Motorola Atrix 2 for AT&T Review (Video)

When Motorola had proudly showcased the Atrix 4G before this year at the Consumer Electronics Show, the Motorola Atrix received accolades for the features that it packs. Being among the first 4G devices with a high resolution 960 X 640 qHD display, the Atrix was deemed the most powerful smartphone in the world thanks to its innovative Webtop OS in other words stored on the phone alongside Android and instant comes to life when the device is plugged into a dock, like the company’s Lapdock that converts the phone into a laptop form factor. Now, just barely 9 months later, and the Atrix has a worthy new successor in the form of the Atrix 2, a device that promises to be better, bolder, and faster during retaining all the original DNA of the Atrix 4G that made the original device so lovable. The Motorola Atrix 2 for AT&T, announced this Fall at CTIA 2011 in San Diego, is in some ways a bigger brother to the original Atrix 4G released some 9 months ago on AT&T’s emerging HSPA+ network. But, the new handset does offer refinements and improvements that a successor model brings.

Measuring 4.96 x 2.59 x 0.40, the Atrix 2 is a two-tone phone with a dark gunmetal chrome finish on the sides coupled with a matte black rubberized finish on the rear. The phone doesn’t win any thin competition, nevertheless it is comfortable to hold in the hands and can slide into any pocket comfortably. The device weighs in at 5.18 ounces, which is about average for a phone of this size.

The front of the Atrix 2 is dominated

The front of the Atrix 2 is dominated by the large 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen, and like many standard Android handsets of today, four capacitive Android navigation buttons rest just below the display. On the top of the screen, you’ll see from left to right a front-facing camera, speaker grill, proximity and ambient light sensor, and a notification LED light.

Up top, you have a 3.55 mm headphone jack, noise cancellation microphone, and a power button. Unlike the original Atrix 4G, a biometric fingerprint reader is no longer integrated into the power button this time around.

The textured rubberized battery cover

To remove the textured rubberized battery cover, there’s a small slit on the bottom of the phone, and users will need to insert a fingernail and pry the cover off. The cover wraps around the sides of the device and gives an illusion of a unibody plastic construction. In accordance with the battery cover, you’ll find the same 1735 mAh battery that’s employed in the Droid Bionic on rival Verizon’s network. There’s a 2 GB micro SD memory card pre-installed in the slot, and users can swap out the card to a micro SDHC card up to 32 GB in capacity. Thankfully, memory cards are hot swappable and the battery doesn’t need to be removed to do so, unlike on some other phones. Underneath the battery, users will have access to the SIM card.

On the rear, you as well have an 8-megapixel autofocus camera with single LED flash–Motorola’s Photon 4G on Sprint’s Now Network has a dual-LED flash module–and a camera that’s capable of recording in 1080p full HD videos, similar to the module inside the Droid Bionic.

In one word, the display on the Atrix 2 is simply stunning. Thankfully, Motorola has done away with the PenTile-based subpixel arrangement on this display, which leads to images and text appearing more sharp and crisp. Nevertheless, the PenTile arrangement was fine on most other phones, including the Photon 4G. The problem for me–although most users probably wouldn’t even notice–existed primarily on the Droid Bionic where the display flickers quickly. The problem becomes more apparent on the Bionic when videos are playing, leading to a quick, and often times indiscernible quick flickers, similar in experience to CRT monitors and old televisions. On the Atrix, that problem is gone and you have vibrant and deep colors, sharp texts, and fluid videos with no flickering.

Another design aesthetic comment that I have is that the mesh earpiece speaker grill ends at the edge of the glass. On other flagship Motorola phones for other carriers, just as the Photon 4G for Sprint or the Droid Bionic for Verizon, the speaker grill is cut into the glass so that it is surrounded by a sea of glass, lending to a more elegant and premium look similar to the iPhone 4′s speaker grill, which seems to float in glass.

Eschewing NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 dual-core 1 GHz chipset, Motorola is returning to its roots with a processor made by Texas Instruments, a history of collaboration between the two firms which began with the original Motorola Droid for Verizon. The Atrix 2 utilizes a TI OMAP ARM-based processor that boasts dual-core computing power clocked at the same speed as NVIDIA’s CPU. But, the TI chip utilizes a PowerVR graphics engine, or rather than NVIDIA’s custom GeForce GPU.

The device has 1 GB of RAM

The device has 1 GB of RAM, which will be great for multitasking and running heavy applications. During 1 GB of RAM may appear to be a lot on a smartphone, the Atrix 2 can be converted to a mini computer or light netbook when docked in one of many optional Motorola accessories. To illustrate, in the Lapdock 100, once connected, the phone enters the Webtop environment giving users more power like they’re on a light netbook. In this environment, you can actually feel the demanding power of Webtop and at times, when loading webpages, it feels like the phone is struggling to keep up.

Though Motorola has abandoned the MOTO BLUR branding for the company’s proprietary and custom UI, the Motorola BLUR-inspired interface on the Atrix 2 is borrowed from the company’s most recent lineup of Android 2.3 Gingerbread smartphone. The Atrix 2 utilizes Gingerbread and Motorola’s enhancements help to make the phone a little easier and friendly to use, even though the experience isn’t as deeply integrated as HTC’s custom HTC Sense user interface.

The Droid 3

Like the Droid 3, Droid Bionic, and Photon 4G, the Atrix 2 has a four-icon dock bar at the bottom of the screen that can be visible on all home screens–save for the app drawer–in other words user customizable and allows for quick access to the phone, email, and browser app, for instance. Widgets can adorn the home screen, and the pre-bundled widgets can be customized and re-sized consequently thanks to Motorola’s customizations. This allows users to make a widget more prominent or conserve screen real estate by shrinking down widgets when needed.

When it comes to creating shortcuts on the homescreen, Motorola’s custom UI makes it a little bit more complicated than on the native Android experience by adding an extra step. When the app drawer is opened, to add a shortcut to the homescreen on a stock Android build, users just need to long tap on the icon and be taken to the homescreen to create the shortcut. On Motorola’s UI, it’s a two-step process, requiring users to click on the option to add to home screen to perform the task.

The app drawer

And speaking of the app drawer, Motorola now has horizontally sliding pages, similar to the Honeycomb UI, to put it more exactly than vertically oriented lists of icons. This helps to make the company’s smartphones more consistent with its tablets.

AT&T and Motorola had pre-bundled a number of apps on the device to help to add value, and performs drive data usage and consumption. Some of the apps included include AT&T Music, a storefront for purchasing music, and AT&T Navigator for a subscription-based turn by turn voice guided GPS navigation solution. Fortunately, although, these apps can be uninstalled by the user if they don’t need them, or be re-downloaded from the Android Market app store. Additionally, non-Android Market purchased apps, just as those from rival Amazon Appstore for Android, can now be installed on AT&T handsets, signifying a reversal of policy on behalf of the carrier and opening up choice for consumers.

The Motorola Music application is a welcomed improvement over the native Music app for most stock Android handsets. The Music app on the Atrix 2 combines social, news, and other enhancements.

The app can tap into Shoutcast Internet Radio for music streaming. The FM radio functionality that’s built into the Music app will allow users to listen to local radio programming, even though earphones must be plugged in as the wires for the earphones will serve as the antenna. Additionally, during playing songs, the Motorola Music app will as well display song lyrics on the Atrix 2, line by line, allowing listeners to have an impromptu karaoke session. Along with news from your favorite artists, concert and ticket information, and the ability to share your music over a DLNA connection, the Music app delivers added value that most users will find useful.

Camera quality on the Atrix 2 falls in line with the Motorola Droid Bionic as both units share the same camera and video sensors with the ability to capture images in 8-megapixel resolution and 1080p HD video content. Additionally, camera prowess on the smartphone is highlighted by a single-stage hardware button that can activate the camera shutter.

The camera itself is great in bright environments

Performance of the camera itself is great in bright environments, nevertheless pictures at times turned out darker than on competing smartphones with similar cameras. Additionally, performance in low light environments were fine with the flash, yet in a darken room, the camera had a hard time focusing and resulted in blurry shots.

The biggest network improvement here worth noting is AT&T’s 4G HSPA+ network. When I had played with the original Atrix 4G at launch, that smartphone barely squeeze out 1 Mbps on the download side and upload speeds were in the neighborhood of just 0.3 Mbps. Out of the box, the Atrix 2, which supports a theoretical maximum of 21 Mbps on AT&T’s 4G network, saw average download speeds between 2-6 Mbps and upload speeds between 0.5-1.5 Mbps, approximately 3-4 times the performance of the original’s at launch. Nevertheless, through subsequent software updates, the Atrix 4G now as well performs at approximately comparable download and upload speeds. Although the new phone boasts support for 21 Mbps with the old model supporting 14 Mbps networks, you won’t see much speed difference between the two models on today’s optimized network.

As AT&T continues to optimize its network, speeds should improve, although this phone won’t be forward compatible with AT&T’s newer at once-generation 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution, latest standard in the mobile network technology) network, which promises to deliver even faster real world speeds. Verizon’s 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution, latest standard in the mobile network technology) performance hovers in the neighborhood of 5-10 Mbps, even though with 2-6 Mbps users will be able to stream, download, and browse at excellent speeds that rivals most home DSL networks.

The phone sound good both through the earpiece speaker

Calls on the phone sound good both through the earpiece speaker and on the loud speaker on the rear. The phone picked up on reception easily and voice quality sounded good on both ends of the call. Thanks to a secondary noise cancellation microphone, background noise is often muted, allowing for a clearer phone call to the other party.

When the phone is placed on its back on a flat surface, the rear speaker is obstructed and sound comes out muffled. When playing music through the loud speaker, or taking a rear speakerphone call, we suggest propping the phone up to allow sound to come through, or placing the phone on its front surface allowing the speaker to project outwards.

Battery life is adequate on the phone. With constant push emails, taking a few calls, and web surfing, I was able to squeeze in about 10 hours of use on AT&T’s HSPA+ 4G network with moderate to good reception. If you’re using the phone heavily, you’ll anyway need to carry around an extra battery, charger, or extended battery. AT&T sells an extended battery for the Atrix 2 as then, allowing users to go even longer between charges.

Unfortunately, although using the phone in the new Lapdock 100 will no longer charge the phone together unless the Lapdock 100 is plugged into a power source itself. This will by all means limit the utility of the Lapdock 100 for mobile users who find themselves away from power plugs.

A number of docks are available to activate the innovative Webtop OS on the phone and allow the phone to be more functional on a larger display. The most notable dock is the Lapdock 100, an accessory that in substance converts the phone into a laptop with a nearly-full sized keyboard, multi-touch trackpad, and larger 10-inch screen. The Lapdock 100, unlike the Lapdock for the Atrix 4G, is cross-compatible with various newer models of Motorola smartphone as it connects to the Atrix 2 via a cable connector in other words than through a molded hardware dock specific to fit the phone.

The Lapdock 100 does increase the utility of the phone

The Lapdock 100 does increase the utility of the phone by mirroring the phone’s UI and screen onto a larger netbook-like display, as so then as give users a full Firefox browser that has access to a number of web apps. With Google’s acquisition of Motorola, we’re wondering if Firefox and Webtop will get replaced hereafter by Chrome OS and the Chrome browser.

The problem that limits the Lapdock on AT&T’s network is that AT&T is the only carrier that forces clients to have a tethering plan enabled with Lapdock usage, like on the Atrix 4G. That means that in other words than sliding by with a $15 or $25 data plan, users will now be forced to pay for a 4 GB monthly plan for $45. On the positive side, with Lapdock, your Internet consumption will increase so this will help to avoid unexpected overages. It should be noted, nevertheless, that Verizon Wireless does not require a tethering plan for its Droid Bionic and accompanying optional Lapdock accessory, which is the way things should be as Webtop is part of the phone and the Lapdock itself is just ‘dumb’ hardware that displays content from the phone.

At $99, the Atrix can be seen as the more affordable iteration of Verizon’s Motorola and is an excellent value proposition. With improved network performance, a redesigned form factor, gorgeous and vibrant display, the Atrix 2 brings dual-core 4G performance to a new affordable price point and will help AT&T reach out to clients who may want performance nevertheless don’t want to pay the price.

The versatility of the Lapdock

The versatility of the Lapdock and Webtop OS is somewhat hindered by AT&T’s stiff policy of requiring a data tethering plan costing users a total of $45 a month for the privilege of turning their phones into a laptop, however the $99 on-contract pricing will give most phones a run for their money, including Verizon’s Droid Bionic, Droid RAZR, and Sprint’s Photon 4G. By pricing the phone modestly, AT&T and Motorola will be able to target both high-end users as so then as mid-range clients. With the speeds and performance of the Atrix 2, we yearn for the day when AT&T once offered unlimited data plans, yet the phone does come with a WiFi radio so you can offload some traffic to a WiFi or home network when you’re not out and about. At $99, the feature-packed Atrix 2 demonstrates that AT&T is ‘Rethinking Possible.’

Tech enthusiast in Silicon Valley enjoying the possibilities of ubiquitous connectivity, information sharing, and collaboration enabled by mobile broadband. You can contact Chuong on Twitter @chuongvision or with the same ID on Skype.

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