Can Motorola Atrix stop the flow of AT&T subscribers to Verizon iPhone?

Atrix 4G, the ultra powerful PC on a palm smartphone from Motorola, will be available with AT&T for $199.99 with a two-year contract from March 6.

However, if you seek a lap dance with the Motorola beauty it will set you back by $499.99 for a laptop dock. The promotional price combines Atrix 4G with the laptop dock after a two-year service contract and $100 mail-in-rebate after subscription to Data Pro smartphone data plan and tethering add on. The laptop dock bought separately will cost $499.99.

Also Motorola makes available its HD Multimedia dock for the beast of smartphone, a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a remote control for $189.99.

The timing of the launch comes just after Verizon releases its iPhone 4. AT&T has a trump card up its sleeve in Atrix 4G, which can curtail the flow of iPhone customers from its network to Verizon.

The mini-monster from Motorola camp runs on Android 2.2 (upgradeable to Android 2.3 or Gingerbread) and comes with an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor capable of thumping 2GHz in processing power. While Apple iPhone sports an A4 processor which is the same processor it uses in its iPad which clocks 1GHz. However, the processor clock speed on an iPhone 4 has not been revealed by Apple.

The Atrix also packs in 1 GB of RAM compared to iPhone's 512 MB, thus giving it the necessary speed boost to beat other smartphones in the fray. However, when it comes to internal memory iPhone 4 matches Atrix with 16 GB memory. However, Atrix can support up to 48 GB memory while iPhone 4 can support up to 32 GB memory.

Atrix offers a larger display at 4-inch compared to iPhone's 3.5-inch display. However, Atrix offers a screen resolution of 960x540 while iPhone offers 960x640 in screen resolution.

The Atrix also comes loaded with two cameras, a 5 MP rear-facing camera and a VGA front-facing camera for video chat. Apple iPhone 4 offers only a 5MP camera. However, both Atrix and iPhone 4 have 720p video capture ability. However, Motorola states that that 1080p video capture will come to Atrix post-launch. Also video playback capacity with HDMI which is pegged at 720p will also increase to 1080p after launch. Apple offers support for 1024x768 pixels with Dock connector to VGA adapter.

Motorola Atrix trumps iPhone 4 in battery life as it offers 9 hours in talk-time compared to iPhone's 7 hours. Also with the power packed inside Atrix it weighs the same as an iPhone at 4.8oz.

On the sensor turf Atrix offers an accelerometer, ambient light and proximity while iPhone 4 offers all these and a gyroscope as well.

However, the key differentiating factor for Atrix is its docking feature. All the intelligence is stored in the smartphone but can be accessed through multiple points like a laptop and HDMI dock.

The laptop dock has an 11.6-inch display, full keyboard, speakers and a 36Wh three-cell battery that provides up to eight hours of battery life. PC World had reported that when the Atrix is docked into the laptop, its Linux OS comes into play and runs only three apps -- Firefox for browsing, a file manager and Android apps in a window. Thus one can run content stored in Atrix on a laptop. The feature makes Atrix quite a contender as it ushers in an ecosystem of devices around the smartphone.

While all the focus is on the exodus of iPhone users from the AT&T camp to Verizon, AT&T could plug this hole with the dynamite of a phone it has in its fold.

Here is a comparison between Motorola Atrix and iPhone 4: