Last year Dell introduced the Dell Streak, which was considered a revolutionary device to bridge the gap between laptop and smartphones. Although Dell’s handset is a tablet, it has all the functionality of a smartphone. Similarly, this year has seen the unveiling of the futuristic Motorola Atrix 4G, a smartphone device enabled with laptop-like features.

Atrix has features that compare well to an Apple iPad 2. The Motorola’s Atrix can connect a keyboard, mouse, speakers and a HDMI-compatible monitor or television. If Dell Streak’s 5-inch tablet can be called a tablet, then the Atrix, though being smaller than the Streak with the ability to function like a laptop can be rightly compared with Apple’s iPad 2.

Here is a comparison between the Motorola Atrix 4G and the Apple iPad 2.

Size:
Motorola Atrix is 117.8 x 63.5 x 10.1 mm and weighs 136 g. The iPad 2 is 241.2 x 185.7 x 8.8 mm and weighs 607 g.

Display:
The Atrix 4G has a 4-inch 540 x 960 pixel TFT capacitive touchscreen display and iPad 2 has a 9.7-inch 768 x 1024 pixels LED-backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen display.

Steve Jobs previously mentioned about smaller display screen devices not faring well compared to the bigger display ones, but that statement can be proven wrong if the smartphone sales figures are taken into consideration. The smartphones are faring much better than tablet devices because of its portability as a phone.

Input features:
The input features found in Atrix 4G are biometric fingerprint reader, Gorilla Glass display, touch sensitive controls, MOTOBLUR UI with Live Widgets, multi-touch input method, accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and proximity sensor for auto turn-off. Apple's iPad 2 has input features like fingerprint scratch resistant oleophobic surface, multi-touch input method, accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and three-axis gyro sensor.

Memory:
The Motorola’s handset has 1 GB of RAM and has a 16 GB of storage with a support for microSD up to 32 GB. Meanwhile iPad 2 is thought to feature 512 MB RAM and has 16, 32, 64 GB storage with no option for expansion.

WLAN/Bluetooth/USB:
Atrix, has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with DLNA, Bluetooth version 2.1 with A2DP and EDR and comes with microUSB version 2.0. On the other hand, iPad 2 has Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, a similar version of Bluetooth and microUSB found in Atrix 4G.

Camera:
The camera found in the Atrix is a 5-megapixel 2592?1944 camera with autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging and image stabilization. The iPad 2 has a 0.7-megapixel 960 x 720 pixels camera. Both the Atrix and the iPad 2 has a secondary VGA camera and can capture video at 720p at 30fps but Atrix is expected to be upgraded to 1080p via a future update.

Operating system:
Apple iPad 2 has the iOS 4.3 operating system and Atrix features the Android version 2.2 (Froyo).

Processor:
Atrix scores with a powerful dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 ULP GeForce GPU Tegra 2 chipset processor. Meanwhile iPad 2 comes with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 Apple A5 chipset processor.

Battery:
Apple iPad 2 has a 25Wh battery giving a talk time of up to 10 hours and a standby time up to 720 hours whereas Atrix 4G has a Lithium 1930 mAh battery giving a talk time up to 9 hours and a standby time up to 250 hours.

2G Network:
Motorola Atrix 4G has 2G network support of GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 similar to the one featured in Apple iPad 2.

3G Network:
The iPad 2 has HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 support while Atrix has HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 support.

Other features:
Other features found in Atrix 4G are SMS threaded view, MMS, Email, IM, Push Email, HTML browser, stereo FM radio with RDS, downloadable games, A-GPS support, Java MIDP 2.0, active noise cancellation with dedicated mic, HDMI port, digital compass, MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player, 1080p MP4/H.263/H.264.WMV/Xvid/DivX at 30 fps playback, Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Google Talk, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace integration, photo viewer and editor, organizer, document editor, Adobe Flash 10.1 player, voice memo-dial-commands and predictive text input.

Apple iPad 2 has features like Email, Push Email, IM, HTML Safari browser, downloadable, incl. motion-based games, A-GPS support, digital compass, MP4/MP3/WAV/AAC player, movie playback, iBooks PDF reader, Google Maps, TV-out, audio and video player.

Motorola's Atrix has the 4G network for faster usage compared iPad 2 which lacks 4G supports. And Atrix 4G smartphone has pulled the crowd to itself with the Webtop application based on Ubuntu that offers a full desktop version of Firefox.

Price:
The Atrix 4G smartphone is priced at $149.99 for a 2-year contract while the iPad 2 with Wi-Fi plus 3G version will cost above $800.

The iPad 2 will be released on March 11. Atrix is already available in the market

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