Motorola Atrix 4G (AT&T)

Pros: Fingerprint recognition rocks!
4-inch screen
Tons of apps
Excellent camera and 720p HD video recording
Complete app integration
Complete Google integration
Acts as a USB memory stick
Over the air updates
Voice to te

Cons: Battery life, It's good but not great
No Netflix!
Front-facing camera... useless?

Summary: Yep, I traded my iPhone 4 for this phone! Why? Because most of my life is in Google so I figured I might as well give Android a try. So, speaking as someone who's owned both platforms for a while, here's a quick list of pros and cons:

Atrix Pros:

1> Fingerprint recognition rocks! Imagine being able to unlock your phone with one hand! No code to remember, just key by swiping either of your two index fingers. Easy and secure.

2> Smooth edges and lighter in the pocket. My son showed me how his iPhone 4 has left a permanent imprint in his jeans front pocket. He's even got a spot where the sharp edge of the iPhone 4 case has actually cut a hole through his jeans. By contrast, my Atrix has rounded corners (like the iPhone 3 used to) and is much lighter so I barely feel it or see it sitting in my pocket.

3> The four inch screen is a full half inch larger than the iPhone 4. The extra half inch real estate really does make a difference, surprisingly.

4> Tons of apps - some are free on Android while the same ones on iPhone cost money. Case in point, Angry Birds is free on Android but is a paid app on iPhone. Amazon's own Android app store (which AT&T doesn't presently allow for Atrix but they promise a fix soon) also offers a daily paid Android app for free.

5> Excellent camera and 720p HD video recording. Plus, according to what I've been experiencing, I'm recording audio in stereo.

6> Complete app integration. When I add a new social app like Facebook to my phone and select to share something like a photo, the Android system immediately offers Facebook as an option to share/send to. With the iPhone, you're stuck with whatever sharing options are set in the OS. Sure, you could launch the iPhone Facebook app and share the photo that way but it's refreshing to see the wealth of choices immediately available to me when I'm already in the photo app and I just took a picture I want to share.

7> Complete Google integration. The first day I signed into my phone with my Google account, I instantly had all my Gmail contacts, mail and calendar items populated in my phone. Plus, Motorola automatically links in your other contacts - like Facebook, Twitter, Live.com, etc. once you add those accounts to your phone. So my contacts listings include a plethora of information about my friends - including their Facebook birthdays (which also show in my calendar!), their latest social postings and my last few personal interactions with them (texts, calls, emails, etc.). Another neat part of this integration is whenever a friend changes their profile picture, it automatically updates their picture in my phone's contacts.

8> Micro USB standard connection for charging and computer connectivity. It's really nice that I now have the same USB connection as my Kodak HD pocket camera and my daughter's phone. We keep a single cable in the car so we can charge any of these devices on the go.

9> Acts as a USB memory stick. This ability is built into Android. You plug it into a computer and you get several options for connectivity. One of them (USB) allows you to access the phone's entire memory (internal and micro SD) so you can easily transfer contents to/from the phone to any computer. I can't stress how nice it is to no longer be "married" to a single computer. I also can't stress how nice it is not to have to rely on iTunes to manage my phone's contents.

10> Over the air updates. I received my first firmware upgrade from Motorola about a week ago - it came directly to the phone! What a breath of fresh air to be able to upgrade my phone while it's just sitting on the coffee table. No cable required, no computer required. If you check the list of requirements for any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, you'll find a computer is absolutely required! Not so for Android phones. These things *are* computers in their own right.

11> Google Maps with spoken turn-by-turn directions! This amazingly free app from Google is available only on Android phones. It uses accurate GPS and depicts your location on a map which is capable of various layers (satellite, traffic conditions, terrain, etc.). Zoom into a city using just the map layer (all other layers off) and you'll see 3D renderings of all the buildings. Panning and changing direction or perspective is butter-smooth! Get directions to a location and you'll be brought to the Google Navigation app - which speaks directions to you while showing you your location on a map (which can also be set to show various layers). I used this app to get me successfully to a remote spot in Spokane WA I'd never been to before. I prefer this app to my car's dedicated GPS device!

12> Voice to text and text to voice! Speaking commands to my phone and speaking out texts and social updates has become so second nature to me now that I hardly find it necessary to type any more. While I'm in the car, the excellent Vlingo app (free and came with the phone) speaks out text messages to me loud and clear and lets me reply just by speaking! I can update Facebook or text a friend safely now while driving. It's also nice to hear a text spoken to me while I'm busy washing the dishes so I can choose whether or not it's important enough to stop what I'm doing to reply to. Voice recognition is built into Android and is available wherever a text input is found in any app throughout the system.

13> HDMI-Out rules! I went on a small trip to visit friends who had moved a few hundred miles away and brought my HDMI cable with me. Unlike the iPhone 4, HDMI-Out is built into the device and the cable is included. It was an easy thing to connect my phone to my friend's living room TV. The phone becomes a remote control for the content on the TV. You can view photos, videos and play music from your phone. No frame rate issues, no skewing or any anomalies at all. The 720p HD videos I'd shot earlier that day were a joy to watch on his large screen. The quality was so good my friend remarked how surprised he was to see actual HD content rendering from such a small device.

14> Flash for web sites! I used the excellent Pulse app when I had my iPhone 4 and routinely found myself staring at a blank, white square when I happened to link to a news article which contained a flash video (as so many do). Now, on my Atrix 4G, I use the same Pulse app but can now see and play the same content I was missing all along. This is a huge benefit for me as I no longer have to make an Evernote with the URL so I can remember to view at home what I couldn't view on the road.

And now for the cons:

1> Battery life. It's good but not great. I start my day with a fully charged phone around 6:30am and by the time I'm back in bed (around 11pm), I typically find myself at 20% or lower at the end of my day. Everyone uses their phones differently and I'm a sometimes heavy user who doesn't always bother to stop background apps and keeps wifi and GPS on 24/7. Why? Well, I've noticed usage of these background apps is handled relatively well by Android 2.2. They're often at zero percent CPU so I figure why bother closing them? In this way, Android is better at multitasking than the iPhone - which, if you keep too many apps open on an iPhone, it can actually crash/lockup! I also keep GPS and wifi on all the time because I've noticed they don't actually get used/accessed unless I launch or switch to an app that uses these systems. When I launch the map, I want the GPS function. When I launch the camera, I also want GPS (for geotagging my photos). When I'm wandering into Starbucks, I want to easily access their network without first having to start wifi on my phone.

2> No Netflix! Although I hardly ever played a Netflix video on my iPhone 4, just knowing I can't do that with my Atrix 4G irks me. It's like someone has taken a tool from my tool belt. Even though I may hardly ever use that tool, I miss having it and know it's gone now. In lieu of an actual video streaming Netflix app, I've settled for a Netflix queue managing app. At least I can browse titles and move them into my streaming queue for viewing at home on my Blu-Ray player.

3> Front-facing camera... useless? Another tool I hardly used but now feel is missing is FaceTime on the iPhone 4. Sure, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've used FaceTime (since it requires another iOS device or a Mac to communicate with) but it was neat. I've tried Tango, Fring and Yahoo Messenger on the Atrix but they either don't make use of the front camera at all or the results are a bit jittery). I hope Skype comes through for us Atrix owners soon!

Overall:

Overall, I'm happy with my decision to trade my iPhone 4 for an Atrix 4G. Eventually, AT&T will release the 4G cap on this device. Eventually, there will be a decent front-facing camera app. Eventually, Netflix may allow streaming videos. Let's face it, there is no such thing as the perfect phone. But, when you weigh the pros and cons for this phone, you can easily see there are more benefits to owning an Atrix 4G than owning an iPhone 4. I'm quite happy with my trade and enjoy seeing commercials which tout my phone as being the most powerful phone AT&T presently offers. Of course, that's bound to change very soon but the point here is I don't think I'll ever be tempted by the "fruit" again.

Updated on Jul 29, 2011

P.S. If you will buy this Motorola Atrix 4G I suggest at: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KZP4BQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=***************&********=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&************=B004KZP4BQ

Updated on Sep 27, 2011

Edit Broken Link:

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Updated on Apr 18, 2012

New Update!

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