Saturday, January 10, 2015

This may be the Droid you are looking for

I'd have to describe our family as walking on the Apple side of life as my wife and I both have iPhones and iPads, most of our songs and movies are downloaded off of iTunes, and my kids' favorite games and educational tools are from the App Store.  That being said, I still like to stay up to date on the functions and features provided by competing brands.  So I appreciated that the folks at Verizon loaned me the new Motorola DROID TURBO smart phone and provided access to their 4G LTE wireless network over the holiday week between Christmas and New Years to see how androids compare.  I have to say we had a pretty positive experience and if you are in shopping mode for a new phone this may be the droid you are looking for.

The Motorola Droid Turbo has a great big screen which is especially great if you enjoy watching video, playing games or just appreciate your type and images being bigger and easier to see; yet the phone really isn't that bulky so it doesn't feel like you are carting around a tablet with you.  For an HD display though I wasn't that impressed by its graphic capabilities when it came to the touch screen applications or surfing the net, but the screen images when you turned on the 21-megapixal camera where very impressive and made me go wow! - especially when I held up my iPhone5S and compared the capabilities next to one another.  Just don't try to take quick shots with the Droid Turbo as it has a second or so lag time for the camera to adjust to give a good crisp HD image.

We used the smart phone to call my brother up who lives on the other side of the country from us in Seattle so my kids could say thank you for their Christmas presents he had mailed to them and I could catch up with what he has been up to lately.  The sound quality using the Motorola DROID TURBO and Verizon's 4G LTE wireless network was exceptional...it sounded as if my brother was sitting right next to us when we were talking to him with no static or lag time although he was more than 2,000 miles away from us during our conversation.  You can tell from seeing the phone in my 6 year old daughter's hand that it has a big frame yet it really isn't bulky or heavy to hold and it is impressive how much of the front of the phone is covered by the screen rather than casing.  If you have kids who are rough with your gadgets or if you  may be clumsy like myself, you may also want to take note of the protective elements they have incorporated into this smart phone.  Motorola has added Metallized Glass Fiber to add strength to the phone's body and also reinforced it with DuPont Kevlar fiber for increased durability.  A water-repellent nanocoating has also been added to protect against spills or getting caught out in the rain although that still won't protect the phone if it were to be say dunked in a toilet or dropped in a lake.  Still a little protection from every day mishaps is better than no protection.  Another nice protective touch added to the Droid Turbo is scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass 3 which guards the 5.2 inch Quad HD display on this smart phone.  With all these features you may be able to avoid having to add a bulky protective case to safeguard this phone and who doesn't hate adding those on to their phones?!

A few other features I appreciated and wanted to point out.  The Droid Turbo has great battery life and I only had to recharge it twice during a week of use.  It has a nifty feature that is really convenient called turbo charging which will give your phone 8 hours of power within 15 minutes of plugging it into an electrical outlet.  It can be torturing when you are in a hurry and need your phone charged and that bar just doesn't move....with this device bing bam boom you are powered up and ready to get back into the world. Another "turbo" feature of this smart  phone is its 2.7 GHz quad core processor which allows for switching between functions with no lag time as I pleasantly was able to quickly flip between my Google calendar, a phone call, my e-mail and the web during a work conversation without any freezes, hitches or hiccups as I multi-tasked through the applications. Awesome! I often find myself having to search my calendar, look for an email, or research something quickly on the web when I'm on the phone so I need a device that has the processing power to let me run multiple features at once and the Droid Turbo absolutely met that criteria for me.

I don't know if it is from familiarity or convenience, but ios still seems a more comfortable fit for me when it comes to an operating system.  There are little nuances with android that just irk me so for the time being I'm sticking with my iPhone; but if Apple keeps issuing ios updates that tend to throw off my enjoyment and the ease of use of their products than I may one day be looking for a droid myself.  If that time comes, I'd have no qualms about picking myself up a Motorola Droid Turbo after my recent test run with the product. 

Disclaimer:  the opinions and views expressed in the post are my own.  A Geek Daddy Blog did not receive any financial compensation from Motorola or Verizon for this post.  I was provided the use of a Motorola Droid Turbo and access to the Verizon wireless network at no charge for three weeks to test and review the phone and Verizon's service.  I am currently a customer for my own personal wireless service with another provider.

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