Motorola Droid Bionic Review - Dual Core with 4G LTE
by Brian Klug on October 11, 2011 1:55 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- LTE
- Motorola
- OMAP 4
- Mobile
- motorola droid bionic
Display - qHD 4.3"
I went over this in our preview piece, but the Bionic literally uses the same display as the Droid X2. It’s a 4.3" qHD (960 x 540) panel with an RGBW PenTile subpixel matrix. The goal of PenTile in RGBW is to affect more light throughput at a given backlight brightness than a traditional RGB stripe. It seems simple enough in theory - R, G, and B filters in an LCD all incur losses, and having a white subpixel is an easy way to increase total throughput with a lower backlight level. Luminance gets mapped to the white subpixel, chrominance gets mapped to RGB, and in theory you get the same image with fewer incurred losses, and can drive the panel with less backlight power.
RGBW PenTile on the Motorola Droid Bionic
The side effect is that, like RGBG PenTile which we saw in Samsung’s AMOLED and SAMOLED, the grid is offset and thus renders vertical elements in a unique fuzzy manner. From far away enough, those offset elements look relatively homogenous or straight, but up close is where you can notice things aren’t a nice, straight grid. In other terms, instead of 3 subpixels per pixel in a normal RGB stripe, RBGW PenTile uses 2 subpixels per pixel. Nouvoyance also explains all of this on their own RGBW page.
I have to admit that I found RGBG PenTile distracting, but RGBW PenTile not nearly as much on these newer devices. Maybe I’ve just gotten used to it from seeing it crop up so many times now. It’s more noticeable on the Droid X2 and Bionic purely because the logical pixels are larger - same resolution, larger display (4.3“ as opposed to 4.0”), however.
Motorola earned something of a reputation for including good IPS displays in the original Droid all the way through the Droid 2. PenTile or not, the display does post good brightness and contrast numbers in our measurements with an i1D2 as always.
I also measured display brightness and white point as a function of brightness selected from the settings menu. This is something we’ve been doing for a while now, and it’s actually pretty cool to see the Bionic’s lines pretty much lie right atop the X2’s - for once, everything does make sense. Viewing angles and outdoor viewing quality is basically identical to what I saw on the X2, which is to say pretty darn good.
I like the Bionic’s display if nothing else because it’s qHD, even if this display is effective qHD resolution through RGBW PenTile rather than an RGB stripe. Higher dot pitch through any means necessary is something I’m ok with, and there are just so many places that qHD gives more breathing room than WVGA in Android.
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Brian Klug - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Yeah the bootloader situation is the same as the 3, meaning that there is a vulnerability. I see people have CWM on the device as well, but expect an update coming soon that will patch these: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=1...-Brian
Mitch89 - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Wow those 4G LTE web browsing times are pretty abysmal. I could easily do 2hrs of web browsing while commuting of a day, not to mention listening to music at the same time. Neither my iPhone 4 or Galaxy S II suck their batteries dry like that. Kinda makes sense Apple left out 4G LTE if that's what happens.steven75 - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Yeah, you know it's bad when you get an LTE phone to do some serious laptop tethering away from home and the CHARGER can't keep up with the battery drain!I'll wait for generation 2, thankyouverymuch.
TrackSmart - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
The inability to charge the phone while using LTE is pretty serious flaw. I wonder if this has to do with the thermals of the phone.Maybe a quicker charge rate would result in too much heat? Brian recorded some pretty high temperatures while in use...
EJ257 - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
This is pretty sad. The ES400 I have would get hot too while charging+tethered and browsing with the laptop but at least it won't have negative battery drain. Granted the ES400 doesn't have LTE but with AT&T's network you won't notice a difference anyway.xype - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
"if there’s anything I’ve learned in the smartphone space, it’s that it is usually better to be first, than better,"I think there’s a company that disagrees with that. The one that released their first smartphone in 2007.
Being first only worked if you are actually better. But hey, being first worked wonders for all the Android Tablets and being 3rd (4th? 5th?) totally killed Windows Mobile 7, so who am I to argue?
xype - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Addendum: The Android Tablets being first relative to the other Android Tablets that were released at a later date.FlyBri - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
I know that these new Motorola qHD screens are a "better" version of PenTile, but to me it still looks pretty bad. I went into the Verizon store to see a Bionic myself, and I was quite disappointed with the screen. For me, I just can't use PenTile...period. If you go into Navigation for instance, the PenTile matrix is glaringly obvious on the blue location arrow. I know my Droid X has a lower res screen, but it's still way better in my opinion.I'm holding off for the phones that have 720p screens, which are coming out any minute now.
Mitch89 - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
PenTile is a total fail, it just looks awful. I considered picking up an Atrix, but that screen is just dreadful IMO for any kind of reading. I'm not sure why I even considered it after owning an HTC Desire for a few months (same problem, but WVGA).I MUCH prefer the WVGA display on my GSII to a qHD display with PenTile. There is just no comparison, one looks awesome, the other looks crap.
FATCamaro - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Yeah. Saw a GS2 in canada over the weekend and it was a gorgeous screen.