Motorola is doubling down on its docking smartphone. The original Atrix 4G was a fun, if somewhat buggy cell phone that converted into a laptop. A major firmware update resolved many of the bugs. Now Motorola is back for more with the Atrix 2 ($99.99), an incremental but welcome refresh—and one that finally delivers on its original 4G promise. The Atrix 2 is still an idea that's ahead of its time, but if you're the geeky type, you can have plenty of fun with it.

Design, 4G Connectivity, and Call Quality
Like the original model, the Atrix 2 is a big slab measuring 5.0 by 2.6 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and weighing 5.2 ounces. It's also somewhat shinier than before. The newly textured, soft touch back panel and smoked chrome accented sides look sharp. The slightly larger, 4.3-inch screen is a beauty, with 960-by-540-pixel resolution and deep, vibrant colors. Any Android phone with a screen of this size is pretty easy to type on, even in portrait mode, and the Atrix 2 is no exception. The infamous PenTile display is gone; consequently, fonts appeared sharp and crisp this time around.

The Atrix 2 is a quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and tri-band HSPA+ 21 (850/1900/2100 MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. We dinged the original Atrix "4G" for its HSPA+ 14.4 connection, which amounted to roughly 3G real-world performance; this time around, the 4G support is real, and the phone virtually screams it with a stylized 4G icon next to the signal strength bar. But I live in a rural part of Massachusetts, so I only saw average speeds of 2 to 2.5Mbps down and 1Mbps up (with three bars of "4G" signal). That's roughly HSPA 7.2, not HSPA+ 21, but it's because of AT&T's network, not the phone. The Atrix 2 also works as a 4G mobile hotspot for up to five devices with the appropriate data plan.

Voice quality was stellar, with a warm, full tone in the earpiece, and clear transmissions through the microphone. Even high-end smartphones sometimes give up voice quality in order to pack in so many other features, but not this one. Reception was solid.

Calls also sounded clear through an Aliph Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4 stars). But voice dialing was a total fail; Motorola and AT&T replaced the stock app with their own, which either missed what I said entirely, or heard half of the digits incorrectly. The speakerphone was clear and undistorted, if a little tinny, and went just loud enough for outdoor use. Battery life was very impressive at 10 hours and 43 minutes of talk time; credit the oversize 1785mAh battery.

OS, Hardware, and Docks
Android purists will be miffed, since Motorola once again MOTOFIED its Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) build. You get five home screen panels that you can customize or swipe between. This time around, the icons get another refresh, the menus swipe left to right instead of scrolling vertically, and you can now change the four quick launch icons at the bottom. It's all pretty attractive, especially the dial screen, although much of it appears to be change for the sake of change—at the expense of timely OS updates later. The 1GHz dual-core processor looks similar to the original model's on paper, but it's actually a TI OMAP4430 chip; the Atrix 4G had an Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU. It benchmarks slightly faster, with a roughly 10 to 15 percent improvement across the board, including frame rates.

The most exciting part of the Atrix 2—along with other recent Motorola smarphones like the Droid Bionic, the Photon, and the Droid RAZR—is its ability to stand in for a laptop. To that end, along with our review unit, Motorola sent along a sampling of accessories. The star of the lineup is the new, reduced-price Lapdock 100 ($199.99), which sports a 10.1-inch screen, a svelte profile, and a netbook-sized keyboard. It's smaller and slightly lighter (2.2 lbs) than the original version, which sported a larger 11.6-inch screen but seemed a bit large for a headless accessory. As before, the phone sits in the back behind the Lapdock 100's screen, but this setup definitely looks and feels nicer.

Dock the phone, power it up, and you'll enter Webtop Application, which lets you run Android apps as well as browse the Web with more screen real estate. Despite what Motorola says, Webtop Application is essentially a custom version of Linux with Android running in a virtual machine, plus a desktop version of Firefox. It appeared less buggy this time around. But it's still very sluggish, even when compared to a standalone netbook with an Intel Atom processor. The keyboard feels comfortable, but the trackpad buttons are difficult to press accurately. There's also a larger Lapdock 500 available, which we tested last month; it sports a massive (for a headless accessory) 14-inch, 1366-by-768-pixel display and a luxuriously roomy keyboard.

Other accessories: Motorola's HD Station props up the Atrix 2 at an angle for movie watching. Phones with kickstands can do the same thing; what's different here is that you can easily plug in powered speakers, a USB keyboard and mouse, and the charger, and leave the whole thing on your desk as a kind of micro-sized desktop computer, again running the Webtop Application and included Firefox browser. Or you can bring the HD Station to the living room: the bundled HDMI cable lets you plug the Atrix 2 into an HDTV and watch 1080p videos, which you can control with the little remote it comes with. If you have a car, the Motorola Vehicle Navigation Dock makes it easy to use the Atrix 2 with the free Google Maps Navigation for voice-enabled, turn-by-turn directions. It's a two-piece windshield mount with a suction cup, plus an adhesive pad for mounting it on your car's dashboard if you'd rather do that.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
Even if you skip all the accessories, the Atrix 2 is a multimedia powerhouse on its own. There's 4.5GB of free internal memory—good, but down from the first version—plus a memory card slot underneath the battery cover, which is tough to remove. My 32GB SanDisk card worked fine, and Motorola includes a 2GB card in the package. A standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the top edge. Music tracks sounded fine through Samsung Modus HM6450 Bluetooth headphones ($99, 4 stars), but Motorola's Internet-fed, proprietary music app was a pain. It took many taps and dialog boxes before I could use it the first time, and once I was finally in, it just looked rearranged—not better in any noticeable way, aside from the admittedly nifty song lyrics display.

The auto-focus camera gets a big upgrade; it now sports an 8-megapixel sensor and 1080p video recording. Test photos looked good, with clear, crisp detail both outdoors and in brightly lit room indoors. Darker rooms had a softer focus and poor resolution of shadows, and the single LED flash didn't help all that much. Recorded 1920-by-1080-pixel (1080p), 1280-by-720-pixel (720p), and 640-by-480-pixel (VGA) videos looked smooth, clear, and even at 30 frames per second; again, darker indoor areas gave the Atrix 2 some trouble, but at least the frame rate never dipped. There's also a VGA front-facing camera for video chats. One downside: the camera app crashed out on me twice during testing.

All told, the Atrix 2 is improved, but still faithful to the original. It doesn't reach the performance stratosphere the Samsung Galaxy S II ($199.99, 4.5 stars) and the Apple iPhone 4S ($199.99, 4.5 stars) occupy, and the Atrix 2's accessories and various software complexities position it decidedly out of the mainstream. But the Lapdock 100 and Webtop Application transform this phone like no other. Even if none of the accessories appeal to you, the Atrix 2 is still a dual-core Android phone with 4G data speeds, 1080p video recording, and a very sharp screen for just 99 bucks. It's tough to argue with that kind of value.

Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 10 hours 43 minutes

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