The new Motorola Droid Razr Maxx makes up for both those shortcomings. It’s 3300mAh battery is 85% larger than the 1780mAh battery on the original Razr, resulting in far better battery life (lasting nearly twice as long). And the thicker battery actually makes the phone easier to hold.

The only downside to the Droid Razr Maxx is it’s slightly heavier (5,1 ounces versus 4,41 ounces) and $50 more than the original Droid Razr. Beyond that, the phones offer the exact same features and specs, so much of what you’ll read below is taken from my Droid Razr review.
How it feels in the hand

Motorola Droid Razr Maxx width compareThe Motorola Droid Razr Maxx is still light for its size, even at 5,1 ounces. And while the thickness of the Razr Maxx has been increased to .35» from just .28» in the Razr, I found the thicker profile gave me a better grip and was actually more comfortable to hold. Since the original Razr.

My issues with the Razr’s button quality are still here in the Razr Maxx. While the overall feel of the phone is solid, the buttons feel downright cheap, especially the wiggly, sharp-edged power button.
Display & Sound

The Motorola Droid Razr Maxx has the same 4,3-inch Super AMOLED Advanced qHD display (960 x 540). There’s plenty of brightness and excellent contrast, with the wide viewing angles you would expect from an AMOLED display. And it’s made from Gorilla Glass, which makes it virtually scratch-proof.

The built-in speaker on the Droid Razr Maxx was loud and clear. Standard calling volume is good as well.
Web browsing & mobile hotspot

Nothing new here. The Motorola Droid Razr Maxx uses Verizon’s 4G LTE network for blazingly fast download and upload speeds. In New York City, I regularly get download speeds of 13—17 Mbps (with a peak of 22 Mbps), and upload speeds from 5 — 7 Mbps. That’s about 10—15x faster than I get using Verizon’s 3G network (see: The Fastest 4G? It’s No Contest for an idea of how much you get with a 4G versus a 3G phone).

Combining that 4G speed, with the Razr Maxx’s powerful 1,2 GHz dual-core processor and beautiful display made for an excellent browsing experience.

The Motorola Droid Razr Maxx can act as a mobile hotspot for up to 8 devices.
Camera & video recording

The Razr Maxx has the same 8MP rear-facing camera as the Razr, which I found disappointing. It takes a long time for the camera to focus, even is bright light, which means lots of out-of-focus shots in low-light situations. Noise in low-light shots was also quite apparent. And in better light, colors were washed out, though they had a nice level of detail.

Video quality was not much better. The 1080p HD video was also washed out and the camera had trouble finding the correct subject to focus on. At least the video was stutter-free, but not without jiggliness in the image.
Keyboard & Navigation

The Motorola Droid Razr Maxx is running Android 2,3 Gingerbread and MOTOBLUR. The processor keeps everything flowing smoothly and navigation is well designed. Both multi-touch and Swype keyboards come pre-installed.

One new feature that many users will find quite appealing is the ability to create «Smart Actions», rules that let you do control a range of functions from power saving to ringer volume to app launching, based on your location or time of day. The rules are composed of «Triggers», such as arriving home, and «Actions», such as turning off 4G and turning on Wi-Fi. Creating the rules is as simple as identifying your Trigger(s) and clicking on the actions you want to occur.
Storage

The Motorola Droid Razr Maxx has 16GB of onboard memory and includes a 16GB microSD card (expandable to 32GB).
Battery life

Battery life on the Droid Razr Maxx was far better than on the original Razr. With the original, the phone was dead by evening, if I was using it frequently. The new Droid Razr Maxx lasted nearly 36 hours. With light use, it went for more than two days. That is exceptional among large-screen smartphones.
Laptop Dock

Like other advanced Motorola phones, the Droid Razr Maxx can use the Motorola accessory Laptop Dock, which can turn the phone into a mobile computer.
Pricing and availability

The Motorola Droid Razr Maxx is available from Verizon for $299,99 with a new, two-year customer agreement. That $50 more than the Droid Razr 32GB and $100 more than the Droid Razr 16GB. Or, you can purchase the Droid Razr Maxx from AmazonWireless for $199.99.
Should you buy it?

Like the Razr, the Droid Razr Maxx is a feature-packed phone with a fast processor, beautiful display and 4G LTE speeds (a must on Verizon) that innovates in some very useful ways. The water-repellent nanocoating inside helps protect it from life’s little unpleasantries, and the Smart Actions will be a godsend for those who need to change setting between work and home, day and night, or weekday and weekends.

Unlike the Razr, the Maxx has a battery that not only performs, it excels. And the thicker girth actually makes it a more comfortable phone to hold, even if you have small hands.

Between the original Razr and the new Razr Maxx, there’s no question that the Razr Maxx is the way to go. If only the camera were better, it would have made my highly recommended list.

Rating: Recommended
Detailed Specs

Talk and Standby Time: Up to 21,5 hours talk time, up to 15,8 days standby
Band/Modes: CDMA Dual band/LTE
OS: Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread
Weight: 5,1 oz
Dimensions: 2,71 x 5,15 x 0,35 inches
Battery: 3300 mAh
Display: 4,3» Super AMOLED Advanced LCD (960 x 540)
Video: 1080p
Camera: Rear-facing 8,0 megapixel, Auto Focus, LED flash
Front-facing Camera: 1,3 megapixel
Mobile hotspot: Yes, up to eight devices
Processor: 1,2GHz Dual Core
Memory: 1GB RAM, 16GB onboard storage and 16GB microSD card (expandable to 32GB)

According to WPSauce, Microsoft has revealed some interesting facts about Tango during the developers’ camp in India. The next version will up the language support from 35 to 120, which shows that Microsoft wants to expand its markets to emerging and developing nations as well. Also, the next version will come with native support for C++, thereby making it easy for developers to code or port apps over to the mobile platform.

However, it has still not been confirmed, whether the ‘next release’ would be the immediate Tango or the upcoming Apollo. Meanwhile, PocketPC have managed to get a screen grab of a Tango running WP7 phone, which shows Skype as well as Google+ integration into the messenger hub. Now that Microsoft owns Skype, it was only a mater of time till this feature was integrated, but we are pleasantly surprised to see it done so quickly. The folks who took the screenshot claimed that chatting over both these services work well, but Skype’s voice calling were a bit buggy. Video calling will also be available, but it may not come out in time for Tango. We don’t know for certain if the screen grab is real or not, so let’s take this with a pinch of salt, until we get some concrete proof straight from the horse’s mouth.

For most people, landing an executive position at Microsoft would be the pinnacle of their career. Watson’s new position at Amazon is working on Kindle apps, so it is almost exactly the same line of work, though now for what was one of his biggest competitors. It leaves a question mark about Microsoft’s future in the mobile space, though not a black hole. The software giant has actually done a formidable job at building the Windows Phone brand.

It got a much-needed boost from Nokia, which recently launched its Lumia 710 smartphone in the US. At $50, the Lumia 710 is seen as a great entry-level smartphone. But alas, selling Windows Phone as the «cheap» option is only driving a bigger wedge when it comes to the smartphone aficianados who simply don’t believe there’s a need for a third player in an iOS and Android duel. For Watson, that battle won’t be an issue anymore.

The texting-glove for the hearing impaired is a new device that turns sign language into text, and sends it directly to one’s smartphone using Android operating software. Usind a gyroscope, an ADK Board, finger sensors and some other gear, the device can faithfully transcribe sign language into text message format.

According to our http://dvice.com/archives/2011/12/texting-glove-t.php”>source, the device was recently unveiled at Google’s Developers Day in Tel Aviv to showcase what can be done with Android software.

Thanks to text-messaging, cellphones are not without use to the hearing impaired. While it use of the glove might not be as practical as simply typing out a text message, since it takes a few moments for the phone to register and accept the glove’s motions, the motion-control-style gloves and software could probably be expanded in the future and lead to some really interesting developments.

At the very least, one could use this current technology to literally «write» things in sign language. How about writing a story using hand motions? That would be a neat item to have in the portfolio.

In other news, check out A revolution in transportation: subway game straps and Dancing multi-legged robot morphs into a ball.

Huawei has scheduled a press event for February 26th, one day before Mobile World Congress kicks off, where they plan to detail their Diamond series high-end Android phones. Tagged as being the «smartest, fastest and most high-performing smartphone(s),” it’s not clear exactly how Huawei would build on the still unreleased Ascend P1 S or P1 LTE.
If Huawei wants to keep up with top manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and Sony, then there’s a good chance their Diamond series devices will feature quad-core processors, HD displays and some sort of advanced imaging technology.

With just over a month until Mobile World Congress kicks off, we’re finally starting to get an idea of what to expect at the show. Everyone from LG and HTC to Epson will have something running Android on display. Is there any particular device you’re really looking forward to? Let us know in the comments below.

Samsung chief executive Choi Gee-sung told reporters during his speech at the Consumer Electronics Show, that the company overtook Nokia in revenue terms in its latest reported quarter and was confident of topping the Finnish group in shipments this year. Although the popularity of Nokia phones is declining, the company is still very strong on emerging markets. Besides, the company has started selling its next-generation smartphones powered by Microsoft Windows Phone 7,5 «Mango» operating system and they can slowdown Nokia’s declines in case the two partners manage to improve popularity of WP7,5 platform compared to Apple iOS or Google Android .

According to the latest polls by Reuters news-agency, Nokia was expected to sell 418 million phones in 2011, versus Samsung’s 320 million. The gap would narrow this year to 388 million versus 359 million.

«Samsung is getting closer to Nokia very quickly. Their smartphones strategy has proven right and on feature phones they are growing fast in emerging markets too. Samsung became a recognized brand and their successful smartphones are helping their feature phones business in regions where smartphones are still too expensive,” said Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst with IDC.

Analysts believe that with slowing sales in well-developed countries, it will be harder for Samsung to outsell Nokia as the company’s stronghold has historically been emerging markets.

«Considering how strong Nokia still is in the emerging markets, Samsung’s expectation seems to imply that Nokia will miserably fail in mature markets. I think it will be hard for Samsung to beat Nokia without more aggressively targeting emerging markets,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Gartner.

To put this figure in perspective, the company processed $750 million worth of mobile transactions in 2010 and $141 million in 2009, David Marcus, vice president of PayPal Mobile, said at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The huge growth in mobile payment volume is the result of an overall increase in mobile commerce, combined with the availability of more useful mobile payment apps, Marcus told VentureBeat.

PayPal had originally kicked off 2011 predicting $1,5 billion in mobile total payment volume for the year, a company spokesman said. As the year went on, the company upped its projections three separate times, to $2 billion in February, $3 billion in June, and $3,5 billion in October.

«Over the course of [2011] we raised our initial prediction by a total of $2 billion, and still managed to surpass our goal by a wide margin with a total of $4 billion,” a PayPal spokesman said in an email.

PayPal has actually seen mobile payment volumes ratchet up each year since at least 2006, when it processed less than $1 million in mobile transactions. In 2007, it hit $7 million and by 2008, it reached $25 million.

Despite the huge growth in mobile payment volume seen by PayPal, those in the payments industry do not expect the new transaction method to reach ubiquity this year. A group of mobile payment executives in September said consumers will be quicker to embrace mobile payments than merchants, who have been slow to accept such transactions.

Some merchants have been early adopters, however. Starbucks, for example, in July unveiled a new mobile payment system available in all U.S. stores for BlackBerry and Apple iOS users.

We have already seen leaked images of the Android smartphone, the device popping up on DroidDoes, training materials, dummy handsets, and even Best Buy Ads for the Motorola Droid 4 and now according to the guys over at Droid-life, Droid 4 accessories are in stores in the form of handset cases.

The guys have managed to get hold of a couple of images of those Motorola Droid 4 cases at retailers one shown above and the other can be viewed below.

However, still no sign of the Motorola Droid 4 receiving an official release date as yet, so perhaps the smartphone will gain its official release come CES 2012. Perhaps Verizon is saving the Motorola Droid 4 to show off at CES along with their Xyboards, who knows.

Spec reminder for the Droid 4 if you are still waiting for the handset to surface, 4-inch qHD touch screen, 1,2GHz dual core processor, 8 megapixel rear facing camera, front facing camera, 4G LTE connectivity, memory card slot, 1785mAh battery, and a slide out 5-row QWERTY keyboard.

So the big question is, are you still waiting to snap up the Motorola Droid 4 once it finally surfaces or have you opted to purchase another Android smartphone?

If you have enjoyed this Phones Review article feel free to add me to your circles on Google+ and I will of course add you back.

Rather than delve straight away into what’s new with the 9380, though, I want to describe my first experience with the phone: swapping out the Vodafone SIM provided by RIM with my own O2 SIM. I already own a BlackBerry smartphone in the Curve line — the somewhat outdated 8520 — and after finally managing to exchange the SIM cards, I simply had to start up the 9380, type in the email and password associated with my BlackBerry ID, and it restored all my email accounts (sans passwords), which I could also use to restore my BBM contacts. If RIM are trying to entice owners of outdated BlackBerry smartphones like myself with a smooth upgrade process, job well done: within a few minutes, without the use of a desktop computer or a Wi-Fi Internet connection, I’d migrated all the essentials from my 8520 to the 9380, and then simply stuck my 8520’s microSD memory card into the 9380 to have instant access to my previous phone’s media.

As for the phone itself: it’s a definite upgrade from the Curve 8520, but from the more recent Curve 9370, I’m not so sure. I can’t fathom what convinced RIM to drop the keyboard from what is arguably their most popular line (at least for consumers), whether it be the misguided notion that tactile keyboards are a thing of the past, or the pressure of its shareholders, but its touch successor is definitely not perfect. The touch keyboard in BlackBerry OS 7 resembles that of the BlackBerry PlayBook’s, with well-spaced letters making up a QWERTY keyboard, and a quick tap brings you to the numbers and symbols keyboard, but even with one of the two «assistive typing» modes enabled, you’re bound to make countless mistakes, and generally have a lower typing speed. The compromise here is that the 9380 becomes a much more comfortable device for media and photography, but whether that’s an acceptable trade is a difficult subject.
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BlackBerry OS 7 features something akin to auto-correct throughout the operating system and in almost every app; you can set the assistive typing style to either «predictive» or «corrective», the former bringing up suggestions for words as you’re typing them, and the latter simply correcting words after you’ve typed them. Predictive is probably the most intuitive, as it tries to correct minor mistakes while you’re in the process of typing a long word, solving the possibility of typing long strings of characters unintelligible even to auto-correct. Pausing for a moment brings up a context menu offering alternative suggestions or your original key presses in case of error, but often these can still be way off-field: if you accidentally hit a punctuation key, it can completely destroy its comprehension, and some words like «ill» will offer the suggestions «illness» and «ilk» instead of the undoubtedly more common «I’ll». I grew accustomed to the system surprisingly quickly, but in cases like password fields, where assistive typing is not applicable, real issues tend to manifest.

The keyboard can be dismissed at any time by tapping the thin bar at the top (which, despite its small size, is remarkably easy to hit), but it feels slightly annoying that you can’t slide to dismiss it, or tap-and-drag from the bar. Should you attempt to tap and drag the bar, nothing will happen whatsoever, which adds an edge of frustration. Punctuation is also annoying inaccessible, requiring users to tap the symbol key to bring up the symbol keyboard — and then tap it again to go back to the original keyboard afterwards, essentially making a single key press into three. There’s a spell checker throughout the operating system, which is a neat addition, and every forename, surname, and company name from your contacts is automatically added to the predictive and spell checker dictionaries, the latter of which can also be edited manually in the options, but beyond that it’s still pretty basic.

Keyboard aside, it’s immediately obvious that BlackBerry OS 7 was designed for the touch screen. Its gorgeous interface is easily navigable with a single finger, and in most visual elements resembles the PlayBook’s operating system, obviously a precursor to the two technology’s merger as the upcoming «BlackBerry 10». Scrolling through Facebook and Twitter feeds with finger gestures is a delight, as is with the built-in consolidated «Social Feeds» app, and BlackBerry App World feels so much smoother with a touch screen than without. The phone immediately switches orientation when turned on its side too, which is useful for long typing sessions and watching video, but there’s no orientation lock feature, which is sure to cause frustration to some. In fact, it seems like one the biggest oversight in designing the phone’s touch interface.
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There are some imperfections when it comes to gestures as well; the PlayBook encourages slides with its unique bezel design, whereas the Curve 9380 (and generally OS 7) seems to encourage taps, until it comes to long lists, at which point you can use the now obligatory flick-slide to run down them. While still coming to grips with the phone, a large number of my slide gestures were somehow misinterpreted as taps, but as I became more accustomed to the device’s interface, this happened less often; I can only suggest that while the touch screen itself is responsive, you need to be conscious from where you’re sliding and to where, otherwise you can unintentionally activate a button.

Other gestures work beautifully, though, including the perennial pinch-to-zoom, which makes an appearance in the included Maps application and the browser. More awkward than the slide/tap misinterpretation are the hardware buttons along the bottom of the phone’s front face; the BlackBerry button and the back button are important to the extent that you’ll be using them regularly alongside the touch interface, but switching between touch taps and real button presses feels very uncomfortable. Capacitive buttons might have been a better choice, or even better: bezel gestures like the PlayBook, dropping the need for buttons altogether. For that, though, we’ll probably have to wait again for «BlackBerry 10». The media buttons are also nicely consolidated into three along the side, the middle of which acts as either pause or mute depending on context, and the other two which act as volume up and down when pressed, or skip and previous when held.

If you’re uncomfortable with the touch screen gestures, you can take advantage of the track pad for many of the phone’s functions. There are only a few minor things that absolutely require the use of the touch screen, for example the keyboard, and dialling. The nicest consequence of this is that the trackpad can be used as a cursor in the browser, effectively giving two control options: the contemporary drag, pinch, tap browsing experience, or a more accurate cursor method, emulating browsing on the PC, which is useful when interacting with Flash content. The trackpad on the 9380 is flat and inline with the rest of the body, which is greatly preferable to the raised trackpad of the Curve 9300.

From the front, the Curve 9380 looks surprisingly like the BlackBerry Torch with the keyboard stowed, but that illusion is broken once you approach the device from any other angle; it’s remarkably thin, measuring a depth of only 11,2mm, and a shiny silver band adorns the circumference of the device in a manner much more tasteful than in the Curve 9300 in which it was introduced. From the back, it looks very much like the other entries in the Curve line, even as far back as the 8520, with the exception of the battery cover’s shape — also new is the incredible difficulty posed by removing the battery cover, a necessary action to remove or insert a microSD card. The lock button on the top of the device has also evolved from the tiny, shallow button on the Curve 9370 to a hidden button under the plastic chassis, with a small white lock icon printed above it.

There’s a bright white LED on the rear, opposite the camera lens, which can be used for both photos and videos as a flash, either manually activated or automatic. It’s a very welcome addition to what is already a surprisingly good camera for a phone in the Curve line, even if it still disappointingly has a fixed focal point. With other smartphones on the market offering high dynamic range and macro photography, it seems less excusable for the 9380 to miss out, but the Curve is still more or less the entry level BlackBerry smartphone; it’s a missing feature, but not altogether a surprising one. A video camera capable of 720p video is also absent, despite its appearance in the past couple of iterations of the Bold, which is a bigger disappointment; it shouldn’t take this long to trickle down to the Curve. Naturally, as with all BlackBerry smartphones, there’s no front-facing camera, which now seems like an odd omission, given that the PlayBook features a front-facing camera as well as an integrated video chat function, but it seems RIM is not yet ready to make the leap to bring this to smartphones.

On the other hand, despite the shallowness of the 9380’s exploration into creating media, it’s certainly designed for enjoying existing media. There’s a solid music player with built-in functionality to display your «now playing» via BlackBerry Messenger status message automatically, and you can smoothly watch high quality video too. The browser fully supports Flash, which was a major and pleasant surprise. You can watch Flash video content streamed over a 3G network connection with absolutely no hassle, although the drain on the battery from doing so is substantial; HTML5 WebM video is also supported, which uses less battery and has even more responsive controls and a shorter loading time. A couple of websites don’t seem to like the Flash implementation too much: for example, the BBC News website won’t display media, citing an old version of Flash, whereas Dailymotion and YouTube work perfectly. It’s more or less hit-and-miss, but in the instances where it does work, it’s a major plus, especially considering how rare Flash support is in smartphones.
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The recently released «BBM Music» application also finds itself enhancing the 9380’s media experience, basically acting as RIM’s interpretation of popular music discovery tool «Spotify”; users create a playlist of songs they like and can then listen to them streamed over the air, as well as exchange playlists with their friends over BlackBerry Messenger. There’s also a podcast player pre-installed, which automatically monitors podcast feeds to stay updated and keep track of episodes to which you haven’t listened, but it oddly misses some of the integration I’ve come to expect of BlackBerry smartphones; its Google-based podcast search engine works, but it feels like a lazy hack: where’s the classic concision of BlackBerry software?

Despite what’s missing, the device pushes into the future in two other regards: the built-in compass and GPS enable the pre-installed «Wikitude» app to create a brilliant augmented reality interface, which can even show you the location of your BBM friends relative to you (if you enable this in the privacy settings); and full support for «Near Field Communications», the same technology behind the much-hyped «Android Beam» which allows you to bump against any other NFC-capable device to pair instantly. Combined with the automatic over-the-air backup courtesy of «BlackBerry Protect», the turn-by-turn GPS and traffic report of «BlackBerry Traffic», and the automatic trip planner and accommodation finder «BlackBerry Travel», it becomes a phone that might not be on the bleeding edge, but is still remarkably functional and certainly future-proof.

In the end, the BlackBerry Curve 9380 is a nice phone; it’s slim, it’s light, it’s powerful, and it’s attractive. Its battery lasts around a day, and charges via the same micro-USB port as all other BlackBerry devices. I still prefer the Curve 9370, though; dropping the tactile keyboard might bring in a wider demographic, but it ultimately harms the phone’s usability, being nowhere near as effective as the 9370’s tactile keyboard. Whether that’s down to the OS 7 keyboard or the misbehaving of the 9380’s touch screen in certain conditions, I’m not certain. If you’re moving from an all-touch phone, the 9380 will certainly appeal to you; if you’re graduating from a QWERTY keyboard phone, it’s not going to be a pleasant upgrade, but the discomfort could pay off. For those to whom media matters more than productivity, the 9380 is a step in the right direction — but others should probably take a step back to the 9370, or jump straight into the Bold line.