Motorola Atrix HD Review: Fast, Sharp, Bargain
by Jason Inofuentes on September 5, 2012 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Motorola
- Mobile
- Atrix HD
Around last Fall I was thinking about biting on an upgrade. My contract was nearly up, and I wanted to feel good about extending it. I'd had an OG Droid and a few other phones in between; I'd even drifted to WebOS and BlackBerry. I looked over the options, and felt good about none of them. What did feel good was the possibility of getting a Krait-based phone in the Spring. My big worry was that even by Summer I'd be looking at paying upwards of $250 to get one, even on-contract. Turns out, I was wrong.
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The earliest Krait devices came out at $199 on-contract, and the number of devices that have come out since then has been impressive, and the pricing keeps getting better. With the Incredible 4G LTE we saw pricing for a Krait device hit $149; but the device didn't have the right combination of factors to merit its price. Motorola's swing puts their first Krait device at $99, and there's nothing that competes with it in the US for twice that price. The form factor isn't perfect, but it's certainly thin enough and light enough. The software isn't just inoffensive, it's a pleasure to use, which is something we're saying more and more of when discussing skinned Android builds. And the battery life reflects one of Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4's biggest advantage.
It has its faults, and it could certainly be shined up to a gloss that would make it competitive with the Galaxy S III and HTC One X. Lacking a few features (NFC, notably) helps bring cost down, but that's not what keeps it from competing with the top tier phones. Holding the One X in your hand, you feel the level of effort that went into designing its unique unibody frame. When you see the Galaxy S II in Pebble Blue, and the light coming through the window hits it just right, it almost seems like the whole front of the device is a single blue surface. There's nothing about the Atrix HD that inspires that kind of fascination.
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So, what does it take to be a great mid-range phone? We can excuse the body, we can excuse an imperfect camera, and we can even excuse missing features. You nail the mid-range phone by making sure the rest of the package is solid, and that's what AT&T has with the Atrix HD.
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Schadenfreude - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link
I hate to be "that guy" - but the correct first sentence/question "is there room for . . ." instead of "their".There, I said it!
JasonInofuentes - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link
Thanks, it's fixed now. Their's always one. :)noblemo - Friday, September 7, 2012 - link
Similarly, I think "tack" should be, "tact."noblemo - Friday, September 7, 2012 - link
Well, "tactic," actually.coolhardware - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link
Thanks for mentioning the Atrix HD's color balance issue!I too have a Motorola phone with a 'nice' display, the Motorola Photon. The display looks 'nice' when you look at the spec sheet, but when you actually look at the screen it is way skewed toward blue.
However, there is a software solution that has worked well for me:
http://www.jdhodges.com/2012/07/correcting-color-b...
and after making the adjustments using the Android color filter app the screen looks MUCH better!
I hope this helps anyone else in a similar situation and I would love to see how the Atrix HD subjectively fared after being adjusted using software. :-)
jjj - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link
Interesting device,now lets see what they have to show today,hope it's something relevant (if anyone cares Moto is live streaming the event on their youtube chan)dagamer34 - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link
If 8GB worth of NAND Flash clearly isn't worth the $100 difference between this one and the Galaxy S III or the HTC One X when it debuted, one has to wonder why the GS III and certainly the iPhone 4S sell for so much in the first place.Oh well, no more iPhones for me. I'm tired of basically being cheated on the cost of Flash.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link
SGS3 is lighter, has a bigger, removable battery, SAMOLED display (which is superior to normal LCDs in my book), double the RAM and double the NAND. That's what that extra $100 gets you. I'd chose the SGS3 over this any time.zero2dash - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link
I strongly considered the Atrix HD because I didn't want to pay $200 for a SGS3 and I hoped that the Atrix would be "good enough" for half the price. In the end I figured I might as well buy something that meets or exceeds my needs now, and should hold up in the future.....and I went ahead and paid the extra $100 for the SGS3. Couldn't be happier.The general consensus seems to be to not compare the AHD to the SGS3 or the One X and I think that's a good point to make, because the AHD is, as the review states, more of a middle class device than a higher class/top tier phone. With One X's now being lowered to $99, I think the AHD is an even harder sell than it already was and I expect these to drop to $49 before too long otherwise they're going to have an even worse uphill battle. Clearly the price tag of the SGS3 is not scaring people off.....and for good reason - it's a phenomenal phone, arguably the best phone available today.
Impulses - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link
The AHD is already $50 at several third party retailers... Probably free during holiday sales, quite a lot of phone for very little (contact renewal and that whole ridiculousness aside).