Motorola Droid 3 Review - Third Time's a Charm
by Brian Klug on July 30, 2011 12:01 AM ESTConcluding Thoughts
So here we are, one year after the Droid 2, and now we have the Droid 3. Dual core smartphones are now pretty much the norm, and overall smartphone adoption shows little to no signs of slowing down anytime soon. On its own, the Droid 3 is a considerable upgrade over the Droid 2. You get a vastly better keyboard, higher resolution display, better cameras, higher resolution and better quality video recording, much better CPU and GPU performance, a better baseband with GSM/WCDMA compatibility out of the box, and Android 2.3.4. One short year later, the same price buys you a considerably better device in almost every possible category.
The problem is that there’s no LTE onboard, which seems in retrospect like a major tactical error on Motorola’s part until you consider that adding that in would likely dramatically change the Droid 3’s size and battery life. Like it or not, we’re still in the first generation of LTE modems, all of which are 45nm at present. Qualcomm’s LTE MDM9600 baseband, which is at the core of an overwhelming majority of current Verizon Wireless LTE devices, is a 45nm part and not directly voice enabled. Around mid 2012, MDM9615 will begin shipping, bringing 28nm LTE/EVDO/DC-HSPA+ connectivity in a slightly smaller, less power-hungry package, and also bringing onboard voice to bear. Only at that point (or with MSM8960 potentially sooner) and with similar parts does LTE connectivity on the device become something you can include without a complicated dual-baseband solution.
It’s roundabout, but basically what looks at first like a tactical error on Motorola’s part really isn’t - they made a design tradeoff and instead the Droid 3 is one of the thinnest (if not the thinnest) devices with a slide-out keyboard. Instead, if you want LTE and a physical keyboard, you’re going to have to wait a while until Samsung or another partner brings it to bear. That said, Motorola does have some LTE-enabled devices headed to Verizon, which we’ll look at in due time, but they likely won’t include keyboards.
If you’re in a market that Verizon hasn’t included in its official list for deployment by the end of 2011, there’s really no point to owning a first generation LTE smartphone. At that point, current devices like the Droid X2 or Droid 3 make sense, or waiting for devices based on some less power-hungry second generation basebands that will no doubt be the rage around the same time next year.
I like the Droid 3 a lot more than I thought I would going into it, just because of how much importance I personally put on having the fastest cellular connectivity. It’s sort of a running joke among friends and people that know me that I spend far too much time running speed tests, and so I went into this review ready to be underwhelmed by more EVDO slowness. I was definitely wrong about how great this device really turned out to be. Keyboard, display, OMAP4, and overall size culminate to a device that feels like way more than just an updated Droid 2.
The device has had another unintended side-effect as well. The Droid 3’s awesome keyboard has made me wish more of the Android flagship, triple-A devices had physical keyboards. Capacitive multitouch keyboards are great, but something is always going to get lost in the process of making a keyboard virtual. It’s also clear to me that developer focus has shifted away from landscape view, with so many Android applications forcing you into portrait-only mode because there’s so much more attention on portrait than landscape devices with keyboards. Maybe it’s time for a Nexus device with a keyboard to remind developers that landscape still exists.
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7amood - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
that's nice to hearplease don't forget to talk about the screen problem
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s_ii_displa...
It's really hard to accept that my perfect SUPER AMOLED is not perfect.
It's harder to accept the fact that samsung don't give a f*** about me since they already have my money.
takumsawsherman - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
On the GL benchmark, it shows iPhone 3GS running faster than iPhone 4. Is this correct? If so, why do you think iPhone 4 is performing worse on the test?Ryan Smith - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
GLBench runs at the device's native resolution. The iPhone 4 is 4x the resolution of the 3GS.Lucian Armasu - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
It looks like OMAP is on the way out from the market, though:http://semiaccurate.com/2011/07/29/texas-instrumen...
Now the fight will be left between Nvidia, Qualcomm and Samsung.
martyrant - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
My VP wanted one, so we both got one the same day. I don't talk on the phone as much, but after a week I did a conference call on it and it drained it from 80% to 15% in under an hour. I also just left it on a charger last night, saw it go from 30-90%, went to bed, got up and just checked it (while still plugged into the charger) and it's back at 30%. Did you see any strange anomalies when running your battery life tests? My VP loves the phone, but hates the battery--his dies all the time and so does mine. It seems like while your tests look awesome, the real life performance of this phone is nowhere near in line with those tests when it comes to battery. I have tried max battery saver, just about everything---had to get the VP an extended battery pack and he still doesn't know if he can continue to use this phone because of the battery issues.martyrant - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
It went to 20% from 30% while writing that comment, while plugged into the charger. Hot, right?josby - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
Same here. I bought mine the day they were released in stores, but I've been anxiously awaiting the AnandTech review of it because I knew it would include battery life comparisons. I came from a T-Mobile G2 (running Cyanogen7) and have all the same apps, with the same update intervals set, on my Droid3 as I had on the G2, yet the battery life is very noticeably worse. It can barely make it from morning til night even with very light usage.In fact, I always left my G2's wifi on, yet the Droid3 still doesn't last as long even if I leave wifi off.
Yet, the G2 does considerably worse than the Droid3 in the battery life tests in this review.
Brian Klug - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
That's odd - I wonder what kind of signal environment he was in when he made that call. Could you find out what Rx signal strength was in dBm?The only part of the entire cellular architecture that has a power control loop is the phone->base station, and when you're in a low signal environment the phone can increase Tx power to be "heard" by the base station and thus hurt battery life considerably. We always test in areas with at least -75 dBm or better.
-Brian
photoguru - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link
I had major problems with my battery life until I realised that the power adapter for the Droid 3 requires 5.1v at 850mA which is quite a bit higher than most chargers. Mine actually died while browsing the web and being plugged into a Belkin usb charger.Also, theres an issue with programs not turning off once you exit them. Task killers should fix it but I actually just went through the programs and manually adjusted which ones can continue to run in the background. Now my battery lasts almost twice as long as it did before, and quite a bit longer than my droid 1 and droid 2 global.
anandtech pirate - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
how about the Evo3D?