Score: 6.5 out of 10.
Great:
- Keyboard. Best one I've seen on any phone yet - spacious: 5 rows of letters!
- Killer speed on Verizon's 4G LTE network
- Fast dual core processor loads apps in the blink of an eye with 1 gig of RAM.
- Call quality is awesome. Calls were strong, even when I spent a week in Alaska.
Not So Great:
- Battery Life
- Clunky
- Screen is not the clearest
- Never had the best luck with Motorola cameras; Difficult to get a decent picture.
Hardware – What We're Working With
The Droid 4 has a dual-core 1.2 Ghz processor and a Gig of RAM - very nice in my book (and I don't always carry a "book"). You won't have any problem in terms of horsepower running your favorite apps.
The screen size is not as big as, say, the Droid Razr Maxx but please remember that we have a separate keyboard that is not hogging the screen area, so you get to use all of your screen. The screen, being smaller than the Droid Razr Maxx, also leaves this phone with a lower resolution of 960 x 540 (qHD).
My first impressions when holding the Droid 4 was that it is a bit on the clunky side; It has some noticeable weight added to it from that needed qwerty keyboard. I'll turn off the lights for a second so you can see how sweet this keyboard lights up the room. Awesome keyboard? Indeed.
Camera and Camcorder
Like other Motorola devices, the camera is so-so. I mean, I was in Alaska, all of the photos should look amazing (don't worry, I brought a backup camera for family photos), but I struggled getting the pictures to turn out halfway decent while using the Droid 4. When you're not a photographer like me and you're unsure - just take a bazillion pictures and delete the worst ones later. Enjoy some random photos from Alaska and Victoria, B.C..
And I just had to snap a photo of this sign found on the upper deck of the cruise ship:
I recorded quite a bit of video as well. The video quality was subpar in my opinion. I'll show you a few seconds of what I'm talking about - Here is a view from the 11th floor of our cruise ship after we docked in Victoria, B.C.:
Battery Life
I had trouble getting through an entire day without the Droid 4's battery expiring. Heck, by about noon, I'd put the Droid 4 into airplane mode for an hour or two, just so I could be sure the phone could make it to the end of the day, should I be unable to plug in for a boost charge.Call Quality
Sound coming through the earpiece was crisp/clear. Speaker phone volume was a bit weak in my opinion. Overall, the background noise cancellation was awesome - none of those annoying delays, for example, where you're talking with a person and you have to say: "What? sorry.. no.. You go first...ehh. Oops.. Sorry". What I'm saying is that the phone does a great job cutting out the background noise so that when a person is listening to the other person talking, their background noise isn't jumping in to sound as if they're interrupting.Software - System and Apps
My Verizon Mobile and Backup Assistant Plus are pre-installed (as well as V-apps and V-Cast). 4G Mobile Hotspot was amazing. Having 4G is a great (needed) thing for my situation, having to log into a VPN at certain times where a 3G connection might not cut it. When I can log into a Corporate VPN and finish some work on the road as fast I can on my home's high-speed internet, the 4G luxury turns into a necessity.
Conclusions
The Droid 4 is kind of bulky. However, if you're in need of an Android phone with a great, physical keyboard, the Droid 4 might be something you should consider.On a scale from 1 to 10, I give the Motorola Droid 4 a 6.5
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