Motorola DROID Turbo Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,752 words · ~8 min read
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does it seem like every phone manufacturer has a wicked case of
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electronic anorexia we get these hyper thin phones that seem content to spend
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all day measuring themselves on a scale and admiring themselves in the mirror
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and maybe some people find that sexy but you know what I see insecurity weakness
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and a lack of stamina none of which makes for a good night in the sorry what
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were we talking about uh right back on track um part two of our triple curved
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monitor surround is coming soon so make sure you're subscribed to catch that
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curvy is beautiful and on that note the
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Droid Turbo can turbo my Droid all night long if you know what I
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mean I I mean it's thicker than most
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flagship mobile devices cuz it's got you know a
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big internal battery so at night time
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the phone is still running that's what I meant by the all night long I mean what
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did you think
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The Cooler Master nepton 240m features an exclusive pump design and their new
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silencio fans to provide impressive near silent performance click now to learn
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more so we'll kick things off with specs picture in your mind's eye what the
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ballist smartphone specs might be for a
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moment basically that a top-of-the line Snapdragon 805 adreno 420 GPU 3 gigs of
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RAM a 5.2in AMOLED Quad HD display covered in Gorilla Glass 3 32 or 64 gigs
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of internal storage Wireless charging AC Wireless internal and exterior Nano
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coating for Splash resistance and a 3900 mAh battery I'm sorry lonus what did you
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just say this thing has just about enough battery capacity to power itself
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and act as a battery bank for my buddy's iPhone yeah yeah I did but calm yourself
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down I'll talk more about it later let's do the quick physical overview first at
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the back we find the 21 megapix still camera that also records Ultra HD at 24
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FPS with its super bright dual flashes a motor a logo and one of the most
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satisfying material choices that I've ever encountered on a phone I mean
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gorilla glass aluminum unibody blah blah blah blah blah the Droid Turbo's
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ballistic nylon doesn't do as much as I expected to improve grippiness but it's
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something different it looks and feels amazing in the hand and I was even able
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to clean the pasta sauce that my 2-year-old spilled on it without too
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much effort seriously I could have killed him though anyway on the left we
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got nothing on the bottom micro USB and on the right the well-positioned but
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slightly mushy lock button and volume rocker that doubles as a nano SIM tray
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and then finally on the top a 3 and 12 mm Jack I actually prefer this position
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makes it a little easier to sort of pull the phone out of your pocket and look at something without getting it caught on
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stuff which leads us around to the front the mono speaker does face forward and
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it's loud enough but sound quality is very unexceptional fortunately the
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screen is a different story now I criticized LG's choice of a Quad HD
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display in the G3 because I don't think the minuscule Improvement in display
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sharpness was worth the lackluster contrast in that case and I still don't
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think a 2560 x440 display is necessary on a smartphone but the AMOLED display
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that Motorola opted for enables that cool notification system where only the
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necessary pixels are illuminated for previews and gives the Droid Turbo
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display rocking contrast that makes it look great even outside it's not perfect
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I wish that minimum brightness was actually lower for nighttime viewing
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there's more motion blur than I'd like when scrolling and there's a noticeably
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cool color shift when you look at it off axis but after the first couple of days
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I pretty much stopped noticing most of those things something I didn't stop
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noticing was the fact that this is the first Android phone that I've used in
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over a year with dedicated capacitive buttons I don't generally have a
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preference either way but I did find that with this phone holding it in
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landscape mode was a little tricky without ing those buttons so just watch
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out for that if you're picking one up so let's get into actually using it first
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the big question isn't it heavy line is with that massive battery in it and the
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answer is no the curvature of the back feels very natural in my hand and the
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weight gives it a satisfying premium feel without making it feel brick like
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okay then line of second question do you actually get 48 hours out of it like
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Motorola claims cuz that'd be sick dog and the answer here is also no and I'll
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throw in a d be ridiculous for good measure I usually ended up with 35 to
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40% left at the end of the day and power users will still be able to drain their
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battery in a single day by doing things like playing games or navigating with
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GPS I'm even sitting here writing this at the end of a workday I'll be at a
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fairly long workday with a mere 25% left
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which is obviously not enough to make it through another day tomorrow but while
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2day battery was a silly claim for Motorola to make the extra capacity of
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the droid turbo has changed the way that I use my phone for a single day and
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switching back to something with a more normal battery size will be extremely
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difficult I did alter the default twom minute backlight time out to 1 minute
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that was just showing off but I was able to keep all my features on Crank Dat
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brightness browse whenever I was bored and I didn't even bother carrying a
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battery Bank while I was using it between the chi Wireless stock in my car
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and motorol is included 12volt fast charger that can store this much battery
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in this much time here's a graph I didn't add it to my script in a pinch
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even though I'm still plugging into a 1 amp charger every night to preserve the
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lifetime of my battery I felt liberated
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somehow because I'm not thinking about my battery all the time onto software
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there's not much to say it's Motorola's skin so you get pretty much bone stock
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Android apparently there's a lollipop upgrade coming very soon which is good
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because art run time is on KitKat on this phone and then it's got a couple of
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moto tweaks including their wave to preview your notifications their slide
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to unlock there's somewhat useless voice control that I found routed voice
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commands through Google Now more often than not which is fine I guess and there
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you go it's Moto skin one thing I noticed although it's not directly
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related to software was that whichever keyboard I was using stock Android or
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swift key I am bloody accurate on the Droid Turbo the bottom is a little
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pointy resting on my pinkies but the chin bar size is pretty much perfect to
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me and I can fly on this thing which leads us to the most negative part of
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this review the camera is wicked fast to
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open with one of the most reliable gesture launch mechanisms I have ever
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seen and it takes fantastic 20 plus
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megapixel Stills like this one of my cat Rumble with Gorgeous shallow depth of
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field but the problem is in the word stills moving subjects whether you're
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trying to capture a photo with the extremely slow shutter
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or a video with the nonoptical stabilized jittery feeling motion that
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doesn't seem to be avoidable just don't work that well for this phone I tried a
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couple alternate camera apps and neither of them helped so all I can do at this
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point is hope that Motorola fixes this with the lollipop update or shortly
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thereafter because otherwise it's going to be a serious Mark against this phone
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for a lot of people which leads us to the conclusion for this video it amazes
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me that I even have to applaud the technological innovation of put a bigger
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freaking battery in it but that's what I'm going to do I don't want a lighter
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phone my fingers aren't made of you know limp spaghetti I want one that works
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better and for longer and that's what the Droid Turbo does and is why in spite
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of its camera it's earned its place as my new daily driver until further notice
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this is a great phone and my only other big complaint is availability it's
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Verizon exclusive in the US right now and while the Verizon apps and
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occasional hey your sim isn't Verizon message are easy to ignore you just
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plain can't buy one in the US without a Verizon contract right now which is
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going to hurt thirdparty motor support if you're into rooting your phones and
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installing custom roms and whatnot although this may be less of an issue
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outside of the US where there's a Max skew that you know may be possible to
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purchase depending on the region so I think that's pretty much it guys thank
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you for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment if your feelings are
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he