droidStory

I checked out Motorola’s latest Android phone, the Motorola Devour, yesterday. I was really excited when I first heard about this phone, hoping for a great entry-level Android device with a physical keyboard, but my hands-on experience, albeit short, wasn’t great.

My first impression: This phone is a tank! Depending on what’s important to you this may not be a bad thing. The Devour feels rock solid, big and heavy. The keyboard slider mechanism works great and the aluminum casing should protect it from many physical abuses. Still, the headphone jack is in a strange location and the overall aluminum body gives it somewhat of a retro look.

Did I already mention this phone is big and heavy?!

Considering the overall size of the phone its 3.1-inch screen feels puny. Touch screen accuracy is good, but unfortunately the screen would not switch to landscape when turned on its side until you opened the slider keyboard. The phone does have a 3-axis accelerometer, so perhaps there is a setting somewhere to make the screen layout switch automatically. The keyboard does feel better than the Droid’s. The keys are spaced out & responsive and the little touch pad works great.

The phone that I played with had Android 2.0 installed, even though it was previously said to ship with Android 1.6. It also comes with MOTOBLUR, targeting people that don’t want to deal with all the individual apps for Email, SMS, Twitter, Facebook , etc. MOTOBLUR uses a simplified concept  of two main information categories called Messages and Happenings that are displayed as widgets on your home screen. Messages are in essence the traditional one-to-one communications, like email and sms. Happenings are all your social feeds from twitter, facebook and the like. People that are heavy into Twitter and Facebook may like the always-on social feed on the home screen. I found the update bubbles to be cluttering the screen, forcing me to use the menu for any other functions.

The 3.1MP camera on the Devour is probably the biggest disappointment. I took a couple of test pictures that looked blurry and dim. No flash and fixed focus make this camera pretty useless.

My overall conclusion: With the many promotions Verizon is offering, the price difference between the Devour and Droid is almost negligible. The Droid is a far superior phone in almost every aspect – the keyboard perhaps being the only exception.

Skip the Devour and get a Droid instead!