Droid Bionic review

Ok, I’ve had the Bionic in hand for about a week and a half now – long enough to give more meaningful feedback.  (If you missed it, you can see my initial thoughts here.  This review assumes you’ve at least skimmed that; if not, go check it out.)

The Basics
The Bionic is Verizon‘s latest high-end phone, the only VZW phone with both a dual-core processor and a 4G (LTE) radio.  The specs are all over the place – I’m not going to repeat them all – but it’s got a dual-core CPU with 1G of RAM, a 4.3″ qHD screen, and an LTE radio – this is the most powerful phone Verizon offers (and, arguably, the most powerful combo available on any carrier right now).  However – and this is a big one, potentially – we’re mere weeks away from a flood of high-end, dual-core powerhouses, including the new Nexus Prime, which will quickly knock the Bionic down a notch or two.

The Build
I really like the form factor here – the phone is large but not unmanageable and feels very solid.  It’s got an attractive metal body with gorilla glass over the screen, and is surprisingly light in the hand.  The back is a matte plastic, sloping to a thicker top around the camera.  It’s not the thinnest phone out there but never feels too thick or too heavy.  It really gives off an impression of quality and is pleasant to hold or look at.  Two thumbs up in this regard.

Performance
Simply put: the Bionic screams.  I’ve never used a phone this fast, where everything you do is smooth and effortless and just about instantaneous.

The 4G network seems to average 11mbps down and 4 mbps up in NYC, which is almost an order of magnitude better than either Verizon’s CDMA network, or my home DSL.  Reception was generally pretty good, except for some parts of my house (which I’m convinced is lined in lead – and considering its age may be).  Phone service was also good, no one on the receiving end seemed to have any issues.

The dual core CPU really shines in this phone – and whatever Motorola did to optimize performance worked.  Most Android phones have a known sluggishness when it comes to response – you touch or slide or open an app and it stutters or pauses.  Newer models are better, of course, but road is the first time I’ve seen one perform like this.  The home screen/ launcher is silky smooth and in general you rarely feel like you’re waiting for the phone to figure something out.  I/O performance can lag occasionally, but every phone from every manufacturer (including Apple) tends to suffer from this and the average user will rarely encounter issues, if ever.

Display
A lot of people have written about Motorola’s pentile displays.  The short summary is that they use very little power, are quite bright (even in sunlight), have weak greens, and have an odd graininess to visuals that comes from the spacing of the pixels in the display.  In my experience, the problems aren’t as bad as some people say: the greens have apparently been bumped up quite a bit from older models, and the graininess is only obvious when you’re looking at certain colors and images.  Text looks sharp and very readable, and generally it’s not something that bothers me.  However, when it does, it’s really annoying.

In the end, having a 4.3″ screen with qHD resolution (960×540) is a real pleasure and that, plus the brightness and low power usage make for a very reasonable compromise in my mind.  It’s not close to being the best display out there, but you could certainly do worse, and it’s a step up from many.

Battery Life
What was that?  Battery life?  Here’s the first strike.  Battery life on the Bionic is bad.  It could be worse, but it’s nowhere near what I was hoping for.

A few points: Android’s battery life tends to be meh.  And Verizon’s LTE network is a known battery hog.  As a result, most of their 4G phones have appalling battery life.  The Bionic has a large battery and a fairly efficient screen, so it performs better than most, but it’s still (in my opinion) unacceptable in this day and age.  I tend to be a moderate to heavy user, with 2 google accounts syncing, facebook and g+ and twitter, plus google reader once an hour (caching full webpages plus images on the device), frequent usage, a few calls a day, and 2 subway rides a day (with little to no service underground – another situation known to drain the battery like crazy).  I ran a few tests, and here were my results:

Everything turned on except Bluetooth, including wifi at home for 2 hours, a subway ride, and 4G at the office: 9.5 hours.
4G off, everything else on except BT, same basic setup as before: 16 hours.
4G off, wifi off,  BT off: 13 hours(!).
4G off, wifi on both at home (2 hours) and in the office (9 hours), BT off, airplane mode for most of my subway ride: over 18 hours and counting.

What’s interesting to me is not that 4G uses the most power, but that 3G uses so much more than wifi – using wifi in favor of 3G data (and, in fairness, using some airplane mode while in the subway) extended the life of the phone by over 5 hours (so far).  That’s a huge difference, much greater than I would’ve expected.

So in summary: battery life is good if you’re on wifi most of the day; bad if you never use wifi; terrible if you never use wifi and use 4G and have lousy reception.  Realistically, though, most of the time I don’t need 4G, I’m just syncing email or my google reader feed, and 3G will do just fine – and in those scenarios, I actually get better battery life than my old Droid.  I’ve always got the option of cranking up the 4G when it makes sense (like when I’m watching a video or downloading a new app), and the rest of the time I get improved (but still not great) battery life.  Could be worse, I guess.

OS & Apps
Well, either you like Android and its freedom – and everything that comes with that, good and bad – or you don’t.  Personally, I love it, but a lot of people don’t.  The thing is, though, this isn’t vanilla Android (aka AOSP) – this is Motorola and Verizon’s take on Android, and that’s a little different.  For one, Motoblur – while Motorola has dropped the name, they still have a custom launcher/ home screen/ etc. interface.  Likewise, Android has some useful base apps, but Verizon likes to have a chance to pee in the pool and leave behind a bunch of fairly useless apps to hog up space on your phone.

The OS is a modified version of Android 2.3.4.  Motoblur is not the greatest mod ever, but it’s not the worst, either.  I have to say – while a lot of their modifications seem stupid to me, it is a lot smoother than I had expected.  The home screen is probably the best part – it has a nifty (if weird) sort of 3D effect when you swipe from screen to screen, and it allows you to easily move – and resize – home screen widgets and app shortcuts.  This is actually a good thing – it brings you functionality and a smooth interface that arguably improves on the default.  Ok, cool.  But on the flip side, Motorola has loaded it with custom icons for the various apps (phone, calendar, email, camera, etc.).  The problem is, those icons are not only ugly but they don’t even look particularly like what you’re expecting.  The camera icon doesn’t look like a camera, the camcorder icon doesn’t look like a camcorder, etc.  Why do that?  The default Android icons were clear and at least somewhat attractive, the Motorola replacements are neither.  Likewise, the launcher switches from the default vertical scrolling list to a more iphone-like side-swipe with distinct screens of apps.  Ok, that’s a matter of choice, some people may prefer that.  But they break the standard way of adding apps – normally a long-press on an app will allow you to add it to your home screen.  Motorola changed that so now it pops up a menu and adds multiple steps, so what used to be a quick and convenient action is now slower and less convenient.  Why change that?

The apps Verizon includes are forgettable – I can’t really remember what’s on there except for My Verizon (check your account info) and the VZW Navigator, which is a complete waste of space w/ Google Maps providing free high-quality GPS-style navigation.  The standard Google apps are included, and these are as good as you’re used to – the really excellent Gmail app, the already-mentioned excellent Google Maps, and the new and improved Market app – with a really slick, nice new interface.  You’ll never go wrong with those.

Call Quality
Not much to report here.  The call quality is solid, the speakerphone is a little quiet, but no real complaints.

Data Signal – Quirks
This one… data signal was generally good.  And, in fact, when coming out of the subway it picked up both 3G and 4G signals much more quickly than my OG Droid ever did.  But (and isn’t there always a but?) there were these times when switching radios between wifi and 3G, or 3G and 4G, when it would just lose its data connectivity.  Sometimes, flipping into airplane mode and back out will reset the radios and get you back online, and sometimes, it won’t.  I’m guessing this is a flaw that’ll be patched in time, but it’s annoying for now.  I’ll also throw out the concept that your average user may not be constantly flipping the radios on and off and testing battery life and signal, and maybe the average user that doesn’t mess with that stuff wouldn’t see these same issues – so take it with a grain of salt.  You may never see this issue.  (And maybe I just got a bum phone, too.)

Camera/ Camcorder
Not bad.  8MP, reasonable quality, fairly fast to take shots – the only real issue?  It sometimes, randomly takes eons to focus.  Most of the time it’s fast and gives nice shots, and then you’ll get that odd time, when it takes forever and you miss the shot – and get a blurry, useless shot instead.  Awesome.  The camcorder doesn’t seem to have the same problem, although I’ve used it less.  One other odd quirk about the phone: it has around 8 video resolution levels, but only seems to have 2 resolutions for the camera itself – 6 MP widescreen or 8 MP.  I do like the fact that you can use the flash while taking a video – nice little touch.

Advertising
This has nothing to do with the phone, of course, but Verizon’s bombastic Droid advertising is as over-the-top as usual.  The Bionic was apparently “Made from Machines… to Rule All Machines”.  There you go.  If you’re looking for a phone that will apparently let you defeat killer robots in an arena while letting you control your home stereo system (or something like that), this is the phone for you.

Hackability
I’m not referring to security, here – I’m referring to the ability to customize your phone, root it, change the OS, and install all kinds of things the manufacturer never intended.  It’s too early to really know, but so far the Bionic looks very promising here – it’s already been rooted, and the Cyanogenmod team already has a preliminary version of CM7 they’re working on.  With a little luck this’ll be almost as much fun to play with as my OG has been.

Conclusion
This is a tough one for me.  There’s a lot to like about this phone – it’s fast as hell, it looks and feels like a high-quality, well-made piece of technology, and the 4G modem brings wireless speeds that just put the old 3G CDMA network to shame.  The battery life is mediocre, on average, but if you’re using the 4G judiciously and are staying on wifi most of the time, it’ll do.  The phone is really a pretty good phone, and honestly, it’s fast enough and slick enough that even people that aren’t Android fans will find plenty to like.  But it’s hard to recommend outright when there are a huge lineup of kick-ass phones coming out – phones with NFC and HD screens and Ice Cream Sandwich… (not to mention, of course, the new iPhone coming out) and if you have the ability to wait a few months, you may find something even better.  Of course, if you can’t wait, you probably won’t be disappointed by the Bionic, either – it’s got enough juice to keep you happy for quite a while.