Motorola Droid Hardware Overview

by Rob Jackson on October 29th, 2009 at 2:55 pm

This is NOT a review. I know you guys want as much Droid as possible so I did a quick run through the hardware, but I need some time with the device before I jump to any conclusions. Emphasis on “quick” as I got a few things wrong – but you’ll notice it was 2:30am… gimme a break!

  1. Largest screen of any Android phone (I said Verizon phone)
  2. Micro-USB (not Mini-USB)
  3. 4x Digital zoom (not optical zoom)

In any case, hopefully you enjoy:

I’ll be working on a full review this week and weekend and will have my full review, opinions, insight, videos and all that jazz early next week!

  • BKdroid

    I disagree with one point. The storage space issue IS an issue with the hardware as well as 2.0. This phone was built alongside Eclair, so they knew exactly what people were asking for, and knew that neither side made an attempt to address it. Motoraola and Google both failed in that aspect. SE is supposedly doing it, why couldn’t motorola?? It’s extremely aggravating.

  • Nik

    Is it a Mini or Micro USB? All of the other reviews say micro.

  • phases

    Nik: Micro, Rob corrected for it in the summary here.. Sorry for the confusion.

  • Nik

    Thanks phases.

  • podge

    could you turn the lights on in your videos please cus my eyesight is retarded. :)

  • William

    It’s a downer to hear about the 250 megabyte limit for applications. Although I’m unfamiliar what the average size of a typical Android application. Anyone?

  • quake101

    Did you miss quote the CPU speed as well?

  • vincent

    Thanks and waiting for your review !
    not putting 16gb directly as a rom to be able to install apps and games is a let down. i won’t buy this phone unless i am sure it is rootable.
    any idea when it is coming to europe please ?
    .
    do i detect a new jersey accent ?

  • Héctor

    @William
    Something around 1 megabyte on average (there’s some few-Kb-apps and some 2 or 3-Mb-apps, mostly games)

    I just don’t get why people wants to have hundreds of apps in his mobile, there’s not different apps enough (sure, there’s a lot of apps in the market, but… so many DIFFERENT apps). I’m happy livin’ with my 512 Mb Magic.

  • Andrew

    Thanks for the overview. In your full review I want you to be as brutally honest as possible. I want to know if (and when) you experience any lag at all. Is swiping to different homescreens smooth? What about when multiple apps are running? Does it run as fast as the iPhone when performing comparable tasks?

  • Steven

    Just noticed you mentioned 256 MB RAM / 512 MB ROM, then followed by saying you have 256 MB to work with. You didn’t mean 256 MB to install apps right? because that’s what the ROM is for. I know you said it was a quick video at 2 AM but I just want to be sure 512 MB to install apps on

  • vincent

    @ hector
    thing is devs are hindered by the low amount of ROM available and can’t / don’t yet offer cool games to take advantage of the powerful cortex a8 class ti omap 3430. And those cool games would take much more than 1mb. As a quickoffice suite. Or other software.
    .
    We never have enought RAM and ROM.
    definitely not now.
    .
    if sony x3 comes out before droid in europe, i might get tempted. I would be particularly interested if a keyboard version of the x3 was coming…

  • thelee

    great hardware overview, looking forward to a review.

    just minor point tho – it may help to point out the OMAP3430 basics. it’s underclocked to 550mhz on the droid (for battery i guess), but it also has a separate GPU (with a greater fill speed than the snapdragon, though less triangles/second), and it has a separate ISP/DSP and arithmetic processer units. From what I can glean, it almost sounds like OMAP3430 is a quad-core machine, except instead of 4 general purpose cores, it has 1 general purpose and 3 specific purpose units. anyone feel free to correct me.

  • simon

    What class is the 16 GB SD card? 4? 6?

  • BachinPhx

    Nice hardware review. Thanks so much and looking forward to your full review of the phone itself soon.

  • Kappy79

    @ Steven
    The ROM has 512 mb, but only 256 of it are user accessible. The rest is for the OS.

  • http://www.gnorb.net Gnorb

    I’m excited about the phone, but that whole 256MB limit for apps, while not a deal killer, really is a big downer. While most apps are just a couple of megs, that doesn’t mean that we may not see 100mb apps pop up as more companies develop more powerful software for the phone; not just games, but also productivity tools.

  • janus

    What class is the SD-Card 2 or 4?

    Hopefully 6 but that would be realy expensive…

  • janus

    DROID with Cyanogen! That rocks!

  • image

    @simon & janus

    included memory card is class 6:
    http://developer.motorola.com/products/handsets/droid/

  • Miguel

    Thanks for the video. However, two important tips for making ANY video review of a cell phone, even if it’s a “quickie” (at almost 10 minutes, this is almost a full review lol)

    1. Use alot of good lighting and maybe even use a mount.

    2. Clean your fingernails to get them ready for the world to see lol.

  • bj

    Couple answers…

    SD card is a Class 6 (reference – the specs on Motorola’s site)

    256 Mb Flash ROM for apps is fairly big. I have 65 apps on my Magic and 218 Mb free. Large apps typically are large due to data (ie GPS apps, games with maps) and they usually have their data on the SD (NDrive does this). Even productivity apps could easily store modules on the SD and just run a launcher/loader skeleton on the internal flash. The only downside to apps on a SD is that you have to have the SD installed/available for them to work. This really is not a big deal.

    Having an SD card is a bigger upside than having more internal ram. Of course in a perfect world we would get both. The X10 is rumoured to have this.

  • Rob

    i received my droid last night its freaking amazing

  • hakeem

    It can definitely be limiting; for example, the TomTom navigator app on the iPhone is 1.2GB. Bad example I know because of the Google navigation stuff already built in, but I have plenty of apps on my 3GS that are 80+MB.

  • Amar

    The graphics card is an SGX 530, pushes 14 Million poly/s

  • Larry

    Apps storage space is a huge deal-breaker for me. I would at least welcome running them off SD cards or storing the bulk of an app on them but that has its own issues (not everyone will have the same class SD cards for instance which could affect app performance).

    Not offering either solution really prevents devs from releasing apps with as much quality as you would find on, say, an iPhone.

    And while I’m on the subject, Android is really on a slippery slope here with the fragmentation of the OS and the hardware. It is quickly becoming too much like the PC market and possibly worse.

    There are at least five different custom Android ROMs that will be available and add on top of that the various different hardware configurations and you have a nightmare for developers.

    Look at gaming for instance (since it almost always pushes the technology side of things). Now you have to make sure your game will work on all those different hardware/software configurations.

    I hate Apple and the iPhone but one thing that’s good about the controlled environment is it minimizes these problems. Now if Google and OHA don’t care about high-end productivity and game software then so be it but it’s hard to convince someone who has those things in other phones to pick up an Android phone instead.

  • a

    there must be a hacked android kernel that will install apps to the sd card. the reason android imposes this limitation is probably to give more control over the phone to the manufacturer and the wireless carrier. if’s pretty annoying and obviously not in the interests of technological advancement.

  • sully

    Larry, thanks for just letting everyone know that you know nothing about app development. The different configuration (non)issue has been covered by many web sites and I believe Google has released an instructional video about it. So Mr. Android is on a slippery slope do a little digging and I think you’ll find that you should have done a little digging.

  • jk

    near the beginning, the green blinking light was mentioned but not in any detail. does this phone have led notifications like the bb’s?

  • Evan S.

    True, Hakeem… But then, look at any program with Multiple Operating system downloads. Apple software is almost always MUCH larger than Windows or Linux. I don’t know why, but that seems to be the case. :P

  • Nebfire

    Really enjoy your reviews and commentary. In fact, phandroid is on my short list for “Must Check” mobile phone websites (I check nearly 30 other sites everyday).

    Thanks

  • http://twitter.com/amaroth Bret

    I want to know if the screen part wobbles at all? Does it give in any when you are holding the phone? What I always hated about my G1 is the screen part was always a tiny bit loose and it will wobble a little bit.

    The Droid looks pretty sturdy, and the screen click sounds cool when you slide it, but I wonder if it will start to get loose over time.. but that might be inevitable for any slider.. i dont know

  • Larry

    @ sully
    Look who knows nothing about app development. Please point me to this instructional video you speak of and I hope for your sake it’s not the one about multiple screen resolutions. There’s more to making apps work one different hardware and software configs than screen size. Just ask all those devs who just can’t seem to get their apps to work the same on the hero or galaxy as on the g1.

  • P.F.

    Sorry if it’s a silly question. In the video I noticed that the Droid screen is less brighter than the other phone. Is it because you configured like that or does it have a sensor to automatically reduce brightness when in a dark place?

  • janus

    what does the proximity sensor???

  • Miguel

    Proximity sensor is to kill the screen sensitivity when you put the phone to your ear.

  • janus

    @Miguel
    thx

  • Larry

    @ sully
    Look who really has no clue about developing apps. Please point me to this instructional video and these sites you speak of. Oh, are you talking about that issue with multiple screen sizes? So you do realize that there are a lot more issues at hand than just screen size, right? Next time make sure you know what you’re talking about before attacking someone for sharing some honest thoughts.

  • chewtoy

    Why the frak would you put the microSD slot behind the battery?

    The G1′s slot location was bad enough — this stupid freaking droid makes it impossible to change out the sd card without powering down the phone. That’s just plain STUPID.

    Really, really disappointed. I will *not* buy a phone that doesn’t let me easily swap SD cards. This is just plain dumb. It’s shockingly bad design (even worse than the gold highlights :-) ).

    And don’t spit back any idiotic fan-boy crap about “why would you need more than 32GB, ever?”

    MicroSDHC cards are cheap, as they should be, and they’re so tiny that it’s easy to care dozens of them. Personally I carry six around most of the time. Most are collections of music, some are podcasts, some are work files.

    I blame Google for letting the G1 set the tone for the future by failing to include a big chunk of onboard storage for everything AND an expansion slot.

    Seriously, people, expansion storage is no different here than it is on your PC. Would you buy a PC without an internal hard drive? Would you buy a PC with no hot-plug external interfaces, meaning you had to shut down and restart just to connect a thumb drive?

  • scoobie

    If google phones don’t let you store big apps (ie Games) the platform isn’t going to beat Apple. This business about only being able to store 256mb apps needs to be sorted on google phones.

  • http://www.eisgaming.com SinisterX

    @chewtoy
    Honestly you can’t blame Google for a manufacturer’s design flaws when it comes to the placement of certain things. You need to be blaming HTC for the G1 and Moto for the Droid. Google had no real say in the design except to say that TMO and Big Red couldn’t put their crap programs on it to bloat the OS/Phone.

    Yeah there should probably be more storage space available for apps, however I am sure just as the other android phones that there will be a way to root them and a “fix” put out to make it possible to install apps to the sd Card instead of on the rom. The phone just came out 2 days ago…everyone just needs to sit back, relax, and be patient.

    @Larry
    You know I wasn’t going to say anything to you…but I am kinda drunk and feel I need to butt in here…for you to pop off and b*tch at sully for slamming someone else, perhaps you should take a step back before putting your fingers to the keyboard. He may or may not have been wrong about the dev of the apps…big flipp’n deal, but why should you stoop to the same level and not only rub his nose in it, but bump your post with some reworded BS. Please…learn to be mature and just let others fight their battles for themselves…alright i’m done ranting @Larry…my drunkardness it out.

  • Dave

    The 256mb app space isn’t a big deal, only the executable needs to be stored in ROM. Any apps with large amounts of data, like a game, can store all the assets on the SD card and load them as needed.

  • joe

    thanks this was very helpful in deciding what phone to get next

  • solraven

    actually the site says it “supports” a class 6 32gb micro SDHC! the included 16gb micro SDHC card says class 2 right on it. look fore a symbol that looks like a capitol C with a 2 in it. if you happen to have one that says 4 or 6 your one lucky sob.



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