Before
Galaxy, there was Droid—a brand so synonymous with Google's OS that few people
knew or cared about the full Android namesake. But as the Samsung of the world
gained ground, the killer robot brand languished, while Motorola itself turned
its attention towards the fresher, cleaner Moto moniker. The new Droid Turbo
($199 with contract, 32GB ) is a course correct for the Verizon-Motorola
partnership, from iterative to innovative. Brimming with the latest specs and
features, the Droid Turbo is appreciably better than the new Moto X. The
display is sharper, performance is better, and the battery is significantly
larger. The killer-robot motif is dead, too, allowing this verifiably killer
phone to speak for itself. The Droid Turbo earns our Editors' Choice award for
Android phones on Verizon Wireless.
Motorola Droid Turbo Hidden features and Reviews
Design
The Droid Turbo definitely
introduces a new material in the black model that we haven't seen before in a
phone: a tightly woven cloth backing made of ballistic nylon. It's good to try
new things, but this one could have been executed a little better.
To some it may feel tactile, but
to us the material felt a little cheap, and instantly made us conscious of the
state of grime on our fingers. How do you clean the black Turbo; will snack
grease seep into the stitching? Meanwhile, the phone's rubberized sides add
contrast, though we found the abrupt transition from textiles to soft-touch
plastic a little jarring.
On the other hand, the cherry red
Droid Turbo has a smooth, almost slippery Kevlar backing with a flashy
holographic stitch pattern that echoes the black model. Its sides and the chin
below the screen are the same plastic material.
Speaking of the chin, it forms a
sharp peak beneath the screen, with just a small flattened area large enough
for the Micro-USB charging port. This jutting ridge makes the grip
uncomfortable for anyone who uses this area to hold the phone one-handed, as we
do.
On the right spine, the
power/lock and volume buttons are notched to give fingers extra purchase. A
headset jack up top gives way to the rounded, non-removable backing. On both
finishes, the 20.7-megapixel camera sits between two LED flashes and above the
telltale Motorola insignia on the back. This time it's almost flush with the back
plate, rather than indented as on other Moto models.
Display
You can’t see any of the pixels,
it’s that detailed! To the surprise of many (and including us), the Motorola
DROID Turbo is packing a 5.2-inch 1440 x 2560 QuadHD AMOLED display. Simply,
it’s a marvel to behold because it’s one of the most pixel-dense screens on the
market with its tally of 565 ppi. It’s so detailed that even when we look at it
closely with our eye, it’s tough to decipher individual pixels.
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Unfortunately, some of the
display’s other characteristics aren’t as impressive. In particular, the screen
achieves a maximum brightness output of 247 nits when measured displaying an
all white image (that's the way we're measuring maximum brightness for all
phones) – a pitiful mark we might add, one that’s near the bottom of our
benchmark list and makes it hard to read outdoors in the sun. AMOLEDs are known
for their lower brightness in such tests and they can actually have brighter
output if the displayed image is not all white – e.g. if it is mostly a black
screen with a few white areas, those areas may be significantly brighter than
247 nits. But still, this is a mediocre mark even in the land of AMOLED screens
– to put it into perspective, we measured the Note 4's maximum brightness
output at 468 nits.
Since this is stock Android we’re
dealing with, the default keyboard is none other than the one provided by
Google. It’s simple, logically arranged, and very responsive to make quick work
out of sending short messages.
Messaging
Emails are handled by the stock
Email app, but if you’re a Gmail user, there’s a dedicated app for that, of
course. Interestingly, we can’t set up a Gmail account using the standard Email
app because it directs us to use the Gmail app for that. Well, that’s not a
deal breaker because the Gmail app is quite functional and delivers an
experience similar to its desktop counterpart.
Memory
and Processor
DROID Turbo is a beastly thing,
especially that it’s powered by the formidable quad-core 2.7GHz Qualcomm
Snapdragon 805 SoCfeaturing the Adreno 420 GPU and coupled with 3GB of RAM.
Without a doubt, the hardware it tow is enough to handle all operations we
throw at it – including some intensive gaming titles. However, it’s part of the
Motorola Mobile Computing System, one that also features a natural language
processor and a contextual computing chip as well. At the end of the day,
though, the DROID Turbo is just like what its name says – it’s turbo fast with
its performance!
As much as we’d like to have a
microSD card slot in this thing, we’re at least content with its 32GB of
internal storage – albeit, there’s an option for a 64GB one too, which dons the
ballistic nylon casing and an extra cost.
Camera
Sometimes more megapixels matter,
like in the case of the Lumia 1020. Other times, they don't count for much, as
is the case with the Droid Turbo's 21-megapixel camera. It's not bad by any
stretch, but there's no real advantage over the Moto X's middling 13-megapixel
camera. Shots look mostly good with sufficient light, but focus and exposure
were inconsistent in my tests, rendering many shots unusably soft or washed
out. When it nailed both, images looked nice, but still not quite as crisp or
lifelike as the Note 4 or iPhone 6. The camera is quick to open and shoot,
requiring less than a second to fire off shots; Motorola's wrist-twist gesture
works reliably well for summoning the camera quickly. Indoors and under low
light, image noise starts to obscure finer details, and long exposure times
resulted in many blurry shots. There's no diffuser ring like with the Moto X,
but I found the dual-LED flash on the Droid Turbo to be superior in
side-by-side tests. Surprisingly, the Moto X's photos had more hotspots, where
it overexposed part of each shot, and it wasn't much better than the Turbo at eliminating
shadows to begin with.
Multimedia
Showing its ties to the Moto X
once again, the gallery app is arranged and functions similarly to the one in
the Moto X. A cool feature that some will appreciate is Highlight, which groups
content according to date and automatically compiles a short “highlight reel”
video for easy and quick sharing.
Sticking with the stock Android
experience, the default music player comes from none other than the Google Play
Music app – so we all know what it entails at this point. The latest update to
the popular app brings some visual qualities that match the flavor with Android
5.0 Lollipop’s interface, but the core functionality remains unchanged.
Interestingly, the earpiece of
the phone also doubles as its speaker, which produces an admirable 74.4 dB of
audio power.
Good
bad features of Motorola Droid Turbo
The Good Hands-free
voice controls and epically long battery life supercharge the Motorola Droid
Turbo. Its high screen resolution and crisp, nimble camera earn it bonus
points.
The Bad A
sharp bottom point makes the Droid Turbo uncomfortable to hold, and the black
color's nylon backing feels cheap. The heavy phone also heats up fast.
The Bottom Line Even
with its hefty design, the Motorola Droid Turbo's robust battery, powerful
processor and vivid display put it on the short list for Verizon customers.
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