LAS VEGAS—The Motorola Atrix is the craziest, most radical smartphone at CES. The more I think about it, the more I think it may be the single most interesting product at CES. The Atrix is an entirely new approach to mobile computing, and it's the first smartphone to take on both the iPad and the netbook market.
The NVIDIA Tegra 2-powered, HSPA+ cell phone for AT&T runs two operating systems at once: Google's Android 2.2 and a customized Motorola version of Linux which helps the Atrix turn into a desktop or laptop PC. I got a few minutes with it after Motorola's press conference and I was fascinated—with just one caveat.
The Atrix starts out looking like a perfectly standard, high-end, slab smartphone. Yes, it's one of the first dual-core Cortex-A9, NVIDIA Tegra 2 smartphones available in the US, and it has a super-high-res 960x540 screen. Other specs are also impressive: 802.11n networking on both 2.4 and 5Ghz, HSPA+ 4G of some variety or other, a gig of RAM, 16GB of storage plus a MicroSD slot, even a fingerprint reader. That's not what makes it cool.
What makes it cool is the docks. The Atrix turns into a laptop or desktop PC, sort of.
The Atrix demo I saw had two docks: a "desktop PC" dock where it attached to a big LCD screen and a full desktop keyboard, and Motorola's sleek little aluminum Laptop Dock.
The Laptop Dock is indeed sexy. It's dark-gray aluminum, with a little flip-up panel that you sit the phone in. (See the slideshow for more details.) The keyboard is comfortable to type on, and the laptop is very slim and sharp when folded closed. It's almost like a MacBook Air with a little Motorola logo on top. When you dock the phone and flip open the laptop, the alternative Linux OS boots in about 10-15 seconds.
The Atrix's Linux only runs three apps: Firefox 3.6.13, a file manager, and Android-in-a-window. There's a shortcuts bar along the bottom, but they're all shortcuts either to the Web or to Android apps that then launch in Android-in-a-window.
Firefox on the Atrix supports Flash, it supports plug-ins, and it runs smoothly. And then you run Android apps in a little window on the side. It's surreal. It's kind of like what Chrome OS should be. And it makes me think: hey, what if you could run other apps on the desktop-OS side? Motorola appears not to have any immediate plans for that, but it's a cool idea.
So here's the down side: the Atrix demo unit I saw was having trouble dealing with smooth animations on a big screen. Sitting in its desktop dock, with Angry Birds blown up to full-screen size, animations were noticeably jerky. Now, I know the Tegra 2 can deliver gorgeous, smooth full-screen gaming experiences on apps that are designed for the processor.
I'm pretty thrilled for the Motorola Atrix, which AT&T said at the Motorola event is coming in a few weeks. But AT&T and Motorola didn't announce prices for the device or its docks, and that could be a sticking point. It's also unclear how hard it will be to upgrade the Atrix's Android OS—MotoBlur causes enough problems. Now there's a whole second OS to deal with.
I will review the Motorola Atrix just as soon as I can get one.