CPU with GPU. 512 megs RAM. 6 gigs internal storage with approx. 4.3 gigs free and 1.5 gigs for application storage.
Size:5.02
x 2.58 x 0.39 inches. Weight: 5.47 ounces.
Phone:CDMA dual band digital 800/1900MHz with 3G CDMA EV-DO Rev. A. Has WiFi hotspot feature.
Camera:8.0 MP, can shoot 720p video.
Audio:Built
in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone
jack. Has FM radio.
Networking:Integrated
WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Bluetooth profiles: A2DP, AVRCP, HFP, HID, HSP, OPP, PAN and PBAP.
Software:Android OS 2.2 Froyo. Motorola enhancements to home screen and added social networking widgets. Full suite of Google Android apps including YouTube, Maps and Navigation, Gmail, email and web browser. Verizon and 3rd party software: Backup Assistant, Music ID, Skype Mobile, My Verizon, Office suite and Blockbuster.
