Motorola DEVOUR A555 Review

Introduction:

The Motorola DEVOUR A555 is now the third Android smartphone to be released by Verizon Wireless after the Motorola DROID and HTC DROID ERIS, but it is the first from the carrier to feature the MOTOBLUR user interface, which integrates social networking, email, and messaging directly on the desktop, though it still runs on Android 1.6 OS. This is in direct competition to the HTC DROID ERIS, which offers similar usability through their Sense UI interface, but the DEVOUR has one major advantage: the physical QWERTY keyboard, which makes messaging overall easier.

Included in the retail package is the Motorola DEVOUR smartphone, 1400mAh battery, wall charger with detachable microUSB cable, and user guides.

Design:

The Motorola DEVOUR is constructed out of extruded aluminum with an attractive silver coat finish, and the accent pieces have a black soft-touch coating on them. This gives the devices a sturdy and durable feel, about equal  to the Motorola DROID; unlike the flimsy plastic construction found on the HTC DROID ERIS. Both the DEVOUR and DROID are roughly the same size and weight, though the DEVOUR does feel slightly larger while in the hand or pocket.



You can compare the Motorola DEVOUR A555 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The DEVOUR has a similar form-factor to the DROID, as both have a side-sliding display with full QWERTY keyboard underneath. The capacitive touchscreen display on the DEVOUR is 3.1-inch diagonal with 320x480 resolution and 65K color support, compared to the 3.7-inch 480x854 resolution display with 16.8M color support on the DROID. When looking at the two side-by-side, the differences in the screen size and resolution are quite noticeable. Even though the display on the DEVOUR is still good enough to service its purpose, we can’t help but wish it had the same display as on the DROID, since there is plenty of room for it. Located under the display are three capacitive buttons for the menu, home, and back, and a hidden blue LED indicator that will flash when you receive any type of notification.


On the bottom-left is a square optical navigation key, which can be used to select items on the display, but we found it to be a bit finicky and not as accurate as a traditional d-pad. On the left side of the phone there is a microUSB port and a sliding cover that reveals the hidden battery and microSDHC memory card slot with 8GB card pre-installed (up to 32GB supported). There is a small tab that you pull on to remove the battery, and when you push the battery back in, there is a small red latch that holds it in place. It is an interesting design, and the first time we seen this on a Verizon phone, though it makes using a physically larger extended battery impossible. On the right side are the volume rocker, voice command key and camera key, though we found the voice command key to be too close to the volume rocker and often times we pressed it by mistake. Located on the top is the power/lock key and 3.5mm headset jack, with the external speaker on the bottom, and the 3MP camera on the back.


Sliding the DEVOUR open and close is an easier task than with the DROID, as the mechanism is spring-loaded and doesn’t require you to move it all the way. The internal 4-row QWERTY keyboard is recessed into the device, with the black plastic keys being individual and separate from one another. We like this layout as it gives space between the keys and allows for easier typing and with fewer mistakes, unlike the keyboard on the DROID which as no space between them. Unfortunately, they still provide little feedback when pressed.

Interface:

Motorola has developed MOTOBLUR, which adds extra features and functionality  to the Android 1.6 device and is similar in some ways to the Sense UI used by HTC. The MOTOBLUR user interface on the Motorola DEVOUR A555 is basically the same as the one found on the Motorola CLIQ, where the users can sign-in to their MySpace, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Picasa, Photobucket, and Yahoo! Mail, as well as standard POP/IMAP email and exchange accounts. Similar to webOS, contacts are pulled from each location and merged together, and if a contact’s info isn’t recognized you can link to other services or enter it manually. Thankfully info from one service does not get pushed back to another; for example if you have a Google contact who is also a Facebook contact, but they have different email addresses with the two services, Google is not updated with the Facebook address. Also, similar to HTC’s contact management, you can view your communication history and status within a contact, as well as their “happenings” or social network updates.



The homescreen has several custom widgets as well. The Happenings widget pulls all of your social network info and gives you a constant feed of updates. Messaging offers your standard SMS and MMS, but also integrates Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other messaging services including your email accounts. You can view them separately or together in the Universal Inbox. There is also a News and Entertainment widget that displays new info throughout the day. Lastly is the Social Status, which allows you to quickly update your status for the various services on one step. The best feature of these widgets is that a single tap on them brings up more info right on the homescreen without launching a separate app. For instance, if you tap on a news headline, it will bring you a brief synopsis, with a link to launch the full story. If you click on a Facebook profile update in Happenings, it gives you the full text, ability to read any comments and the option to comment yourself. On any of them you can swipe across the screen to get to the next item. There is also the ability to download the full Facebook app from the Android Market, which you have to use for mobile picture uploads to your Facebook profile.




MOTOBLUR is not nearly as ambitious as HTC’s Sense UI, but we do appreciate that it integrates more services than HTC does. When it comes down to it, MOTOBLUR isn’t so much an overhaul of the Android interface like Sense UI, but rather a tweaking. It boils down to better contact integration (even more so that Android 2.x) and some decent custom widgets. There are also five homescreen pages, instead of the stock three, which is always a plus. By far, the Motorola DEVOUR is the most “social networking” device we’ve seen for Verizon, as it is constantly being updated with your different feeds and has an “in your face” approach to showing them. This might make some feel like information overload, but you can always remove the widgets from the homescreens.

Organizer and Messaging:

All of the organizer options are stock Android 1.6. The calendar integrates with your Google account and syncs wirelessly. There is no memo or tasks program, but several are available in the Android Market, and the alarm clock has been ever so slightly tweaked to allow the user to change the snooze time between 5 and 15 minutes.



As mentioned before, messaging is not only SMS and MMS, but also integrates messages from the various social network services, as well as other user-defined personal and corporate email accounts. In addition to the physical QWERTY, the on-screen Android keyboard is available as well, though it is smaller than the DROID’s on-screen keyboard.

Camera:

The camera interface is as basic as it gets, with only a few settings,such as 5 color effects, resolution (3MP, 2MP, 1MP), picture reviewtimes, and to record location info in the pictures. Images takenoutside during the day by the DEVOUR’s3MP fixed-focus camera are notin the same category as ones taken by the 5MP DROID, as they have poorcolor representation, jagged edges, block pixelation, and look blurrymost of the time. Indoor images come out even worse, as low-lightlevels show more grain, and since there’s no flash, don’t expect totake any night pictures. Videos however look pretty good when playedback on a PC, but still not DROID quality, as they are recorded in the3GP format at 640x480 resolution and with 23 FPS.

Motorola DEVOUR A555 sample video at 640x480 pixels resolution.





Multimedia:

It will come as no surprise that the DEVOUR comes with the stock Android 1.6 music player. Though there is nothing wrong with it, you can download better music apps from the Android Market, such as Rock On and MixZing. Music playback quality is good, about equal to the DROID, but it sounds a bit louder since the external speaker is angled on the bottom instead of being on the back on the device.



Motorola has reworked the picture gallery and video player so they are now nicer to look at, though it isn’t as graphical as the 3D viewer on Android 2.1. When flipping through pictures, for example, the transition is much like turning a page. The photo viewer allows for picture editing as well, such as RGB, brightness, contrast, color saturation and others, and an auto-fix noticeably touches up images. There is a very cool preview feature where half the picture stays as the original and the other half is adjusted so you can compare the differences. The image can be cropped and rotated, or have the resolution cut down, and you can also select from different color effects or add speech bubbles, clip art, and frame the picture. All-in-all, it offers a lot of handy editing tools that aren’t found on most Verizon phones.



We tested the playback of several videos on the DEVOUR, as it supports MP4 files encoded with H.263 and H.264. Even though the display is physically limited to 480x320 pixels resolution, the device could play videos of up to 720x306 resolution with 1500Kbps bit rate, which was not possible on the HTC DROID ERIS. However, the WVGA display on the Motorola DROID remains the clear winner for watching videos between the three Verizon Android devices.

Software:

Naturally you can download and install apps from the Android Market,but there’s quite a number of apps already on the Motorola DEVOURincluding Google Talk, GMail, Google Maps 4 with Navigation,QuickOffice for viewing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Acrobat files,Verizon’s Mobile IM for AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo!, Visual Voicemail,VZ Navigator, VCast Music with Rhapsody and VCast Videos. Most Verizoncustomers are familiar with these programs, so we won’t go into greatdetail about them here. However, it was interesting to us that theDEVOUR comes with VZ Navigator, which costs a monthly fee to use, andalso Google Maps with Navigation, which is free to use, since both appsprovide GPS guided turn-by-turn driving  directions with audio prompts.





One added bonus to the Motorola DEVOUR A555, and a first on a Verizondevice, is the Motorola Phone Portal. With it, you can connect thephone to your PC (via USB or network Wi-Fi) and use a web-based programin your browser by going to http://192.168.16.2:8080/login/intro.htmland perform different tasks, such as downloading pictures, assigningringtones, view call and web history, and view and edit contacts. It isa nice feature, and is good for those individuals looking for a PCprogram-like interface to connect to the phone, but in all honestly itdoesn’t really do anything that can’t already be done, such astransferring files, changing settings in the phone, etc.



The Motorola DEVOUR A555 comes with a Qualcomm MSM7627 processor (the sameone found on the Palm Pixi) that combines two ARM cores, one operatingat 600MHz for applications and one at 400MHz for the modem processor.Internal memory is 512MB ROM / 288MB RAM. The device is by no meansslow, and seems just as quick as the Motorola DROID.

Connectivity:

The Motorola DEVOUR is a dual-band CDMA (800/1900 MHz) handset with high speed data connectivity available through Verizon’s 3G EVDO Rev A. network or Wi-Fi 802.11b/g. Bluetooth 2.0+EDR is supported with profiles for headset, hands-free, stereo audio, and phonebook access. Included with the device is Nuance Voice Commands, which allows for voice dialing over Bluetooth, something that is lacking on the Motorola DROID and HTC DROID ERIS. It works rather well as you can simply say “call home” in your BT earpiece and the Nuance program will call your stored home number.

The browser on the DEVOUR is Webkit based and displays web sites in similar form and fashion as the Motorola DROID, except that it has built-in support for Adobe Flash Lite, just like the HTC DROID ERIS. We tested this on a few sites with limited results, though some sites with larger Flash files would not load at all. YouTube videos can play directly in the browser, but look better and aren’t choppy when loaded in the YouTube app. We consider this a work in progress and hope that Flash 10.1 will find its way to the DEVOUR. Browsing most sites will show proper HTML layout and formatting, though multi-touch zooming is not supported, unlike the DROID ERIS, which limits you to use double-tap and the zoom icons. However, just like with the DROID ERIS, our only complaint about using the browser on the DEVOUR has to do with the screen’s resolution. Since it is lower resolution than the Motorola DROID, you are continually having to zoom-in so that text can be legible. This may not be a concern for some, but people who will be using the browser a lot will be more pleased with the higher resolution display on the Motorola DROID.

Performance:

Call quality on the Motorola DEVOUR was good, as voices were clear and lacked any distortion on our end, through we did notice that we had to turn the earpiece volume all the way up for people to sound loud enough…while the Motorola DROID was able to use two volume settings lower. People that we called also said that we sounded good on their end and equal to that of when using the DROID. However, signal reception was a bit disappointing, as the DEVOUR would only have 2 bars in high-coverage areas and shows a signal of -107dB to -105dB, while the DROID would have 4 bars and show -92dB to -87dB signal strength. (Remember, the closer the dB number is to 0 the better). We’re not sure why the DEVOUR has a lower signal, but we didn’t drop any calls during our tests.

The included 1400mAh battery is rated to provide the DEVOUR up to 5.6 hours of talk time or 18 days of standby time. During our testing we were able to achieve 6 hours and 23 minutes of continuous talk time on a full charge, which is equivalent to the Motorola DROID, and mixed-usage on each (including some talk, web, email, etc.) will get you about 24-30 hours before needing to recharge the battery.

Conclusion:

The Motorola DEVOUR is a nice Android-based smartphone, but what sets it apart from others is the MOTOBLUR user interface that provides greater integration and ease of use for your contacts, social networking, news, email, and messaging. In fact, the only thing we felt that is missing from the device is the larger and higher resolution screen that is on the Motorola DROID. Though, be that as it may, the DEVOUR offers a lot of nice features, including voice dialing over Bluetooth (which isn’t on the DROID or DROID ERIS) and a better designed QWERTY keyboard, though the 3MP camera is rather disappointing. Overall, we would recommend the Motorola DEVOUR for pretty much anyone who wants to easily stay connected via social networking. However, if you want the “high-end” Android, the Motorola DROID is still your best option, as it has the 3.7” WVGA display, 5MP autofocus camera, and will soon be updated to Android 2.1 OS.