6 Droid Phones: Motorola's Hope to Regain Lost Market

Anyone who has a mobile phone probably owned at least one Motorola unit in his lifetime. Motorola used to be the global leader in mobile phone sales in the 1990s until Nokia, Apple and Samsung stepped up their game and caused Motorola sales to plummet.

Based in Schaumburg, Illinois, Motorola lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, which caused the company to be divided into two independent units, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions.

Motorola Mobility is currently owned by Google and based in the Libertyville, Illinois in Chicago. Despite the downturn, Motorola is recognised as the icon of RAZR phones with elegant design and stunning thin body during the years 2002-2003 which was very difficult to achieve by the other manufacturers at that time.

However, Motorola focused on RAZR phones too much that it saturated the market and slowed down the innovations for Motorola units that by 2009, the shift from regular phones to ones running the Android OS caused Motorola to be left behind.

In a bid to catch up, Motorola Mobility, under Google, made the its own Droid phones and launched the Droid RAZR MAXX which is reviewed in the following YouTube posting.

Motorola Droid units have slim design, powerful hardware, and good features, and are known for being very durable. Here are the six Droid smart phones selected from several released by Motorola.

Droid RAZR MAXX HD

This Droid has 4.7 inches of HD screen display and similarity to HDTV quality. The battery life complements even with the vivid screen image quality of this droid. A single charge keeps the DROID RAZR MAXX HD powered up to 32 hours of performance, up to 13 hours of HD videos, and up to 8 hours of GPS voice guided system during travel. And with SMARTACTIONS features, battery is extended, prolonged, and saved during idle times without killing the reception for the SMS and call service. Motorola is one the phone manufacturers with exceptional battery life.

Since the display is in HD, the camera capture should be in HD as well. DROID RAZR MAXX HD with its advanced camera technology takes HQ photos with optional effects such as panorama and multishot, and could also take videos with razor-sharp HD 1080p format plus slow motion.

Design and protection should tie up so Motorola users could still expect the thin appearance of this droid, with DuPont KEVLAR fiber encasing the entire rear cover, Corning Gorilla Glass for the screen and water-repellent nanocoating.

Droid RAZR MAXX HD costs $299.99 according to its U.S. Web site.

Droid RAZR M

The next one has 4.3 inches of display that spans edge to edge with Super AMOLED Advanced display technology and still fits the palm. SMARTACTIONS is also available in this droid which lets the user set up application according to desired settings and extends the battery the life when not in use without interfering with SMS and calls.

Droid RAZR M is constructed with premium materials like aircraft-grade aluminium frame surrounding the edge to edge display, Corning Gorilla Glass which deflects both scratches and scrapes. The back is protected with KEVLAR strong fibers and water-repellent nanocoating for the display and even with the electrical boards inside this droid.

This droid costs $99.99.

Droid RAZR HD

This is another 4.7-inch droid mobile device with HD display that offers vibrant visual clarity like the HDTV. This RAZR prioritises the HD viewing from text, web pages, ebooks, and movies while enduring demands of energy from the battery. According to Motorola, RAZR HD has a battery life up to 24 hours per single charge. The battery lasts up to 7 hours with YouTube HD shows or 20 hours of music playlist via streaming. For web surfing via 4G LTE, the battery lasts for 6 hours. Since battery life is important SMARTACTIONS feature is active in this device as well.

When it comes with the design, RAZR HD is merely 8.4mm thin and is considered the world's most compact 4.7" smartphone with HD definition and extreme angle viewing innovation.

Droid RAZR HD costs $199.99.

Electrify M

This unit is still slim with 8.6mm thickness even without the RAZR in the model name. Electrify M runs on Android OS with 4.3 inches of display extending almost to the border line. The device supports 4G LTE and Google Chrome browsing, Google Mobile services, and SmartActions for the battery life.

ATRIX HD

ATRIX HD provides 4.5 inches of HD display + ColorBoost for vibrant colour display, 8.4mm thickness, Modern White or Titanium style, DuPont Kevlar fiber, and several Motorola features in one smartphone.

It has high processing speed of 1.5GHz dual core processor, 4G LTE capability and SmartAction enabled feature to extend the battery life.

Photon Q

The last from this list is the Photon Q with a PC-like keyboard. The PC like keyboard has 5 full rows of laser cut, evenly spaced and elevated designed keys plus LED lighting for darkness. Photon Q feature 4.3" display with ColorBoost, SmartActions for extended battery life, 4G LTE ready, 8MP camera, business ready services, and runs on Android OS platform.

These smartphones have Google Services and most of them runs Google Chrome, s claimed to be the fastest browser right now in desktop. All of the devices as well are running on Android OS platform with upgrades ready in the Motorola Web site.

However, despite the launch of Droids, it seems Motorola would have tougher days ahead to recover lost ground since its third quarter sales contributed $2.58 billion to Google's income, which is below analysts' forecast of $3.3 billion.

As a result, Google announced in August the axing of 4,000 jobs in Motorola Mobility or 20 per cent of its workforce. The company also plans to shutter some of Motorola Mobility's facilities and simplify its wireless product portfolio.