Leaked Droid RAZR HD images and benchmarks predict a killer Verizon device
When I spent some time reviewing the Motorola Droid RAZR MAXX, I found very little not to like. The industrial design improved on Motorola’s already solid ideas, the battery life was amazing, and the camera was actually good for a Motorola device. In fact, my only real complaint about the device was the outdated and ugly software it ran, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) with MotoBlur. Since the Droid RAZR came out, Google has finished their acquisition of the company, and while little change has happened so far, many are wondering what direction Motorola will take.
We’ve seen their new software direction with Ice Cream Sandwich, and the implementation looks good, but there has been no new hardware to take advantage of it. In addition, HTC and Samsung have both recently released their flagship smarpthones for 2012, while Motorola has been nowhere to be seen. As such, although we don’t usually deal with leaks of this sort, I wanted to give Motorola a little of attention over the latest information that has come out concerning what may be its next big smartphone, the Droid RAZR HD.
First, there are the images. We caught a glimpse of what was thought to be the device quite a while ago next to some other Motorola smartphones, but this image very clearly shows a Motorola LTE smartphone for Verizon, with the Motorola Kevlar covering the entire back of the device. It looks a bit like carbon fiber actually, and I’m not too sure about the look. Turning to the side of the device, we find a microUSB port and miniHDMI port, which shouldn’t be surprising, but it is odd that Motorola didn’t utilize a single MHL port for both USB and HDMI instead.
Moving on to the hardware, as has happened with other devices before, a stray NenaMark2 benchmark has revealed quite a few of the smartphone’s specifications. Most importantly, we have a 1.5GHz dual-core processor of the Snapdragon S4 variety, accompanied by an Adreno 225 GPU. This should come with at least 1GB of RAM, but it wouldn’t be too surprising for Motorola to try to match the Galaxy SIII and fit in 2GB. On to the display, a 720p HD panel has once again been confirmed, and although it shows up as a 1196 x 720, it would make sense that the missing 84 pixels were due to the onscreen navigation buttons. Speaking of which, the software version has also been specified as Android 4.0.4, which is the very latest Ice Cream Sandwich build as of now.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m quite interested to see what Motorola brings to the table with their next smartphone since the Google acquisition. My first Android device was an original Droid that I loved, but since then Motorola seems to have been slipping slightly. Sure, the RAZR MAXX was good, but it just wasn’t as amazing as Samsung’s and HTC’s devices. The RAZR HD looks like it could be Motorola’s rebound to the top tiers of the smartphone market, and as far as I can tell they seem to have done everything right. Provided these specs hold up and Motorola doesn’t butcher Ice Cream Sandwich like they did with Gingerbread, I think they could have a killer device on their hands.
[DroidLife 1, 2]
