Motorola Droid X: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Brian Klug on July 20, 2010 4:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola Droid X
- OMAP
- Mobile
Still Captures
What’s particularly interesting about the X is that it contains a bonafide mechanical shutter system that actually actuates. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s there. In what testing I’ve done, the shutter actually seems to activate of the time in low light situations than in bright light outdoors, which is a bit paradoxical to me. If you look close in the video, you can actually see the lens assembly go in and out for focusing, which is pretty normal.
Stills themselves aren’t amazing on the Droid X, but a definite step up from the camera on the Motorola Droid. If you’re making that jump, the difference will be a welcome improvement in camera quality.
You can compare all of the shots we’ve taken at 7 different locations in the gallery below. I’ve updated the results with an example shot from a Nikon D80 DSLR as well for comparison as something of a baseline. We’ve now got photos from the Droid X, EVO 4G, HTC Incredible, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, KIN ONE, KIN TWO (which has the competing 8 megapixel Sony IMX046 SoC), Motorola Droid, N900, and Nexus One. Location 7 and 4 are the most interesting, in my estimation.
The shots really speak for themselves. The EVO 4G and Incredible tend to oversaturate and over-sharpen, and the iPhone 4 does have some over-saturation of its own.
What I found particularly interesting about the X’s shooting modes for stills was in picture modes. The X will let you shoot stills very quickly at the expense of quality - they’re captured at 1 megapixel - in multi-shot mode. You don’t get to dictate when the exposures take place, 6 photos are just captured in rapid succession.
Next, there’s a self portrait mode that uses face detection to take your photo whenever it sees a face. Remember face detection I hit on earlier? This is an interesting application for it. Unfortunately, it refuses to detect my face and take the photo about 80% of the time. I even used my notebook’s built in webcam to monitor what was going on and if my face was in the frame. Even perfectly centered, most of the time inexplicably no dice. It even pops up a “no faces detected” box after 30 seconds. Apparently I’m a vampire or somesuch living undead.
But what I found really intriguing was the included auto stitch panorama mode. This is one of the most interesting applications I’ve seen for the compass; location aware image stitching. That’s right, you go into this mode, and can stitch together six images. That’s been done before, sure, but in the bottom left, you get an augmented reality preview showing how far you need to rotate to the next position before a photo is automatically captured. Repeat the process, and the software stitches the images back together automatically.
Panorama - Stitched entirely on the X
There’s just something so right about this process - I shouldn’t have to manually overlay bits of the previous image if the smartphone already has a good enough compass to know what direction we’re pointed, so do it in software! The X does precisely that.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
89 Comments
View All Comments
Swift2001 - Saturday, July 24, 2010 - link
I'm not stuck with that ridiculous red blob on the front page, am I? Don't know about you, but I don't want to turn my eye into a bloodshot beast's eye.GEverest - Sunday, July 25, 2010 - link
Is there some way to attach the Droid X to a tripod or something equivalent? I sing in a quartet and we often want to take a video of us singing to review how we look and hence improve.GEverest - Sunday, July 25, 2010 - link
Will it be possible to upgrade from 2.1 to 2.2 (Froyo) and eventually to 3.0? I presume it is a software upgrade.strikeback03 - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - link
Motorola has promised it will see 2.2 later this year. 3.0 is unknown, but probably a batter than even chance. If whatever security they use is circumvented and custom ROMs can be flashed then you will probably be able to run whatever you want.lukeevanssi - Sunday, July 25, 2010 - link
it is possible but not in the moment.the droid is like a iphone
iphone took about 3 months to unlock and another 2 months for the internet to work on tmobile.
the droid took 2 months to find a flash to metropcs (which has been found).
the code for the internet and mms for flashed metropcs droid has not yet been found or solve.
http://choyungteatrial.org
markomd - Sunday, July 25, 2010 - link
It really is a lovely little machine but it won't integrate vertically with my all-Mac system. Too bad it doesn't run on OS 4.1 or I'd buy one in a heartbeat. Alas, I must wait until Steve and company fix iPhone 4 and make nice with Verizon.silverwarloc - Monday, July 26, 2010 - link
Great review btw...but, I wanted to know the problems that have been posted on youtube concerning the screen flicker. Is this rampant? Or isolated?Brian Klug - Monday, July 26, 2010 - link
I haven't seen any screen flicker on mine, even almost a month later. I'm guessing it was just a bad batch of displays. I haven't had any of the display issues I've seen floating around. I should have made note of that, but if it was broken I would've definitely called it out.-Brian
crunc - Monday, July 26, 2010 - link
I got to know anandtech from their iPhone 4 review, which put all others to shame, and here again they've done a bangup job. The thought and detail put into these reviews is just amazing.halcyon - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - link
Could you please compare to Samsung Galaxy S variants as well?It spanks these babies (sans iPhone 4) on almost everything, afaik, battery, screen, cpu/gpu...
It'd be interesting for comparison purposes.
Also, Galaxy S is available almost everywhere in the world, Droid X has very miniscule availability in some parts of the US only.