I had an opportunity to review the Droid Bionic, my second LTE phone on Verizon. \u00a0The HTC Thunderbolt had its ups and downs that have largely been cleared up by updates, we\u2019ll see how well Motorola\u2019s introduction to LTE fares. \u00a0I have used the Bionic as my primary phone for a little over three weeks now.<\/p>\n
Device Looks and Design<\/strong> The two-tone look is good. \u00a0The touch-based home buttons are large, which helped me transition from the reversal of the Home and Menu buttons on the Thunderbolt. \u00a0I like them better than the Droid X buttons, which are physical buttons.<\/p>\n I was not looking forward to one aspect of moving from the Thunderbolt, and that was because all of my prior Motorola Android phones (except for the Devour I believe) had magnetic sensors that would trip the car or media dock apps when magents were detected at those spots. \u00a0This made carrying those phones in belt pouches a hassle because those have magnets in them. \u00a0I was relieved to find there are no magnetic reactions on the Bionic. \u00a0No more worrying about manually shutting off the screen once it pops on again passing a magnet into a case, or dealing with various dock modes and having to install apps to ignore those.<\/p>\n I miss the kick stand HTC builds into the Thunderbolt and the Evo. \u00a0Too bad more carries don\u2019t include those, they come in handy sometimes.<\/p>\n Packaging and Activation Notes<\/strong> Data<\/strong> My hope with the Bionic was that Moto’s LTE phone would lock and hold onto 4G signal better than the Thunderbolt, but so far mobile data performance is not noticeably better out-of-the-box than the Thunderbolt. \u00a0Even though the areas I live and work are well-covered by 4G, I still see the 3G indicator icons frequently.<\/p>\n Battery Life<\/strong> Display<\/strong> An improvement over the Droid X I appreciated was discovering the Bionic will output everything through its HDMI port. \u00a0The Droid X was limited in what would be sent to the HDMI output and there were apps out there to compensate for that, but with the Bionic everything is there… the desktop, games I load, movies I play.<\/p>\n User Interface<\/strong> Memory and Storage<\/strong> An example of where that affects use is my bookmarks backup app. \u00a0It is expecting to import\/export my browser bookmarks to \/mnt\/sdcard, so I had to copy that folder into the correct sdcard spot to get it to work. \u00a0Who knows where my browser downloads will show up.<\/p>\n Voice Call Quality<\/strong> Camera<\/strong> Verdict<\/strong> Bill is a member of the Verizon Wireless Customer Council, an invitational customer focus group sponsored by Verizon Wireless. \u00a0He periodically receives devices in exchange for review and comment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had an opportunity to review the Droid Bionic, my second LTE phone on Verizon. \u00a0The HTC Thunderbolt had its ups and downs that have largely been cleared up by updates, we\u2019ll see how well Motorola\u2019s introduction to LTE fares. … Read more
\nThe Bionic is nice and light, though some of that impression may be due to my carrying the Thunderbolt with Quasimodo extended battery pack. \u00a0There are no metal parts in the battery cover, so unlike the Thunderbolt is appears all of the antenna parts are in the body of the phone. \u00a0The extended battery cover is very streamlined as well.<\/p>\n
\nInitial unboxing was like most of the recent Android devices… small box with power\/data cable. \u00a0Activation coming from the HTC Thunderbolt was as easy as moving the SIM card over to the new phone. \u00a0Reminds me of the nice and convenient GSM days when I could easily change phones based on my mood of the day without logging on to a Web site or going through a long process to change equipment on the line. \u00a0It is a welcome feature for Verizon.<\/p>\n
\nData handoffs and seeming indecision on the part of the Bionic on whether to lock onto 3G or 4G are problematic. \u00a0I have run into a few situations where I pulled out the phone to do something and there was no data connection. \u00a0Sometimes putting the phone into airplane mode and back will get data to \u201cwake up\u201d but sometimes a reboot is required. \u00a0This is one of those frustrating things I hope will be solved by updates to the phone. \u00a0It seems all Android phones have a couple of infuriating bugs when released that later updates usually take care of.<\/p>\n
\nI tried using the standard battery for a few days but was not impressed, easily getting less than a day\u2019s use out of it. \u00a0Luckily I ordered an extended battery and performance is a little better. \u00a0Based on my normal usage patterns I can finish out usage with enough left to get me through early-morning the next day with the extended battery. \u00a0Plan to buy one unless you don\u2019t mind plugging the phone in mid-day or top it off with a car charger while driving.<\/p>\n
\nThe screen looks good, though not as good as the Thunderbolt indoors. \u00a0I use my phones for ebook reading and find the screen to be adequate and easy to read. \u00a0And unlike the Thunderbolt I don\u2019t have a hard time using the screen outdoors as long as the brightness is turned up.<\/p>\n
\nEverything is snappy and fast, even after loading the apps and widgets I use. \u00a0I wish it had 7 home screens instead of just 5, I often find myself wishing I had at least one more.<\/p>\n
\nOne issue that causes fits is how the Bionic maps its “external” storage. \u00a0The phone’s handling of storage (onboard storage and external card storage) is nonstandard and many of my apps don’t work well because of it. \u00a0The built-in 8GB of storage is mapped to \/mnt\/sdcard, and the microSD card is mapped to \/mnt\/sdcard-ext . \u00a0This means apps that expect to save to \/mnt\/sdcard (what other Android devices use) are going to save to the internal storage and not the card unless the app lets you change where it stores stuff. \u00a0I’m not happy with that, as now I’ll have app data in two places and not on the one single place I want it (the microSD card). \u00a0So if you are looking around the filesystem be aware of that, as I had some initial “I just copied that over, where is it?” moments.<\/p>\n
\nVery good, in fact exceptional as compared to other phones I have recently used. \u00a0I can get enough volume out of the earpiece in different environmental situations. \u00a0I don\u2019t talk much on the phone, but when I do it is nice to have a quality experience.<\/p>\n
\nThe Bionic\u2019s camera is so-so… I sometimes can\u2019t get it to focus correctly and have to re-take shots, and the time between when you tell it to take the pic and when it actually takes it is too long. \u00a0But it has served most of my needs so far.<\/p>\n
\nThe Bionic is easily the fastest Android phone I have used in terms of interface response. \u00a0Physical form is polished. \u00a0There will be some more interesting Android releases this Fall going into the holidays, but if you need to buy now and can put up with a few quirks and wait for required fixes via updates then I can recommend the Bionic.<\/p>\n