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Motorola Droid 2 Review: Rebooting the Droid

 by Brian Klug on September 19, 2010 7:00 AM EST
39 Comments | Add A Comment
39 Comments

Conclusions

The Droid 2 is obviously incremental—look no further than the name. But even nailing incremental product refreshes can be hard, and Motorola has largely done it with the Droid 2's excellent hardware. The masculine industrial design of the first still shines through on the Droid 2, and the hardware itself retains what was great about the form factor without changing everything needlessly. 

For the most part, virtually every major complaint about the first device has been addressed, and for that Motorola deserves credit. The D-Pad is gone, the keyboard is completely revamped for the better, troublesome buttons refined, awkward chin tucked away, and the platform's SoC has been updated. The device  hardware itself is thoroughly modern with the exception of the camera stack's inability to record 720P video. 

Though the Droid 2's hardware is unequivocally excellent, the software still needs tweaking. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that 3G tethering needs some major attention, and performance in some areas just isn't where it should be. Hopefully all of this can and will be addressed with a timely OTA update. There's also the matter of Motorola's BLUR skin, which there isn't any way to turn off short of rooting and loading a different ROM.

If you're an existing Motorola Droid owner, the Droid 2 will feel like almost completely familiar territory. Quite honestly, unless you're absolutely dissatisfied with the speed of that device, the Droid 2 will feel exactly the same. The differences lie in the keyboard, and whether you'll have the 'Wow' moment I did will depend entirely on which original Droid keyboard you ended up with. 

If the original Droid was a slightly insecure adolescent that made up for being the newcomer with brash masculine boasting, the Droid 2 would conversely be a much more confident polished 30-something. It's still hip, but there's nothing earth-shattering about the whole package this time around—it's just a safe update. If you've got the original Droid, the Droid 2 just isn't quite enough of a huge leap forward to warrant an upgrade unless you really need the speed. Faster performance will come late 2010 and early 2011 in the form of ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore based devices running at even faster clock speeds. That said, if you're in the market for an Android phone on Verizon with a keyboard, look no further than the Droid 2. 

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  • Brian Klug - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    Thanks for calling me out on that, I totally suspected I had forgotten something important. Can't believe I did that. /facepalm

    -Brian

  • stlc8tr - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    "The Droid 2 has pulled a complete 180 from the original Droid’s travesty of a keyboard. I’d say the device has gone from having one of the industry’s worst smartphone keyboards to arguably one of the best, if not the best. "

    Really? Have you tried the Touch Pro2 keyboard? Good travel. Nice offset. Numbers row. Good spacing between keys. It's nearly perfect. That is by far the best keyboard that I've ever used.

    http://www.mobileguerilla.com/images/htc-touch-pro...

  • Brian Klug - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    I had a Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 for a long time. I have to agree - HTC has dominated the landscape keyboard landscape for a while, but on Android platform it's hard to beat the Droid 2 right now.

    Until we get the landscape HTC device that we've seen spy shots of. I don't think it has a codename yet, but it has that Touch Pro 2 keyboard.

    I think we definitely agree.

    -Brian

  • wyvernknight - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    I think the blur animation that you're talking about when you open and close the app drawer is simply a stock Android 2.2 animation and not a Motoblur add-on.

  • hansel2099 - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    muy buen celular

  • lunarx3dfx - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    This is very disappointing. Your reviews are always very informative and for the most part all inclusive, but I've noticed in the last few reviews the Palm Pre has been absent. Now, I know that most would say, well it's Palm, and they are pretty much dead. However, unlike the Nexus One, which is included in all these reviews, I'm sure there were more Pre's sold than the Nexus One meaning that there are probably a few consumers out there that would like to see how it stacks compared to a new phone that they might be considering. It's just a suggestion.

    Also, for those who might be wondering, my overclocked to 1 GHz Palm Pre scored as follows:
    Browsermark: 24492
    Sunspider: 11228

    I'd like to point out that those scores are still pretty high up on the list.

  • Brian Klug - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    Hey lunarx3dfx, I've got a Palm Pre Plus here that we got in for review, so I haven't really been able to include benchmarks from those suites until now. It'll show up in the new benchmarks though. On stock clocks I get 22298 ms on sunspider and 12936 on browsermark. Those 1 GHz speeds are actually pretty impressive.

    -Brian

  • ol1bit - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    I think it's awesome that you are reviewing Smart Phones now. After all, they are truning more and more into computers.

    I've been into computers since the TSR-80 Color computer, and can't believe how far things have advances. http://oldcomputers.net/coco.html

    Anyway Thank You!

  • AnnonymousCoward - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    Brian, I commend you for this engineering review and attention to detail. You made some great observations, like the ridiculous waste of space when text messaging.

    The inability to delete the stupid verizon and google bookmarks is inexcusable. Not mentioned is also the inability to delete or even just hide the garbage apps that come by default, including Blockbuster and Amazon MP3. So much for "Droid Does". Droid Doesn't let you delete the preinstalled crap. Besides rooting of course.

    I noticed in a Verizon store using the X with the 2 side-by-side that the 2 has noticeably worse scrolling performance in the app list.

    As for that 1cm of empty space to the right of the keyboard, they should have used that to make the keyboard even bigger! It was wasted, in order to have the phone dip down 2mm near the edge, which really doesn't accomplish anything.

    A huge gripe I have is how syncing with facebook causes your entire contact list to be overtaken. The only remedy seems to be not not add facebook as an account, and give yourself a link to facebook.com on your desktop.

    I am disappointed with the ever-present touch screen lag. Clicking and scrolling anything has a lagged effect from your input. Unfortunately, many people lack lag sensitivity, so we end up with displays and phones that exhibit an acceptable amount of lag to a few designers or testers, which is unacceptable to guys like me.

  • evilspoons - Sunday, September 19, 2010 - link

    I find it amusing how you're talking about the Droid 1 as if it's a dinosaur from the land of ancient, forgotten technology... yet it's still a year newer than the Blackberry I use all the time (Nov 2009 vs Aug 2008). Hmmm. Maybe it's time to upgrade.

    Only one of the local wireless carriers has the Droid 1 (sold as the Milestone because Droid is licensed to Verizon from Lucasfilm) and we just got it recently. The only recent-ish Android phone my current provider (Rogers) has is the Xperia X10. Ugh.

    It's really just an iPhone 4 or a 6-12 month out-of-date handset for us up in the Great White North.
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