Three Motorola Droid 3 videos leak, detail quite a bit

Emil

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Motorola's unannounced Droid 3 smartphone has already seen leaked images, but now we've got video. Three tutorials of the device have leaked on YouTube, courtesy of PhonePads, destroying Verizon's and Motorola's efforts to hide details of what the third-generation Droid will have in store.

The Motorola Droid 3 is a five-row QWERTY slider (there's a number row now), featuring an 8 megapixel camera that is apparently capable of 1080p HD video recordings. Other changes over the Droid and Droid 2 include a pair of volume keys on the right edge (instead of the usual rocker), the apparent lack of a dedicated camera button, the migration of the power button from the top right of the phone to the top center, and both micro-USB and mini-HDMI on the left edge. The three videos embedded below show a basic introduction, handling contacts, and text input:



Although Verizon clearly states "Software Shown Not Final" on each video, the Swype virtual keyboard will likely be shipping with the Droid 3 (in addition to the standard virtual keyboard and the physical keyboard). That being said, it's not clear what version of Android the handset will include – we're hoping it will be at least Android 2.3 (codenamed Gingerbread).

The device is expected to have a 4-inch qHD display (960 x 540 resolution) and a dual-core processor. An official release date and price for the Droid 3 have yet to be announced, but the general consensus is that it will hit Verizon Wireless in the near future for a similar pricing structure as the previous Droids. Recent speculation suggests the launch could come as soon as later this month.

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With droids, its all about the specs they have. There are so many now, and they all have very similar designs. It's really amazing there hasn't been a lawsuit like with the samsung galaxy and iphone. I would really like to see phones shipping with dual core processors, better battery (can never be good enough), and high quality cameras. We really don' t need the "point and shoot" cameras anymore for pictures when we have our nice 8mp+ smartphone cameras.
 
Yeah Moto Blur or whatever it is called is terrible. I just got a X2 and not only does the UI Motorola put on here clunky and slow, but it is buggy as well. When you try to move an object on the home screen you get this weird artifact with red horizontal lines running across the screen, with a square for the icon with green lines in it. On top of all this I personally think it is ugly and you can't easily turn it off. Stop making these crappy UI overlays, or at least give us an option to turn them off. I had to start using third party launchers just to get things to run smoothly.

Another thing... the display. I will say that I picked this phone because it had the brightest display I could find. The brightness is awesome and I can actually the screen in direct sunlight. But this pintile panel is really weird, and I think it may be the cause of some of the gradient and dithering effects we get on certain colors. The response time on this panel is also terrible, very obvious ghosting. It is particularly noticable with white text on a black background, which is probably why you reversed the colors on the settings menu, so potential customers wouldn't see how bad it really is. The only good things about this display is the size, resolution, backlight brightness, and the viewing angles.

I am not a fan of the physical buttons at the bottom. While I usually prefer real buttons as opposed to virtual buttons, these are just too small and heavy to press down. It is almost as bad as Aston Martin's DB9 center console controls. If you can't make good buttons then just do the virtual buttons below the display panel.

The camera I also have to agree is not great. Not to mention there must be some sort of software glitch with the camera software because I recorded 3 videos, and 2 of which were corrupt. I haven't played with it much but i'm already not impressed.

I don't think the dual core is really ready for prime time yet. I think it is like when PC's started getting dual cores, but there was no software that could use it efficiently and smoothly. Music stutters when the phone is just sitting there and not multitasking (tried 4 different players, all the same result). Music sometimes stops or pauses for several seconds or just doesn't start back up again when multitasking. I haven't even tried video playback yet but i'm afraid to at this point since it can't even handle audio.

All of these relatively small things ruin a phone with such great potential. At this point I think maybe i'll take this X2 back and keep my crappy Samsung Glyde (yeah... I know...) until the 3 comes out. I can only hope it has improved... if I can get a physical keyboard with the 4.3 inch screen, with the excellent brightness and good viewing angles, then i'm probably onboard.

Now if Verizon would offer some decent lower cost data plans for these phones that would be nice. $30 is completely unnecessary and a waste of money unless it is your only connection to the internet. At which point it should have NO restrictions on tethering.
 
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