Motorola Droid Bionic, the Strongest iPhone 5 Rival so far, Unboxed

The much anticipated Motorola Droid Bionic will be officially released on September 8. Motorola’s smartphone has received rave reviews from tech journalists who had the opportunity to handle the device.

When Droid Bionic was unboxed and tested, it emerged that most of the rumored features had made their way into the powerful smartphone yet. The phone is completely modified from the original one introduced during CES 2011. Finally Motorola has delivered on a promise it made eight months ago. In fact, Droid Bionic was the most anticipated phone of the year along with iPhone 5.

In what seems to be a twist in the tale, Verizon is not offering Samsung Galaxy S2, effectively making Motorola Droid Bionic the ultimate phone to receive all the attention in the days to come.

Motorola Droid Bionic will come at $299.99 with a two-year contract. And the phone comes with ZumoCast app which offers remote access to your videos, music, pictures and documents stored on your PC or Mac. The smartphone also comes with Video Surf, Shazam-like app for videos, Motoprint for wireless printing, NFL Mobile and support for Netflix. The laptop dock is priced at $299.99, $99.99 for the HD station and $29.99 for the Webtop adapter. Accessories like car mount and battery dock are priced at $39.99 and $49.99 respectively. If you purchase both the Bionic and the lapdock at the same time, then you will get $100 mail-in rebate.

Also Bionic monthly plan is offered at $70 a month for 450 minutes of talk time and 2 GB of data while mobile hotspot functionality can be turned on for $30 for a month with additional 2 GB of data.

Costco, however, is said to offer the Droid Bionic starting Sept. 13, for a discounted price of $279.99 with a free accessories bonus pack. The Bonus pack is expected to include a standard dock, vehicle car mount with rapid car charger, extra battery, and a battery charger, giving it $158 value.

Here is a look at how iPhone 5 fares against Motorola Droid Bionic.

Display:
Motorola Droid Bionic has qHD (540 x 960 pixels, 256 ppi pixel density) TFT display for its 4.3-inch screen. It has the privilege of featuring a movie-friendly 16:9 aspect ratio. The iPhone 5 is expected to come with a teardrop design with an aluminum plate casing that is supposed to be slimmer and lighter than past iPhone models, mostly featuring a 3.7-inch or 4-inch screen.

According to PC World Review, “The dark gray, soft, rubberized battery cover is nice in the hand, and the Corning Gorilla Glass face gives it a sophisticated feel… I was impressed, however, with how sharp the text looked in the browser and in Gmail.”
Winner: Droid Bionic wins with its sheer size and ability to play qHD videos.

Design:
When it comes to design, Apple has always updated the design of its smartphone each year. Keeping in mind the track record of Apple delivering exceptional innovation in terms of design, expect a nice-looking smartphone.

Motorola generally fell short when it came to offering a smartphone with top-notch design similar to Apple. But this time around Motorola Droid Bionic has brought out a thinner 127x66.8x10.9 mm phone compared to 125.9 x 66.9 x 13.3 mm offered in January. The iPhone 4 is still thinner with 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm dimension, but with iPhone 5 expected to be thinner and curved, Droid Bionic doesn’t stand a chance here.
Winner: iPhone 5 always wins when it comes to design.

Processor:
Those who unboxed and reviewed the Bionic found that the phone has dual core 1GHz TI's OMAP 4 chipset processor.

According to Engadget “Texas Instruments' OMAP 4430, NVIDIA's Tegra 2 and Samsung's Exynos 4210 went head to head in a gauntlet of browser and graphical benchmarks, and it looks like the LG Optimus 3D's OMAP 4 came out on top, boasting of minor but significant improvements practically across the board.”

Clearly Motorola boasts of a powerful processor. However iPad 2’s dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU A5 processor, which is expected to make it into iPhone, 5 clocks at 1 GHz. With iPhone 5 being powered by a processor found in tablet, it almost equals Motorola Droid Bionic.
Winner: Tied

Camera:
Motorola Droid Bionic comes with 8-megapixel 3264x2448 pixels offering 1080p HD video capture while iPhone 5 is sure to feature similar sized camera, according to Bloomberg.

But the ability to capture video at 1080p is yet to be confirmed. In fact, Motorola Droid Bionic is the first Verizon LTE phone to shoot 1080p HD video. And the Droid Bionic quality camera pictures seem to be outstanding as photos taken by it appears in various tech Web sites. The photos look pleasing with sharpness, color accuracy and brightness.

The iPhone 5 picture clarity can never be disputed, hence both the phones stand toe to toe here.
Winner: Tied

4G:
Even though iPhone 5 may be titled as 4G phone, it may not feature Verizon’s 4G LTE support as the LTE chip price is too high to match Apple’s cost-efficient measures. Most probably as AT&T HSPA+ network advances, there are chances of iPhone 5 being activated with 4G in near future.

However, Motorola Bionic’s 4G LTE is a clear winner here. According to USAToday Review, “While performing a continuous streaming video test over WiFi with the screen set to 75% brightness — brighter than the recommended setting — I was able to get just shy of five hours of battery life. That's a great mark. The battery took just more than two hours to fully recharge. Remember that these tests are meant to quickly drain the battery in continuous use conditions. In real-life use, the Droid Bionic will last comfortably from morning until night.” That means we can presume the battery may last more than 8 hours if used normally.

The Verizon network boasts download speeds of 5-12 Mbps and upload speeds of 2-5 Mbps in broadband coverage areas.
Winner: Motorola Droid Bionic

Cloud Sync:
The main idea of the cloud synchronization is that your notes are synced using a web server, so you don't need to be near your PC - You can perform the synchronization anywhere you have access to the Internet. Today, more and more people are relying on the cloud sync option, mostly because users can store large amounts of data (in the gigabyte range), perform word processing and computationally intensive work. Now, iPhone users are all set to enjoy most of the sync benefits which Android users have been enjoying for long. iOS 5 is expected to bring iCloud to users. Apple Inc. announced the launch of its cloud service at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 6, 2011.

Apple, known for its software compatibility, brings users the best and the simplest user interface. This time around Apple is not going to disappoint. Hence both these phone stand tied here.
Winner: Tied.

Other Angles:
However, other positives of Motorola Droid include the WebTop application to connect to laptop and use the phone interface on the laptop computer, helping consumers to make calls, send texts, or run GoogleDocs, browse through Firefox 4 browser along with access to more than 200,000 Android Marketplace apps. The HDMI port helps you to connect with digital audio and video sources like digital audio devices, computer monitors, video projectors, tablet computers, and digital televisions. The card slot found in Droid Bionic helps in expanding the storage capabilities and provides a quick and easy way to back up data. Also enjoy the flash privilege found in Android phones while visiting various Web sites.

The handset has useful enterprise applications, including Citrix Receive and GoToMeeting, Motoprint (for in-network Wi-Fi printing), a data widget to help monitor data usage, and QuickOffice for document editing.

Review:
USAToday: “I've been using the Bionic for about a week and it's easily the best phone I've used all year…. There is no denying the incredible power packed inside the Droid Bionic… For those who have been waiting out the 4G smartphone race this summer, hoping for a hit with the Bionic, your wait has been rewarded. This one is worth buying.”

PCWorld: “Although we’re still wrapping up our lab tests of the Droid Bionic, it is safe to say that this is one of Verizon’s strongest phones available right now. The build quality is excellent, the software is clean and intuitive, and the addition of ZumoCast is terrific.”

Thisismynext: The Bionic is essentially as good and as bad as other recent Motorola entries, and shares much in common with the Droid X2, Droid 3, and Photon 4G (on Sprint). It's a handsome device with a sturdy build, and has more than enough horsepower to keep you happy for the immediate future.

Video Review: