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  • EndlessChris - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Great review as always. Looks like this will be my new phone :)
  • RaistlinZ - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Sharp lookin' phone. I like.
  • vol7ron - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    I like this too, larger screen, nice looking keyboard, great looking device. It seems to have it all.

    One thing, does it really have a 0.3MP front-facing camera? I would suspect 1.3MP would be more realistic, especially since there are probably economies of scale for that technology right now.

    Thx,
    vol7ron
  • Brian Klug - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link

    Vol7ron,

    It definitely does have a 0.3 MP (VGA) front facing camera. http://developer.motorola.com/products/droid-3-xt8...

    I'd like to see 1.3 MP sensors on the front for sure, but at this point it doesn't make sense until both the per-pixel quality is the same (same size pixels) and there are apps that can actually do some HD teleconferencing (like if Skype had support). We're almost there though.

    -Brian
  • Myrandex - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    It would be for me if it wasn't for this bastardization that Verizon did:

    The obvious next part of the story is that WCDMA HSPA+ 14.4 Mbps connectivity. Unfortunately, Verizon has locked the retail Droid 3 out of seeing USA-based GSM/WCDMA networks with an MCC (Mobile Country Code) lock.

    Why can't Verizon just allow the hardware to perform at its fullest rather than finding some way to lock it down? They have always been terrible about locking their phones in some way.

    Jason Cook
  • themossie - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Tried the Droid 3 in store the day it came out, mixed feelings about the screen.
    Found it very usable for applications, not usable for serious reading (news, ebooks, etc). First time I've suffered eyestrain from an LCD screen with decent brightness and contrast. Droid 1 works great for this use case.

    Brian, Anand and the rest of the AnandTech team - any opinions on this? Anyone else?
  • themossie - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Also, thanks for the great review - business as usual at Anandtech!
  • steven75 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Indeed. Can't believe he tried to equate this pentile display with less resolution in a larger screen size (significantly worse PPI) with the retina display. They aren't even close.
  • bplewis24 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    I'll trust the guy who looks at hundreds of phones per year over the hyperbolic masses who troll the internet.

    I'll also trust my own eyes and science, which prove you wrong.
  • Finraziel - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    Well, I'll also trust my own eyes, and the picture right above where Brian says he doesn't mind pentile too much really makes the droid3's screen look like crap compared to the lower resolution droid2 right next to it. My experience with other pentile screens also suggests there's absolutely no point in increasing the resolution only by using a trick like this, you end up with noticably lower effective resolution. I'd prefer an actually sharp screen over impressive specifications.
    I really hope when the 720p screen phones come out in the next half year or so they wont be using cheap tricks like this.
  • Lucian Armasu - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    I completely agree with you on this. Either raise the resolution for a normal LCD/AMOLED screen (RGB) or don't raise it at all if you're going to use Pentile. It makes the display worse overall.

    It's like you're trying to increase sharpness of the display by increasing resolution by 30%, and then you use Pentile which *drops* sharpness by 60%. The end result is negative on the sharpness of the display.
  • YoPete525 - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    Have you guys actually looked at the Droid 3 in person? Most elements on the screen still appear sharper than say on the Incredible 2, which has a relatively comparable 4-inch screen with the 800x480 resolution. You also have to realize that a higher resolution means more viewable content, such as more settings options on the same screen, or more emails in the same view. The increased detail is very noticeable on, for example, home screen icons, looking at the Droid 3 and then a phone with the traditional 800x480 makes icons on the smaller resolution screen appear comically large.

    Solid colors, especially the green (which is in the battery icon), do look fuzzy, as well as a combination of lines on certain backgrounds, and colored text. But at least give the screen a chance in person before you write it off. In terms of overall screen sharpness, you're right in that the RGBW Pentile matrix isn't ideal, but it isn't as bad as you make it out to be.
  • snowblind64 - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    Let's not forget there are benefits to a RGBW pentile screen. Battery drain is consistently well under 10% on my Droid 3 thanks to that extra white sub-pixel.
  • themossie - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    For some, it really is that bad.

    I used it in person, spent a couple off hours in the shop playing with it. Compared to the Droid 1, on the Droid 3 I have to read text at a greater font display size / zoom level (the characters have to be bigger on screen) and as a result can fit less content on the screen than on the Droid 1.

    Best comparison I can make: it feels like you are running an LCD screen at a very uncomplimentary non-native resolution. Try running a 1080p screen at 900p, it's painful to most any power user - you can still read and do work, but everything is fuzzy and hurts the eyes. Some people aren't bothered by this, others get headaches.

    For UI elements, the screen is acceptable; for reading this becomes a problem.

    I'm glad (and jealous) the Droid 3 screen works for you :-) I want a new slider that beats my OG Droid!
  • RavnosCC - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    Agreed! I played w/the phone side by side with my D1 on all my favorite sites, reading the same content... trying to find a comparable zoom level on the D3 that didn't make the text look horrible was near impossible on most of the sites I frequent. I think Moto needs to seriously rethink the idea that increasing specs while effectively lowering quality will become the future :( The trade-offs aren't worth it, imho.
  • relativityboy - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link

    As a posessor of the D3 I can say my D1's screen looks much better.
  • Brian Klug - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    So you have to keep in mind that the photo actually is a 100% crop that I supplied to just show the differences in the subpixel matrix between RGBW and RGB.

    I've been pretty critical of PenTile RGBG in the past, and admittedly RGBW still isn't as desirable as straight up RGB, but it definitely is a way to emulate higher equivalent resolution. The other RGBW advantage is of course the reduction in power (just keep the W subpixel in the on position when displaying white) and thus requiring a less powerful backlight.

    Again, I'd definitely prefer a true qHD 960x540 display like what HTC has on the Sensation/EVO 3D, but this isn't too bad compared to how RGBG looked on the previous generation of AMOLED displays, if nothing else because the vast majority of webpages render with sharp black edges properly.

    -Brian
  • Lucian Armasu - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    It's because of the Pentile Matrix. It makes the screen fuzzier. I wish manufacturers would stop using it. It's not a trade-off I'm willing to make over whatever benefits Pentile brings.
  • hwarrior - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Too bad Droid 3 is Verizon linked.
    http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/18/motorola-xt860-...
  • jjj - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Motorola will be using 2 LTE chips in it's 5 LTE devices planned to be released this year (Xoom, Bionic,1 more phone and 2 more tablets).One of the chips is developed by Motorola and the other one ... no clue really but Motorola might not want to kill battery life by using Qualcomm so maybe ST-E or Icera.
  • jigglywiggly - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    i'd sell myself

    This phone lux nice, do want, I just wish it was on at&T
  • 7amood - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    why don't I see any galaxy s2 in the comparison charts and where is the galaxy s2 review from anandtech?? :/ *waiting*
  • Brian Klug - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    We actually just got an SGS2 in this week (international version) and I'm busily working on the review for that device ;)

    -Brian
  • Omega215D - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    I got to spend some time with this phone and it is pretty nice but doesn't feel as solid as the Original Droid nor look as elegant. Thankfully the Droid 3 got it where it counts performance-wise. The phone crashed when activating the camera and required a battery pull but that was only once. If I didn't have my Thunderbolt (which is doing well on battery life now) the choices would be Droid Incredible 2 or Droid 3 as they are both international phone. That would change if Verizon decides to get more WP7 phones.

    I liked the review. It's very detailed and unbiased, unlike the sorry excuse for a review from PhoneArena which shows it's clear Apple bias.
  • Johnmcl7 - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    I'm extremely disappointed there's not even one phone of this class and type for sale here, there's rumours of an HTC Doubleshot with a keyboard but still no sign of it. I've been trying the software keyboard on a Tab for a while but I can't stand it, I much prefer the N900's physical keyboard which leaves me stuck for the moment for an upgrade.

    John
  • Brian Klug - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    I guess you could always spring for the Chinese version, but hopefully there's a Milestone international version equivalent coming soon.

    -Brian
  • piroroadkill - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Aw man, even my Desire HD has 768, and it actually gets put to use.
    Why cheap out, Motorola?

    That said, as much as this looks great, I'd never recommend it due to Motorola's anti-modding community stance. Oh well.
  • Ben - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    I'm wondering if "The Droid 3 has excellent ambient noise cancellation during calls, again thanks to the two extra antennas which are no doubt used for processing. I’m not sure what IP is beyond the Droid 3’s noise rejection hardware, but clearly it does a good job."

    Should read as "The Droid 3 has excellent ambient noise cancellation during calls, again thanks to the two extra microphones which are no doubt used for processing. I’m not sure what IP is behind the Droid 3’s noise rejection hardware, but clearly it does a good job."
  • Brian Klug - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Yeah I got antennas and microphones sort of confused there, thanks! Fixed now!

    -Brian
  • Bob-o - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    It's awesome they included a row of numbers at the top, I hate switching when entering mixed input. But why, oh why did they not put the usual secondary symbols on the number keys??! You know, !, @, #, $, etc. That's standard!!! What were they thinking??! Groan. . .

    Also:

    > What feels neglected is how anemic the hardware keyboard auto-replace engine is.
    > Compared with the gingerbread and even Motorola multi-touch keyboards, the hardware
    > keyboard has an almost non-existant auto-replace engine for fixing misspelled words.

    This makes me question Android's software stack. Why would each device (whether physical or virtual) have to implement this functionality? This should be a filter on input, no matter what device the user is using to enter data. . . and so it should work identically no matter what keyboard is being used. Stupid.
  • RoninX - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    I'm guessing that people who prefer a physical keyboard (like myself) would rather manually correct spelling errors than deal with <a href="http://damnyouautocorrect.com/">overly aggressive autocorrect algorithms</a>.

    I currently have a Droid 2 on a one-year contract that's eligible for an upgrade, and I'm strongly learning toward getting a Droid 3, due largely to the excellent keyboard.

    I'll have to see the Pentile screen in-person before making a decision. I find it interesting that some people find the Pentile effect imperceptible, while others find it unbearable.

    I'm also curious about the Samsung <a href="http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/29/atts-sleek-samsung-s... which looks like a dual-core Exynos slider. The keyboard doesn't look nearly as good as the Droid 3's, but the 3000+ score on Quadrant (similar to the SGS2) is intriguing...
  • RoninX - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    That should read, the Samsung http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/29/atts-sleek-samsung-s...">SCH-i927 dual-core Exynos slider.
  • hackbod - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    Auto-correcting input from a hard keyboard is actually very different than from a soft keyboard. A soft keyboard's auto correction is deeply tied to the key layout, and tables built to map specific tap positions on the keyboard to the possible letters that may be intended.

    The Android IME architecture *does* allow the IME to perform the same kinds of text processing operations on physical keyboard input as it does on touch input. However, in practice, a soft keyboard IME is designed around processing touch input, and you probably wouldn't want it to do the same processing of hard key input because the result would be poor.
  • jvchapman - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    No 4G = Useless.
  • bjacobson - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    looks like the display is still sunken down under the gorilla glass like on the Droid1 and Droid2? The more I use others' phones (Samsung Galaxy, Iphone, etc) the more it bugs me on mine...significantly increases glare.
  • bjacobson - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    The dragging down notifications bar animation, on all the OMAP based phones I played with, runs at 20-30 FPS best case.

    The Samsung Galaxy animation for it is much smoother for whatever reason.

    This is the biggest beef I have with android phones; I play with my friend's Iphone 3gs and it's still smoother than the latest android hardware...
  • Mumrik - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    I really don't get why we have to have those sucky touch buttons under the screen when they could be proper physical buttons.
  • Myrandex - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    I agree. I miss call start and end buttons personally.

    Jason Cook
  • anandtech pirate - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    only 512mb of ram? I'm sure throwing in another 512mb wouldn't have added much to the cost. and I bet the performance boost would have been worth it.

    also..... whatever happened to the evo3D review?.... just wondering like a lot of other people
  • tipoo - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Does anything indicate 512MB currently bottlenecks Android or its apps? We just moved away from 256MB not so long ago, after all.
  • anandtech pirate - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    hmm, I was thinking about the Sensation vs. Evo3D, one has 768mb of ram while the other has 1GB or ram. The sensation suffers from noticeable lag on the homescreen where as the Evo3D is much smoother. this might be a sense 3.0 problem though as it's a resource hog.
  • themossie - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    The extra RAM makes a huge difference when it comes to multitasking.

    With my Droid 1 the home screen always reloads when I leave an application, and true multitasking is impossible as I can't keep multiple applications in memory.

    Droid 1 is significantly hampered by 256 MB. Droid 2 has 512 MB. Droid 3 should have more. Most of the Many competitive phones have 768 MB+ - (offhand the Droid Incredible 2 and MyTouch 4g) or 1 gb (Evo 3D, Atrix 4G) and RAM is cheap...

    512 is acceptable now, but don't think in terms of today - what will the minimum requirements be to run Android in 1 year? 2 years?
  • Reikon - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    I was wondering about the Evo 3d review too. Didn't Brian say it was supposed to be out weeks ago?
  • mike8675309 - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link

    I agree... More memory. The dual core Moto Atrix comes with 1gig of RAM. Verizon has been notoriously stingy with RAM in the phones they deliver.
  • bishless - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    I saw "Wetmore" in the maps screenshot and instantly thought, "Holy crap, this writer is in Tucson!"... I looked a little closer and saw Ruthraff and felt proud enough to reveal my detective skills in the article comments... Then a couple pages later, there's the weather widget obviously displaying "Tucson". Heh.

    So much for detective work.

    I see you're aware of Cartel Coffee Lab... we ought to meet for coffee sometime!
  • Brian Klug - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Yeah, always been here in Tucson ;)

    I hang out at Cartel a lot, absolutely!

    -Brian
  • GotnoRice - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    While having numbers on top is sort of nice, they failed hard when it comes to the most basic element- the orientation of the QWERTY keys

    Look down at the keyboard right in front of you. The "S" key in the middle row should be directly above the gap between the "Z" and "X" keys. It should straddle the gap between those keys almost perfectly.

    Yet on the Droid 3 the "S" key is almost DIRECTLY on top of the "X" key. Simply put, the rows are misaligned.

    The reason people like a QWERTY keyboard is because it's a layout they are already familiar. That fact is incompatible with the idea of randomly adjusting the rows in relation to each other as if it's arbitrary; it's not.

    They got this mostly right with the Droid 2 keyboard, how did they get it so wrong with the Droid 3?
  • Pete_ - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Check your facts: the Tegra 2 chipset does not support LPDDR2 (333/266 MHz) and is limited to only 133 MHz DDR. I've owned the DX2 and returned it for the Droid 3... proof is in the pudding.
  • Brian Klug - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    Hmm, I'm not sure about that: http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-2.html then look under Memory Frequency.

    We've independently confirmed a few times them using LPDDR2-600, for example on the Optimus 2X.
  • ol1bit - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    I'm glad you posted so many photos, but the blue tint on the flash enabled photo is terrible.

    Even the video has a tad of blue tint compared with the Cannon.

    I wonder if they will do an update to fix that with this phone, or if this is just a jump step phone with no marketing, just to keep money flowing in till the Bionic comes out?
  • 7amood - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    that's nice to hear

    please don't forget to talk about the screen problem
    http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s_ii_displa...

    It's really hard to accept that my perfect SUPER AMOLED is not perfect.
    It's harder to accept the fact that samsung don't give a f*** about me since they already have my money.
  • takumsawsherman - Saturday, July 30, 2011 - link

    On the GL benchmark, it shows iPhone 3GS running faster than iPhone 4. Is this correct? If so, why do you think iPhone 4 is performing worse on the test?
  • Ryan Smith - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    GLBench runs at the device's native resolution. The iPhone 4 is 4x the resolution of the 3GS.
  • Lucian Armasu - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    It looks like OMAP is on the way out from the market, though:

    http://semiaccurate.com/2011/07/29/texas-instrumen...

    Now the fight will be left between Nvidia, Qualcomm and Samsung.
  • martyrant - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    My VP wanted one, so we both got one the same day. I don't talk on the phone as much, but after a week I did a conference call on it and it drained it from 80% to 15% in under an hour. I also just left it on a charger last night, saw it go from 30-90%, went to bed, got up and just checked it (while still plugged into the charger) and it's back at 30%. Did you see any strange anomalies when running your battery life tests? My VP loves the phone, but hates the battery--his dies all the time and so does mine. It seems like while your tests look awesome, the real life performance of this phone is nowhere near in line with those tests when it comes to battery. I have tried max battery saver, just about everything---had to get the VP an extended battery pack and he still doesn't know if he can continue to use this phone because of the battery issues.
  • martyrant - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    It went to 20% from 30% while writing that comment, while plugged into the charger. Hot, right?
  • josby - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    Same here. I bought mine the day they were released in stores, but I've been anxiously awaiting the AnandTech review of it because I knew it would include battery life comparisons. I came from a T-Mobile G2 (running Cyanogen7) and have all the same apps, with the same update intervals set, on my Droid3 as I had on the G2, yet the battery life is very noticeably worse. It can barely make it from morning til night even with very light usage.

    In fact, I always left my G2's wifi on, yet the Droid3 still doesn't last as long even if I leave wifi off.

    Yet, the G2 does considerably worse than the Droid3 in the battery life tests in this review.
  • Brian Klug - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    That's odd - I wonder what kind of signal environment he was in when he made that call. Could you find out what Rx signal strength was in dBm?

    The only part of the entire cellular architecture that has a power control loop is the phone->base station, and when you're in a low signal environment the phone can increase Tx power to be "heard" by the base station and thus hurt battery life considerably. We always test in areas with at least -75 dBm or better.

    -Brian
  • photoguru - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    I had major problems with my battery life until I realised that the power adapter for the Droid 3 requires 5.1v at 850mA which is quite a bit higher than most chargers. Mine actually died while browsing the web and being plugged into a Belkin usb charger.

    Also, theres an issue with programs not turning off once you exit them. Task killers should fix it but I actually just went through the programs and manually adjusted which ones can continue to run in the background. Now my battery lasts almost twice as long as it did before, and quite a bit longer than my droid 1 and droid 2 global.
  • anandtech pirate - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    how about the Evo3D?
  • Brian Klug - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    Anand is still working on it, he's been super busy but hopefully it's next in his pipeline. ;)

    -Brian
  • vision33r - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    Using a gimmick technology to upsize the resolution cheaply. Having used the Atrix for almost 6 months I am sick of looking at it. Luckily it was for work.

    Looking at Pentile LCD for a long time is almost like watching a 3D movie without the glasses on. Your vision starts to strain and you will see the colors around the font.

    FAIL/.
  • kesh27 - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    Seems like a lot of negativity toward the type of display. I have a D2G I like a lot and will likely upgrade to this or something very close months down the road. Sweet the D3 doesn't require a fork and incorporates global use (minus the US carrier lockout).

    Perhaps a little more subjective review of the new display, such as fatigue or annoyance after watching 30m of video or continuous use of a variety of apps? Maybe a small panel review of something similar to balance opinion?

    As to hackability, I bought a G1 when they first came out and had it strung out on Cyanogen as far as hardware could take it, only because OTA updates weren't every coming from T-Mo. Finally got a global phone with specs I wanted for future travel. Have honestly had no need to do any hacking other than a root for Titanium Backup (freezing bloatware), ok maybe occasional wifi tether too. If you want a phone to hack, get a hackable phone. I like this line because it runs everything I want very well, and keyboards rule.
  • synaesthetic - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    Man, screw you Moto. Bunch of effin' liars.

    UNLOCK IT NAO. And the one on the Droid X2 also!
  • Undersea - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link

    Might be silly to some but coming from blackberry which I could sort email to droid 1 which I couldn't, I hope to heck you can sort outlook email
  • hillsurfer - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    We just upgraded my wife's line to the Droid 3, and the fact that it isn't LTE is one reason we chose it. We still have the unlimited 3G data plan, which we'd have to give up if we switched to LTE, which isn't available in this area anyway, and won't be for some time.

    Just wanted to point out that some "improvements" come with a price. Luckily, Motorola and Verizon Wireless didn't include LTE as an improvement. I suspect we won't have that choice much longer.
  • funoptics - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    Great review, AnandTech! It could be top notch, however, if you included the only thing that seemed to be missing: a discussion of the performance and capabilities of the motion sensors. Some smart phones have gyros, the Droid 3 does not. For users of smartphones working with augmented reality applications, this is very important.
  • photoguru - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    One thing that most people have overlooked is the fact that they put a 16GB card hardwired in it and also gave us a card slot for a second card! I loaded mine up with 48GB of class 10 storage goodness :)
  • nitink - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    this phone have a great potential unleach its power get full hd games with sd card data..at:
    http://nitin-xyz.blogspot.com/2011/07/free-and-ful...
  • araczynski - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    I had the first droid for about a year when it first came out, found the keyboard sliding mechanism to be a joke. poorly engineered, namely due to easily trapping dust/fine particles of sand (or gold;)), and the rail mechanism just wearing away at the back surface, making it look cheap and abused after only a few uses.

    would never use another phone that uses the same engineering, which this seems to be just like.

    i like my droid x at the moment, much nicer screen, and i'll take the onscreen keyboard over worthless sliding any day.
  • Myrandex - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    5th row keyboard looks very nice. I did compare one in the store to my Touch Pro 2, and unfortunately I still have to side with the touch pro 2. I tried typing out a sentence and the button size of the touch pro 2 just seemed to reign supreme. It is in the right direction though!

    Jason Cook
  • Johnmcl7 - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    That sounds promising, if they're going to make a Chinese version they may produce an EU version as well given they're producing the hardware anyway.

    John
  • aggiechase37 - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link

    I have the D3. Couple things:

    1. Gingerbread keyboard does NOT come preinstalled, nor does Angry Birds.
    2. I have issues with lag coming back to the homescreen. This is especially persistent with the camera app
    3. I also have issues with framerate drops swiping through homescreens and the app drawer. Minor, but noticeable. Hardly as fluid as Anandtech boasts.
    4. Something should be said about the screen being much more view-able in direct sunlight, moreso than any screen I've seen so far.
    5. Camera lowlight conditions are considerably improved over D3's predecessors.
    6. There are issues with the led flash causing a blue tint when snapping pics with NO light, like utter darkness. But seriously who does that?
    7. 3rd party launchers are not compatible with Moto's widgets.
    8. Moto's launcher eats 40mb's of RAM, seems a little excessive.
    9. Task killer included on the phone. Is Moto insane???
  • relativityboy - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link

    I ordered one of these the day they came available. Coming from a rooted, very customized CM7 D1 I was a little underwhelmed. While there's no question the D3 is capable of more at the limit my D1

    * felt good in the hand. I don't care for the hard edges of the D3.
    * had excellent performance (I lucked out - low voltage ChevyNo1 kernel @ 1.1Ghz). With swap and a fast SD chip I didn't have the launcher reloading all the time.
    * had very good battery life (1.5-2 days of med/lite use)
    * felt much smaller in the pocket
    * actually had better performance in tasks like scrolling the contacts list, and rendering pages in opera/stock browsers
    * The radios on the D1 have better reception. I'm not talking about bars on a screen or stats in a test bench. In my office people often complain about dropped calls, poor wifi in the bathrooms(yep), etc. I had no idea what they were talking about until I switched to the D3.
    * the touch screen seems less sensitive that on my D1.

    --
    I'm sure some of my complaints are related to immature software, but things like radio reception shouldn't be related to that. I've had a number of kernel panics, and display resets.

    Maybe I got a bad phone, but I'm not sold on the D3.
  • relativityboy - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link

    Today I'm completely frustrated with this piece of bunk. Seriously. This phone is crashing, getting worse, can't get a GPS lock to save it's life.

    On the bright side, with the kinds of problems I'm having it might not all be buggy software.
  • amankumar - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link

    want some super cool android HD games to unleash its potential, here's the link:
    http://nitin-xyz.blogspot.com/2011/07/free-and-ful...
  • Death666Angel - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link

    Hey! I just wanted to comment on the last paragraph of this review. I personally had a Touch Pro 2, bought it in August 2009. It has a pretty good keyboard, when the reviewers are to be believed. And although the touchscreen was resistive and thus not as easy to navigate as modern capacitive touchscreens, I hardly ever used the keyboard. Unless you type unusually long emails or are in the business of typing up reports on your smartphone, the tradeoff you have to make for a keyboard smartphone isn't worth it in my opinion.
    My Galaxy S2 is hardly bigger (125mmx65mmx8mm) than the Droid3 and significantly lighter (117g). I probably wouldn't win a typing contest when we had to type a whole page. But SMS, comments, short email reply I'd win.
    The only thing the keyboard on my TP2 was useful for was as a gamepad for my Mega Drive emulator. I played through Soleil on it. But I have already played through Legend of Zelda and am 80% through Secret of Mana on my SNES emulator on the Galaxy S2 using the overlayer gamepad. With some USB-host gamepad support it will be even better.
    So, to summarize, I would never buy a keyboard smartphone again because the cons outweigh the pros for me. (Only the Playstation phone looked interesting....)
  • EEWdad - Sunday, August 7, 2011 - link

    It is very refreshing to see a comprehensive and unbiased review of this update to the Droid 2. Many other reviews I've seen on web have largely dismissed the Droid 3 as a worthy product -- mostly due to the absence of 4G/LTE.

    It was nice to see AnandTech's combination of device performance metrics and hand-on impressions to used to objectively assess the capabilities of the Droid 3 -- much different outcome from the other reviewer's rather subjective opinions. From what I can see from this review, I think the hardware performance, 3-D interface, keyboard, web browsing, wi-fi, video, photos, phone voice quality and noise-canceling capabilties are pretty darn impressive.

    My wife has had a Droid 2 for about a year now -- I think it's been a reasonably good smartphone. Since getting hers, I've been wanting one for myself; after reading this review, my confidence is high -- I've taken the plunge and ordered a Droid 3 for myself.

    Please, keep up the good work!
  • 2therock - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link

    Cannot Wait For You To Get A Bionic
  • Zaniyah - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link

    I just love my Droid 3 and the navigation system on it works fantastic. The pictures are excellent. It took me a while to get use to it, but there were so many positives that outweighed the negatives. It is worth every dime I paid for it. Honestly, I love everything about my Droid 3.
  • burkex90 - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 - link

    Buyer beware!!!!
    There are only two chargers that will work properly with the Droid 3. They are as follows,
    The P617 and the P510
    The P617 should come in the box with the car dock and cable. Every end of the cable has a tag
    with a picture of what it should be plugged into. On the large USB end of the cable it shows a picture of the P617 car charger, period end of story use this charger only!
    When I ordered my car dock through Verizon $60 and change after taxes, the charger was missing. I was told to contact Motorola, they sent me a P513 charger as pictured in the article above. This charger is capable of charging the battery only, using navigation will cause the phone and battery to overheat considerably.
    The P510 will charge the battery and run the phone independently of each other, leaving you with a fully charged battery after using navigation or other apps. The same goes for the P617 which should be included with the package as it is indicated on the cord.
    The P510 information about its ability to run the phone independently while charging is available on the Motorola store website, click on the device then click more info. But you shouldn't have to do any of this if you received the P617 charger.
    The P513 car charger fried my phone.
    Please pay attention to what charger you intend on getting, the 513 ultimately cost me a $122 repair bill from Motorola.

    Good luck,
    Michael Burke
  • rinyin - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - link

    Droid3 still uses the QC MDM6600 GPS, and not the TI. It's the first to support GLONASS as well as GPS satellites, which is one explanation for performance gain.
  • MISSY7X - Sunday, December 4, 2011 - link

    JUST WANTED TO SAY THANK YOU FOR SUCH AN AWESOME OVERVIEW OF THE DRIOD 3 GLOBAL PHONE. I AM BEING SENT THIS MODEL BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO SEND ME 5 DROD GLOBAL 2'S ALREADY WITHIN ONE YEAR! NEVER DUE TO WATER DAMAGE OR DROPPING...INSTEAD ITS BEEN AN AWFUL OHONE FROM THE START. SO MANY PROBLEMS WITH EACH ONE VERIZONA DN ASURION HAD TO SEND ME. THEY ARE SENDING ME THE GLOBAL 3 MONDAY AND I WATCHED YOUR VIDEO AND READ YOUR SPECS AND THE IMPROVEMNTS. I APPRECIATED YOUR HONESTY AT THE END AS WELL ABOUT THE ONE THING YOU REALLY DIDNT LIKE AS WELL AS THE GALLERY CLUTTER :). ANUWAY, THANKS FOR EING SO THOROUGH AND HONEST!!! ~ MISSY ~
  • MISSY7X - Sunday, December 4, 2011 - link

    SO SORRY FOR THE MISSPELLING OF MY COMMENT...I SHOULD HAVE PROOFED FIRST...LOL! THX AGAIN! ~MISSY ~

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