Motorola laid low for most of 2009 until it announced the Cliq in the US last September. This was soon followed by the Droid/Milestone. The Dext is essentially the Cliq in the same shell, but injected with slightly different components. The handset supports the GSM network, which makes it compatible for use in Europe and Asia. At that time, Motorola said it looks forward to bringing its custom interface, MotoBlur, and Android devices to other markets around the globe. The company held true to its promise as the Dext will be available in Singapore exclusive to SingTel this week, though there's still no word on availability in other parts of Asia. While we secretly wished Motorola had brought the Milestone, which runs Android 2.0, to our shores instead, at least the Dext will get Android 2.0 mid this year. That's something to look forward to.
The buttons on the keyboard are domed with the alphabet packed in three neat rows. The directional pad is on the left, while the shortcut commands (Alt, Search, spacebar, Sym and back) sit at the bottom. The hard plastic keys have a nice size and reassuring click response, but the experience is marred by the tiny spacebar.
We thought Motorola would have gone with a larger touchscreen on the Dext considering there's a good amount of bezel around the panel. The Home button has a red ring around it, which also represents the "busy" onscreen indicator. Flanked on the left and right are the Menu and Back keys, respectively.
A bunch of other controls are on the sides. These include a ring silencer switch, 3.5mm audio jack, keylock and camera shutter. The keylock is almost flush with the surface so you'd have to look hard to find it. The camera shutter has a nice two-click tactility which we like for getting the autofocus half-press.
Around the back, there's a 5-megapixel camera and battery cover with a polka dot motif. We're quite sure the circular indents don't represent anything and are there purely for aesthetic purposes, but, hey, we could be wrong. On the backside of the touchscreen, there's a lit Motorola icon with the "blur" insignia, which brings us to MotoBlur, Motorola's proprietary solution packed on top of Android 1.5.
MotoBlur can be a blessing or a pain depending on your personal preference. What it does is blend all your contacts, emails and social-networking profiles into one big cauldron. So, in theory, everything is only a click or two away. In practice, the experience is a little less gratifying. When you first power up the Dext, you'll be prompted to sign up for a free MotoBlur account. The next step is to add your social-networking (Facebook, Twitter and MySpace), email (Gmail and Microsoft Exchange) and media-sharing (Picasa and Photobucket) accounts. The next thing you know, MotoBlur will start to download every morsel of information you have on these signed-in sites. We thought it would at least bother to ask what we wanted to synchronize and what we didn't want to, but apparently, that was beyond our control.
Fortunately, it was a rather smooth ride thereafter. MotoBlur would recognize and link the contact profiles so you can see your friends' Facebook status updates directly from the phonebook. You'll still have to manually link those with disparate names, though. The phonebook looked a little messy at first, but at least you can choose what to display once you've linked the contacts. After the initial hassle, it should be smooth sailing. Same goes for the calendar.
The Dext runs on Android 1.5 and will get upgraded to 2.0 mid this year. There are five home screens altogether which we think is overkill since there aren't that many widgets available to place on the panels. With MotoBlur, there are Happenings, Social Status, Messages, Weather and RSS feed reader. It's certainly not the variety we see on the HTC Sense. The last two widgets are what the names imply, so we won't go into detail. Happenings is a ticker-styled widget that constantly grabs updates from your social-networking accounts along with the users' avatars. On our set, we had Twitter and Facebook accounts signed in. You can choose to display the day's items or set it to show two or three days and up to a week's worth of updates. When you tap on the widget, it'll expand to occupy 80 percent of the display but shows only one post. To get to the next one, you'll have to swipe left. This wouldn't have been a big deal if we received only one or two updates each day. If you have 300 new entries, be prepared to do a lot of scrolling. This mish-mash of messages can be overwhelming and makes it nearly impossible to follow a conversation.
The flashing white LED was also craving for our attention. It resembles the "breathing" light on Nokia devices, but it was easy to get distracted each time it flashed an update (remember, we have a ton of Twitter and Facebook updates everyday) or an email. The other widget, Social Status, merely displays your most recent post on your social-networking accounts. You can choose to post it across all the sites you've signed in or to specific ones.
The Dext has a Universal Inbox where all your emails, SMSes, Facebook messages and DMs on Twitter are housed within. There's a tiny icon at a corner of each text to show its origin. We really like this feature and, oh, there's a widget to go along with it as well. It's a small feature, but it works sensibly and admirably. If you have the Happenings, Social Status, Messages and Weather widgets on one home screen, there will be space left for only two standard icons, which makes a really busy panel.
The last bit of MotoBlur is a service that lets you locate the device if you lose it on the way home from a late night out. Obviously, the on-device GPS has to be activated for this to work which would undeniably put a strain on the battery life unless you have the foresight to know when you'll misplace your phone. Our test returned an accuracy of a 7m radius. You could also rely on cellular signals alone, but that means you'll end up with a rather huge search area. We tested this out and ended up with a 5km radius. Which is kind of pointless. Now if all else fails, you can remote delete all your personal data on the phone memory (content on the memory card will still be there) via the MotoBlur Web site. The phone has to be switched on and receiving a data connection for this to happen. The entire process took only a few seconds when we tried it.
Connectivity
In terms of connectivity, the Dext comes with the usual rift raft of features including EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi and support for VoIP. There's also stereo Bluetooth for streaming music to a pair of wireless cans. The phone, however, doesn't support video calls.
Multimedia
The Web browser is the default Android stock version, so there's no built-in support for Flash or multitouch. There are separate programs for playing music, videos and browsing pictures. For the latter two, the interface is a 3D wall with a tab for switching between the media. We saw this earlier on the LG GW620 so this could be an Android feature.
The camera interface isn't very much different from the default version, but Motorola has introduced some fancy customizations. There's an autofocus box, picture preview box and camera shutter that rotates according to the screen orientation. We felt that it's a nice touch even though it wouldn't have mattered if they weren't there. Autofocus was a little iffy (there's no macro mode) and appeared soft. But for pictures which were focused, the picture quality was satisfactory for snapshots. The lack of a built-in flash was a bummer, though. Video capture is at a paltry 352 x 288-pixel resolution with 23fps. Shutter lag was an excruciating wait of a second. See some of our test shots on the following page.
The 1,420mAh lithium-polymer battery is rated for up to 6 hours of talktime and 13.5 days on standby. At the end of each day, our Dext dropped to dangerously low battery levels, so keep the charger somewhere nearby. According to FCC radiation tests, the Motorola Dext has a digital SAR of 0.69 watt per kilogram.
Tags: E-mail, Motorola Inc., Keylock, Happenings, No.
Design
The Dext isn't a head-turner. It exudes an industrial touch, a sizeable footprint and a substantial high-quality feel. There's a slight give when the phone is closed (you can jiggle the display panel a little), but at least the parts don't feel like they'd break away. The sliding mechanism is smooth and locks into position with a firm, chunky sound to reveal a hardware QWERTY tucked beneath.We thought Motorola would have gone with a larger touchscreen on the Dext considering there's a good amount of bezel around the panel. The Home button has a red ring around it, which also represents the "busy" onscreen indicator. Flanked on the left and right are the Menu and Back keys, respectively.
A bunch of other controls are on the sides. These include a ring silencer switch, 3.5mm audio jack, keylock and camera shutter. The keylock is almost flush with the surface so you'd have to look hard to find it. The camera shutter has a nice two-click tactility which we like for getting the autofocus half-press.
Features
MotoBlurMotoBlur can be a blessing or a pain depending on your personal preference. What it does is blend all your contacts, emails and social-networking profiles into one big cauldron. So, in theory, everything is only a click or two away. In practice, the experience is a little less gratifying. When you first power up the Dext, you'll be prompted to sign up for a free MotoBlur account. The next step is to add your social-networking (Facebook, Twitter and MySpace), email (Gmail and Microsoft Exchange) and media-sharing (Picasa and Photobucket) accounts. The next thing you know, MotoBlur will start to download every morsel of information you have on these signed-in sites. We thought it would at least bother to ask what we wanted to synchronize and what we didn't want to, but apparently, that was beyond our control.
The Dext runs on Android 1.5 and will get upgraded to 2.0 mid this year. There are five home screens altogether which we think is overkill since there aren't that many widgets available to place on the panels. With MotoBlur, there are Happenings, Social Status, Messages, Weather and RSS feed reader. It's certainly not the variety we see on the HTC Sense. The last two widgets are what the names imply, so we won't go into detail. Happenings is a ticker-styled widget that constantly grabs updates from your social-networking accounts along with the users' avatars. On our set, we had Twitter and Facebook accounts signed in. You can choose to display the day's items or set it to show two or three days and up to a week's worth of updates. When you tap on the widget, it'll expand to occupy 80 percent of the display but shows only one post. To get to the next one, you'll have to swipe left. This wouldn't have been a big deal if we received only one or two updates each day. If you have 300 new entries, be prepared to do a lot of scrolling. This mish-mash of messages can be overwhelming and makes it nearly impossible to follow a conversation.
The Dext has a Universal Inbox where all your emails, SMSes, Facebook messages and DMs on Twitter are housed within. There's a tiny icon at a corner of each text to show its origin. We really like this feature and, oh, there's a widget to go along with it as well. It's a small feature, but it works sensibly and admirably. If you have the Happenings, Social Status, Messages and Weather widgets on one home screen, there will be space left for only two standard icons, which makes a really busy panel.
The last bit of MotoBlur is a service that lets you locate the device if you lose it on the way home from a late night out. Obviously, the on-device GPS has to be activated for this to work which would undeniably put a strain on the battery life unless you have the foresight to know when you'll misplace your phone. Our test returned an accuracy of a 7m radius. You could also rely on cellular signals alone, but that means you'll end up with a rather huge search area. We tested this out and ended up with a 5km radius. Which is kind of pointless. Now if all else fails, you can remote delete all your personal data on the phone memory (content on the memory card will still be there) via the MotoBlur Web site. The phone has to be switched on and receiving a data connection for this to happen. The entire process took only a few seconds when we tried it.
Connectivity
In terms of connectivity, the Dext comes with the usual rift raft of features including EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi and support for VoIP. There's also stereo Bluetooth for streaming music to a pair of wireless cans. The phone, however, doesn't support video calls.
Multimedia
The camera interface isn't very much different from the default version, but Motorola has introduced some fancy customizations. There's an autofocus box, picture preview box and camera shutter that rotates according to the screen orientation. We felt that it's a nice touch even though it wouldn't have mattered if they weren't there. Autofocus was a little iffy (there's no macro mode) and appeared soft. But for pictures which were focused, the picture quality was satisfactory for snapshots. The lack of a built-in flash was a bummer, though. Video capture is at a paltry 352 x 288-pixel resolution with 23fps. Shutter lag was an excruciating wait of a second. See some of our test shots on the following page.
Performance
The overall device performance was snappy and rather smooth, though you'll notice the inevitable lag when opening applications like the Gallery especially if you have a ton of pictures and videos in there. The Dext has a 528MHz processor. Call quality sounded a little hollow and it felt as if we were talking to someone across an empty room with a lot of "noise" in between. The speakerphone was loud and clear, so no complaints there.The 1,420mAh lithium-polymer battery is rated for up to 6 hours of talktime and 13.5 days on standby. At the end of each day, our Dext dropped to dangerously low battery levels, so keep the charger somewhere nearby. According to FCC radiation tests, the Motorola Dext has a digital SAR of 0.69 watt per kilogram.
Conclusion
We'd like to fall in love with the Dext, but we can't. It's a capable phone overall, but feels rough around the edges when it comes to implementation. Is the Dext Motorola's greatest device? No. Is MotoBlur the one-stop, end-all solution for Android? No. But is the company on the right track? It's a resounding yes. The Dext won't win hearts, but it paves the way for better Motorola devices (fingers crossed) beyond the Milestone and Backflip once MotoBlur evolves.Tags: E-mail, Motorola Inc., Keylock, Happenings, No.
