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
Conclusion & Final Thoughts
The Bionic is the first smartphone we’ve seen to date that combines 4G LTE connectivity with a dual core SoC, ending a surprisingly long period where those two were mutually exclusive. The result is what’s currently the best cross section of features on paper, and a shockingly speedy experience.
The Bionic’s stock battery life isn’t far behind the other LTE smartphones, but it’s also not any better than them. That kind of performance is very indicative of where we should expect things to sit until 28nm LTE basebands and SoCs start arriving on the scene in 2012. If you don’t have access to a microUSB charger for at least a few hours during the day, the standard battery might be too much of a stretch. If you’re in that situation, the extended battery is an absolute necessity.
Though this Bionic isn’t the phone we were shown at CES, the result of being kicked back to the drawing board is overall pretty positive. The problem is that the incurred delay puts the Bionic right up against another phone with a dual core OMAP 4460, LTE, and a new build of Android. It would be a disservice to readers to not at least make mention of the Nexus Prime somewhere in this review, but my thoughts are still to wait and see what that device has to offer. I wouldn’t expect battery life to differ all that much however, given the same combination of features.
I sound like a broken record, but the Bionic really is a combination of the Droid 3’s software load and SoC, the Droid X2’s display and form factor, and a Motorola 4G LTE baseband. It’s a combination that finally breaks the mutual exclusivity that dual core and 4G LTE have had since Verizon’s 4G LTE launch. The Bionic that we saw and played with at CES never really saw the light of day, and yet I feel like this “Targa” turned Bionic does the promise of being the first dual core smartphone with 4G LTE justice. Even though the Nexus Prime is looming eerily on the horizon as of this writing, if there’s anything I’ve learned in the smartphone space, it’s that it is usually better to be first, than better, and you have to hand it to the Bionic for being first to dual core with LTE.
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steven75 - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Except for the waiting for your battery to charge, as proven in the tests above.Omega215D - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Not all of us have that issue with LTE. Granted the battery life isn't something worth writing home about but it's sufficient, especially after receiving Gingerbread on my Thunderbolt. On my original Droid and my brother's iPhone 4 there were times when the system would be pegging the EVDO constantly when loading some web pages thus putting more strain on the battery.kepler - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
I would be interesting to see how much data is consumed during the tests. If the LTE phone is consuming 4x the data, but lasting half the time, that is arguably 2x increase in possible productivity.Aikouka - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
I'm assuming that there isn't much difference between the data. LTE modems simply seem to be power hungry, so running a constant stream of data will show pretty high battery use.This knowledge is good for some users, because for people that like to stream things like Pandora, they may consider turning off LTE (LTE isn't really required for streaming music). But what came to my mind while reading the article is that **constant data use tests** don't necessarily mimic the actions that all users take.
It'd be interesting if we could see power characteristics related to a single action. For example, how many YouTube videos could I load throughout a single charge of the battery? If the LTE-equipped phones can load 200 vs. 50 on EVDO (completely made-up numbers) simply because LTE provides significantly faster speeds, then that shows a rather large multimedia advantage.
Even without such a test, I think it's pretty easy to see that while LTE is pretty amazing to see in a phone... there's a lot of micro-managing that you may have to consider doing to see the sort of battery life that we've come to expect out of a phone.
secretmanofagent - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
One thing that I would like to point out (and I think it's specific to Blur and worth mentioning) is the ability to dismiss individual notifications instead of having to open each individual notification or clearing all of them. I love that feature on the Bionic.I have seen some data connectivity issues with it where I will randomly lose all data and be unable to recover it until I reboot the phone (airplane mode doesn't fix it). This can happen at any point in the day or night, and I'm having my phone exchanged.
anandtech pirate - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
nah, that's okay. we don't wanna see your face.... :-palmost all phone reviews only show the phone which is what people are watching to see.
LordConrad - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
My Thunderbolt is rooted and running Andriod 2.3.4, courtesy of Das BAMF 3.0 RC4.9 rom.I've overclocked it from 1.0GHz to 1.2GHz
A few benchmark results:
Sunspider = 3092ms
GUImark 2 (fullscreen) = 48.32
LinPack (single-thread) = 44.831
GLbench 2.1 Egypt = 18.2
I'll stay with this until Qualcomm Krait gets here. Besides, I would much rather have a TFT screen at WVGA than a Pentile screen at qHD.
Omega215D - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Let's see what the Samsung Prime and the HTC Vigor have in store for us now that they are using HD screens.I have the OTA Gingerbread on my Thunderbolt. I get similar results without rooting or overclock. Battery life is longer as well. I just have to avoid downloading useless apps from the market though (thanks to a certain APK).
LordConrad - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
I'm looking forward to the HTC Vigor also. I don't care for Samsung devices, the screens are nice but they feel cheap and are not as easy to root as newer HTC phones. The Thunderbolt was annoying to root and I'm not doing that again.I forgot to mention that I got the 3200mah extended battery from Seidio Online shortly after buying the phone. Also, the main purpose of rooting was to enable programs such as WiFi Tether. I refuse to pay an extra $30 for tethering since I never exceed my phone's 2GB data plan (tethering is only occasional).
jeepdinger - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
I would be curious to see the number of times each page loads when the battery test is run. It was stated that several pages load continuously during the test. The new LTE speeds versus the slower 3G speeds should manage the same or more page loads for the same or less battery life. If this were true then there is a definite advantage to the LTE speeds even though the battery life seems less when the pages are continuously loaded. Is this something that could be added to the graphic, maybe as 2 bars per phone listed. Thanks.