So we’ve had the DROID X in our dirty little mitts for about and hour, and while that isn’t nearly enough time to give a proper review, it is adequate enough to form some first impressions. So hit the read link and lets do this thing.
First — as this is most likely the thing everyone is wondering about — is the size. The DROID X does not feel like a phone with a 4.3-inch screen, and that isn’t a bad thing. Is the screen massive? Yes. Gorgeous? Yes. Too big to pocket? No. The phone has a great weight, completely solid feel, and great industrial design. You feel like you are holding a top-notch high-end phone.
Motorola bragged that the displays brightness was over 600 nits. We’ll just have to take their word for it. We say it is a nice, bright, and crisp display.
A nice tidbit we found that wasn’t on the official stat sheet has to do with microphones. The phone has three mics: one on the lower rear of the phone for noise cancellation, a second on the front (the mouth piece), and a third on the top of the phone right next to the 3.5mm headphone jack. The third mic is used to detect sound location and supplement the main mic when recording video. Pretty cool.
The phones 8GB internal memory is just that, 8GB…all for you, not for Android. There is a dedicated 512 MB’s of ROM that is just for Android, the 8GB internal memory is for applications and application data only; all of your media will be stored on the microSD card (16GB card included in the box, expandable up to 32 GB).
The camera seems great. We’ve only snapped a few images but they seem really crisp. We’ll cover the camera, and the 720p video recording, more in our full review. The folks from Motorola informed us that the camera has a mechanical shutter, which should reduce shutter delay and allow you snap sharper images. We also found that the raised area where the camera and dual-LED flash lives provides a great hand-hold and makes the phone feel smaller than it actually is.
Motorola has added some nice software touches to the phone as well. MOTOBLUR widgets are now resizable; you can make them as small or as large as you wish. There is a very handy battery manager that will allow you to turn off data services at a set time or on a set schedule while still allowing the phone to get SMS messages and phone calls. Motorola also added a data manager that allows you to toggle background data and data roaming as well as force social applications to update over Wi-Fi only.
In summary, our first impressions are very, very positive. Between the phones impressive stat sheet and our initial tests we can’t wait to start really putting this thing through its paces over the next several weeks.
