Motorola Droid X: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Brian Klug on July 20, 2010 4:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola Droid X
- OMAP
- Mobile
Screen
The X, like the original Droid and HTC EVO, uses a traditional LCD TFT display instead of AMOLED like we’ve seen in the Nexus One and HTC Incredible. As noted earlier, the X also keeps the same FWVGA resolution as the original Droid, but increases screen size to 4.3 inches.
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Left: Motorola Droid, Right: Motorola Droid X (Same size)
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The result is that PPI drops from 266 on the Motorola Droid to 228 on the X. The EVO uses a more Android standard 800 x 480 WVGA resolution, but has slightly lower PPI at 217. The end result is that pixels are more visible on the EVO than the X, losing out to the original Droid. For reference the iPhone 4 comes in at 330 PPI.
Left to right: EVO 4G, Droid X, Nexus One, iPhone 4
One of the first things that struck me about the X’s screen was that it appeared undersaturated at first glance. To some extent, this is the result of me being used to looking at oversaturated Android elements on AMOLED devices. I’ve only spent a limited time with the EVO display, but it looks like HTC has increased saturation to make it look comparable to the HTC Incredible.
It’s more than likely that what the display looks like on the X is actually how the Android UI really looks. This could be a problem of perception for people that buy the X; even though the display itself might be more representative of what colors really look like, because it isn’t oversaturated (and thus what people are used to seeing), it might set wrong impressions about color accuracy.
As noted before, the HTC Incredible and Nexus One displays show 0 nits of brightness on our i1D2 colorimeter, so contrast is technically nearly infinite, which is why they’re omitted from the contrast chart.
Outdoors, smartphone displays still photograph poorly and don't look great either. However, I found the X to be no less enjoyable than any other device outside if you were patient and careful to keep it in the shade.
Speakerphone
In keeping with our smartphone reviews, I measured the loudness of the X’s speakerphone using an Extech sound meter 6 inches above the display of the device. I call an automated weather report ASOS number, and wait for the call to complete. The average loudness in dBA is reported below. In all cases, ambient noise floor is a controlled 51.8 dBA.
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice I updated the display and speakerphone charts with data from the HTC EVO since Anand sent his my way. Here, we see the EVO 4G taking the loudness crown by a decent margin. The X’s speakerphone is decently loud, but not the absolute loudest in the pack.
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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.