Motorola Droid 3 Review - Third Time's a Charm
by Brian Klug on July 30, 2011 12:01 AM ESTDroid 3 Car Dock Accessory
Before we leave the subject of superficial hardware impressions and the exterior, I want to mention something else. Motorola did something interesting and sent along the official Droid 3 car dock accessory. I’m familiar with the Droid 1 and 2 car docks, with a friend of mine owning and using one daily.
The Droid 3 car dock is changed but only slightly, with a larger form factor designed to accommodate the Droid 3’s heftier size. I like that the car charger consists of two pieces. By default, the dock is slightly oversized to accommodate a Droid 3 and reasonably sized case, and a plastic tray that fits inside to then accommodate a Droid 3, sans case.
Like other docks, the Droid 3 car dock uses a suction cup to stay attached to a surface, in this case ideally a glass surface. As smartphone editor, to say that I’ve tried a wide gamut of smartphone car mounts is an understatement. Like most suction cup based mounts, the official Droid 3 model really does need a surface with the level of smoothness only glass can provide to stay attached. Odds are that your dashboard won’t be sufficiently smooth enough to keep the mount suctioned on. The smartphone slides in, and a top spring loaded latch locks down on the device to hold it in place.
There’s a microUSB connection on the back side of the car dock into which a car charger plugs. The dock pivots on a ball which can be tightened. Again, I was impressed with the weight and balance of the car dock, which makes it very stable when attached to a windshield. I have a variety of accessory socket chargers, but ordered the official Motorola accessory socket USB charger just to see whether anything differs. I’m happy that the day of accessories being locked to specific manufacturers is long over.
As always, mounts that are specifically designed to a particular product fare better, and the Droid 3’s is no exception. The whole apparatus is nicely balanced and dampened with enough mass that the device doesn’t shudder or shake violently at any road speed or condition. I drove around town in my truck at surface street speed and on the interstate at 80 MPH with the Droid 3 in the mount and came away impressed.
The device docks inside and makes a microUSB connection with the base, which has some signaling that also launches the car mode in the device. From here, one can access some quick shortcuts including four custom applications, some call functionality, and a simple navigational map. The map shows current speed and optionally direction, but doesn’t offer much more functionality beyond simply a map and current position indicator. For navigation, one has to actually use Google navigation instead. It’s possible to exit the car mode software, but all roads do tend to lead to it afterward while docked.
There’s not much more to comment about the dock other than that it nicely accommodates the Droid 3. It would be nice if Motorola shipped a microUSB charger along with the dock, as the device essentially needs one for the dock to be useful. At $39.99 as of this writing, the dock is a bit expensive but admittedly priced around what I’m used to for mounts that don’t end up feeling cheap and vibrating endlessly. The other options are generic solutions that adjust to fit, or other custom solutions for specific vehicles.
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jigglywiggly - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
i'd sell myselfThis phone lux nice, do want, I just wish it was on at&T
7amood - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
why don't I see any galaxy s2 in the comparison charts and where is the galaxy s2 review from anandtech?? :/ *waiting*Brian Klug - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
We actually just got an SGS2 in this week (international version) and I'm busily working on the review for that device ;)-Brian
Omega215D - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
I got to spend some time with this phone and it is pretty nice but doesn't feel as solid as the Original Droid nor look as elegant. Thankfully the Droid 3 got it where it counts performance-wise. The phone crashed when activating the camera and required a battery pull but that was only once. If I didn't have my Thunderbolt (which is doing well on battery life now) the choices would be Droid Incredible 2 or Droid 3 as they are both international phone. That would change if Verizon decides to get more WP7 phones.I liked the review. It's very detailed and unbiased, unlike the sorry excuse for a review from PhoneArena which shows it's clear Apple bias.
Johnmcl7 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
I'm extremely disappointed there's not even one phone of this class and type for sale here, there's rumours of an HTC Doubleshot with a keyboard but still no sign of it. I've been trying the software keyboard on a Tab for a while but I can't stand it, I much prefer the N900's physical keyboard which leaves me stuck for the moment for an upgrade.John
Brian Klug - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
I guess you could always spring for the Chinese version, but hopefully there's a Milestone international version equivalent coming soon.-Brian
piroroadkill - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
Aw man, even my Desire HD has 768, and it actually gets put to use.Why cheap out, Motorola?
That said, as much as this looks great, I'd never recommend it due to Motorola's anti-modding community stance. Oh well.
Ben - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
I'm wondering if "The Droid 3 has excellent ambient noise cancellation during calls, again thanks to the two extra antennas which are no doubt used for processing. I’m not sure what IP is beyond the Droid 3’s noise rejection hardware, but clearly it does a good job."Should read as "The Droid 3 has excellent ambient noise cancellation during calls, again thanks to the two extra microphones which are no doubt used for processing. I’m not sure what IP is behind the Droid 3’s noise rejection hardware, but clearly it does a good job."
Brian Klug - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
Yeah I got antennas and microphones sort of confused there, thanks! Fixed now!-Brian
Bob-o - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link
It's awesome they included a row of numbers at the top, I hate switching when entering mixed input. But why, oh why did they not put the usual secondary symbols on the number keys??! You know, !, @, #, $, etc. That's standard!!! What were they thinking??! Groan. . .Also:
> What feels neglected is how anemic the hardware keyboard auto-replace engine is.
> Compared with the gingerbread and even Motorola multi-touch keyboards, the hardware
> keyboard has an almost non-existant auto-replace engine for fixing misspelled words.
This makes me question Android's software stack. Why would each device (whether physical or virtual) have to implement this functionality? This should be a filter on input, no matter what device the user is using to enter data. . . and so it should work identically no matter what keyboard is being used. Stupid.