LAS VEGAS – Motorola today announced one of the first LTE phones for Verizon Wireless's 4G LTE network, along with an amped-up social networking phone for T-Mobile. I got some hands-on time with the Motorola Droid Bionic 4G and the Motorola Cliq 2 for T-Mobile.
The Droid Bionic is one of several dual-core, Cortex-A9, NVIDIA Tegra 2 based phones I've seen at the show so far, along with the Motorola Atrix and LG Optimus 2X. It's another big slab phone, a little thicker than the average because of its LTE abilities; I held it next to a Droid X and found it to be just a bit thicker.
Like all the NVIDIA Tegra 2 phones, it plays gorgeous games in full screen mode: I launched Dungeon Defenders, which looked great. The 960x540 screen certainly helped; it looked just a bit sharper than the 854x480 screens I'm used to on Droids. And like all of Verizon's upcoming LTE phones, it will run Skype's new video chat software – although the Bionic only had a canned demo of the video chat on board.
The Droid Bionic has an HDMI output port, and a Motorola rep explained that it will mirror games and stored videos on a big screen, but not play video from apps like Netflix, Hulu or Blockbuster.
The Bionic also has Motorola's full suite of social networking and e-mail apps, including Motorola's enhanced Exchange functionality and MotoBlur-like social networking widgets. Verizon and Motorola didn't announce a date or price for this phone.
The Cliq 2 has one of the more unusual keyboards I've played with on a smartphone. It's a sliding keyboard smartphone with hexagonal membrane keys that look like a sun-blasted desert or a collection of rocks. I was wary of the keyboard, but it's surprisingly comfortable to use – the keys are domed and have a relatively large surface area.
The Cliq 2 is snappy with its 1Ghz processor, though I expect that to be dragged down a bit by MotoBlur, as usual. New Blur features on the Cliq 2 include the ability to organize your apps into folders on the main app drawer screen – which is great if you have a lot of apps – and an ability to switch between home and work modes, each with its own wallpapers, email accounts and settings.
The Cliq 2 has a 3.7-inch, 854x480 screen, Wi-Fi 802.11n with Wi-Fi calling, Bluetooth and 3G on T-Mobile's network. I noticed the Cliq 2 has unusual Internet speeds – according to Motorola, it's an HSDPA 10.1Mbps device, which plants it between 7.2Mbps devices like the original Cliq and T-Mobile's faster HSPA+ devices.
Motorola says the Cliq 2 will be available on January 19th to T-Mobile customers.