Motorola Droid X: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Brian Klug on July 20, 2010 4:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola Droid X
- OMAP
- Mobile
Video
The X joins a number of smartphones shooting 720P video. It shoots 1280x720 video in MPEG-4 format at a full 30 FPS with AAC audio. This is up from the 24 FPS of the original Motorola Droid as mentioned earlier. Average video bitrate is nearly 1 megabyte/s. As expected, you can force the LED on and shoot video with illumination. 720P video capture is limited to 30 minutes at a time.
The layout of the video interface is virtually identical to the still interface. You can launch camcorder to get directly to shooting video, or just use camera for stills, or either one and switch between.
I found video quality to be almost as good as the iPhone 4’s, which is arguably the current leader. The EVO 4G’s video looks oversaturated and uses a noticeably worse audio codec, AMR narrowband. Though video bitrate is almost the same, I notice more blocking in the EVO 4G’s video than the X’s. I shot the X and EVO videos in the same hand at the exact same time, so feel free to do comparison on your own. Still, it’s hard to deny that the X’s video doesn’t look much more like what you’d expect, and the difference is all software and that SoC difference surprisingly.
Motorola Droid X
HTC EVO 4G
Nexus One
iPhone 4
HTC Droid Incredible
Motorola Droid
Nokia N900
The X also uses that three microphone array to do a lot of special noise canceling. The result is four different audio “scenes” for the user when in video mode. Everyday captures audio from every microphone, outdoors reduces wind noise, concert is for preventing microphone distortion and capturing loud music videos, narrative is for capturing videos while commenting on the scene, and lastly subject is for capturing video with audio from the front of the camera. I tried all of the audio scenes with the exception of subject, and found that they actually do a decently good job.
I’m impressed with how good of a job the narrative mode did - while shooting the video I couldn’t hear myself talk most of the time and didn’t expect much in the way of results. My test videos are the following:
Droid X - Outdoor Setting
Droid X - Narrative Setting
Droid X - Everyday Setting
Droid X - Concert Setting
Unless I’m mistaken, the X has the most microphones of any smartphone on the market, and I think Motorola has put some interesting use scenarios together with their five different sound scenes. It’s interesting that Motorola bills the X as a camcorder, dedicating a special application tile to camcorder over stills.
But that's not all, there's also video shooting modes that are a bit special, same as there were camera modes for stills. The X provides settings for slow motion and fast motion. When I saw the slow motion setting, I immediately suspected that higher framerate would come at the cost of video resolution. Really there are two reasons for that - pixel binning to gather enough light given a faster (shorter) integration time, and to keep the load on the SoC video encoder block the same.
As you'll see shortly, my suspicions were correct. Slow motion video is shot at 320x240 with no audio. Similarly, fast motion mode seems to reduce sampling but keep the encoded rate the same, similarly there is no audio in the file.
Droid X - Slow Motion Setting
Droid X - Fast Motion Setting
I did encounter one rather catastrophic crash while testing. After changing microphone effect modes, the camera preview went portrait, ditched all of the control interface, and refused to quit. After a minute of mashing the home button, I was able to finally get back to the home screen, but launching the camera again yielded the same thing. This all happened live, right where I was shooting test videos on the corner.
See what's wrong?
A reboot solved the whole thing, but perhaps this is something Motorola could take a look at fixing.
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Spoooon - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - link
Just noticed some similarities between a "review" on CNN (http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/technology/100... and this one:CNN Money:
Overall, the build quality of the X is solid. Motorola has pulled off two high-end Android phones -- this and the original Droid -- that really feel good and inspire confidence. There's no give on any of the buttons, the volume buttons aren't loose and broken out of the box like some were on the original Droids, and the grippy plastic makes it feel even better. Having the phone tilt a few degrees and not rest completely flat on surfaces will help prevent the back from getting scratched up.
Anandtech:
Overall, the build quality of the X is solid. Motorola has pulled off two high end Android phones that really feel good and inspire a lot of confidence. There’s no give or play with any of the buttons, the volume buttons aren’t loose and broken out of the box like some Droids were, and the grippy plastic makes it feel even better. Again, I think having the phone tilt a few degrees and not rest completely flat on surfaces will help the back not get scratched up.
They are peppered throughout the CNN review. Maybe CNN borrowed your content with your consent?
Spoooon - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - link
Oops. Noticed the attribution on the first page of the CNN article.LOL, I started reading it an hour ago, then stopped to work, then went back to it. :)
grkhetan - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Hello, One question about the antenna chart. In the "holding naturally" column, where you touching the lower left black strip in the iphone 4?THanks
Gaurang.
brucebergman - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
I buy a phone to make phone calls first, be fancy second. (Fancy is nice, yes! But...) I didn't see anything on antenna analysis, or an externally accessible antenna jack should you feel the need to plug in some serious RF gain.My last two phones were the Audiovox CDM9000 and the LG VX2000, and currently is a Palm Treo 700wx. What do they have that the new crop do not? A real antenna, for those places where the NIMBY's won't allow new cell sites, and a way to connect an external antenna if you go out in the boonies a lot.
Until someone addresses this, I'm sticking with the Palm Treo. Or till it's hopelessly outdated and/or breaks and they can't find a replacement, at least.
weekilter - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Too bad Moto couldn't have had the same understanding that Apple did and prevent VeriZon from putting their logos all over the device. Why the carriers think their logo adds to the appeal of a device is lost on me.myshadows - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
Thanks for the awesome review! I may have missed this, but what is the speed of the internal 8 GB of memory compared to the Class 4 SD Card?ItsaRaid - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Anand or Brian-Which would you pick?
Im trying to decide which way to go, I have a BB9700, with problems, I have looked at Both Phones the IPHone 4 and the Droid X- Im stuck- Hope maybe you can guide me as well.
Here is my Direct Contact Info:
ItsaRaid@columbus.rr.com
Hope you will take a few moments of time and help guide my decision making. Both Screens are Gorgeous and their sizes are no a big deal-
Thank You
Larry
BookDoctor - Monday, September 27, 2010 - link
I'm with you right down the line, especially regarding the length of the charging cord. Seems to me it's just another case of the supplier wanting to make an extra buck on accessories. Oh, well. . . . Nonetheless, I think the superior performance across the board makes it a small price to pay to have what's--at least in my book--the best Android device thus far.smithgood9 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
As a Droid X fan, I find it useful to me. I wanted to transmit videos to PS3 for enjoying, but I failed. Because PS3 can only play it supports video formats. and PS3 can't support 3GP or other formats. Fortunately, I find a great Droid X video converter - Foxreal Video Converter, which can convert between various videos with excellent output quality. Use it transmit videos to MP4 and transmit videos to PS3 by DLNA function.