The Motorola Atrix 4G Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 13, 2011 3:18 AM ESTStill Camera Experience & Quality
LG tried with the Optimus 2X to make the most of the SoC NVIDIA gave it. The phone supported both 1080p video output and 1080p video recording. Even the still camera had a 6 fps burst mode, exploiting NVIDIA's allegedly high performance ISP. In its quest for specs however the Optimus 2X didn't always deliver. Video recorded at 1080p wasn't particularly impressive, and you can only take stills in burst mode at a 2MP resolution.
Motorola on the other hand appears to be aiming more at user experience rather than feature set. The Atrix 4G only supports up to 720p output over HDMI and can only record videos at 720p as well. There's no burst mode supported by the camera app.
Even settings in Motorola's camera app are pretty sparse. You don't get to choose resolution specifically, but you get to pick aspect ratio and total pixel count. There are no white balance or exposure options to set here either. You can choose between predefined settings grouped into scenes (e.g. auto, portrait, landscape, night, macro) and that's pretty much it.
The app is fast though. Switching between the rear camera and the front camera is iPhone 4 fast, and switching to shooting video is faster than any other phone I've used. The experience in the camera app is very smooth. Even the view finder is super smooth.
Stills are shot at 2592 x 1456 by default, although you can switch to a 5MP mode which will give you images at 2592 x 1944.
Image quality is reasonable but not spectacular in brightly lit environments. Images aren't as saturated, detailed or as contrasty compared to the iPhone 4. Lower light performance suffers, particularly on the front facing camera as there's no flash.
Motorola Atrix 4G
Apple iPhone 4
Motorola's camera app doesn't support tap to focus and it will only focus on whatever is in the center of the screen. Since there's no tap to focus the scene will often be blurry before you take a shot and only come into focus after you've hit the capture button.
Shutter lag is decent for a smartphone and overall I'm impressed with the camera app itself.
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xaml - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 - link
But can it run Crysis?Weedkillers2 - Wednesday, February 16, 2011 - link
HiyaDue to initial reviews iv read the concept of the dock / webtop is good but its a bit slow...
Mabye it would be in Motorola's interest to create an Overcloking Application when the device is running off external Power such as
The Laptop Dock or the HD Dock
this would boost its peformance when mains connected and make the device more appealing in thouse situations to no realy change of the product required.
(obviously use at own risk feture or atleast different levels of over clok use at own risk)
Dylan
synaesthetic - Wednesday, February 16, 2011 - link
Until smartphones have modular and universal OS capability, they won't replace computers.When you can just hop over to Google's website and download a new, universal version of Android, and then hop on over to Motorola's website to download your device's appropriate drivers, THAT will be the moment that smartphones can truly attempt to replace PCs in the mainstream market.
Until that happens, walled-garden systems, lack of speedy updates and OS fragmentation will keep them in their current niche.
Oh, and they should *ship* with root access easily enabled, just like a computer. No exploits or hacks required, a simple flipping of a switch in the OS to enable superuser permissions.
TareX - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - link
Can Ananad (or anyone who held the phone) tell me how bad the text "fuzziness" was in the browser, on a zoomed out view? Some reviews said it appeared "pixelated" and unreadable despite of the qHD screen.EMM81 - Saturday, February 19, 2011 - link
Anand can you give some more detailed impression/images of the Atrix screen. If it really is a pentile matrix it would be an RGBW scheme. This is unfortunate because it is basically like adding a white sub pixel to the existing red, green, and blue sub pixels and calling it twice the resolution. So by my calculation the screen is really ~679x382 if you considered RGBW as one pixel. I would assume that the impression of this screen would therefore be that of a lower resolution than 800x480 and theoretically the white sub pixels would allow it to either be brighter when displaying non color saturated images or to lower the back light and save power. Since your graph clearly shows a lower contrast ratio the only possibility is power savings at the expense of quality. PLEASE correct me if I am wrong but this does seem to be the case.DisplayGeek - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
You are indeed wrong and here's why:http://www.nouvoyance.com/files/pdf/measuring-pent...
Counting the number of subpixels, when using a system that uses both subpixel rendering and metamer rendering (where one uses the fact that white can be produced by both a single W and the combination of RGB) allows the display to use only two subpixels per pixel *on average*.
Yes, the RGBW system allows the power to be cut roughly in half.
The full on white to full off black contrast ratio is dependent upon the LCD technology itself, how much light leakage occurs in the dark states. It has nothing to do with the subpixel arrangement or color filter system, or its mode of operation. Though, the Dynamic Backlight Control does improve the contrast when dark images are shown, as reducing the backlight brightness makes the darkest states darker, while maintaining the brightness of the intermediate grey states. But that wasn't tested here.
arth2910 - Monday, February 21, 2011 - link
The Meizu M9 actually has the highest resolution of available android smartphones (matching that of the iPhone 4's). Acer's Iconia Smart also appears to be touting 1024x480.eawortman - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
Is there still a full review coming?santro652 - Saturday, March 5, 2011 - link
Hi Anand,I am planning to get the Atrix carrier free version from USA, can anyone tell me if this phone will work in India or is there any unlocking required after taking a carrier free version. Please. Thanks in advance.. If anyone else knows the reply please let me know ASAP, Please
Kawboy12R - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Looks like the full review got derailed somehow. I'd love to see some AT reviewage though.