Motorola Droid 2 Cell Phone Review

Phoning, Surfing and GPS

In the United States, the Droid 2 uses Verizon’s CDMA EV-DO Rev network, but it can also access 802.11b/g Wi-Fi networks. It has a speedy 1 GHz processor and comes with 8 GB on-board memory. As explained, it comes with an 8 GB microSD card, but you can use cards up to 32 GB. Like most other similar smart phones, the Droid 2 has an accelerometer, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, Multi-touch screen, and an eCompass.

The Droid 2 is the first phone to ship with Android 2.2 operating system, which gives a speed boost to the phone. We found surfing quite speedy, and we encountered no dropped calls. Calls were clear on both ends and the speakerphone was good.

Android 2.2 also allows the Droid 2 to be used as a wireless hotspot, allowing you to share your connection with up to five devices. You will have, however, to pay Verizon an additional USD 20 per month for that "privilege", and data use is capped at 2 GB.

While the Droid 2 worked well with our Bluetooth headphones and car devices, we couldn’t get the phone to recognize voice commands over Bluetooth. Since this is a feature that should be built into Android 2.2, we couldn’t determine if this was a problem with the OS or with the Motoblur that Motorola adds on top of the operating system.

As with the Droid X, the Motoblur overlay is not as prominent as it was with previous Motorola phones. Motorola does offer some nice widgets including Bluetooth, Airplane mode and WiFi toggles, news, picture frames, sticky notes, and others. It also includes widgets for social networking, an area that has always been a focus of Motoblur.

The main screen of the Droid 2 is shown in Figure 12. As you can see there is plenty of room for Widgets and apps. There are seven customizable home pages.

Figure 12: The Droid 2 main screen

If you slide your finger down to the bottom of the screen, the Droid 2, like the Droid X, gives you a way to quickly navigate these screens.

Figure13: Home screen navigation

While the Droid X is the best phone that we have seen for surfing the web, this Droid is not far behind. The only drawback is the smaller screen on the Droid 2. The real plus is that Android 2.2 supports Flash, which makes surfing even more enjoyable. If you have already purchased a Droid X, don’t worry, it will soon be upgraded to Android 2.2, as well.

Not surprisingly, the Droid 2 is optimized to work with Google Maps Navigation. The turn-by-turn instructions are excellent and with a car mount, this phone could easily substitute as a GPS system.

The Google Android Marketplace continues to grow and these apps add even more functionality to the phone. The phone comes with many apps are preinstalled, including games, productivity apps, and special Verizon apps. While some folks may consider this bloat, we found it kind of fun to try all the various apps and just remove the ones we didn’t want.

Battery life is rated at 575 minutes continuous use or up to 315 hours standby. We found that there was enough battery life to last an 8-hour day with several hours on the phone and that is about all you can expect from any smart phone.