Our Motorola XT860 review

[howard]

Here's Sabesh's review of the Motorola XT860 4GL



The XT860 4G from Motorola is a fully spec'ed smartphone sporting Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and a QWERTY slide-out keyboard. As of the time of writing, it's only available to the Canadian market via Bell, which makes it somewhat rare.

Highlights:
4" QHD PenTile LCD display.
5-row QWERTY keyboard with a row for #s.
Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
Front facing VGA camera.
8MP rear-facing camera with dual LED flash.
1080p video recording.
1GHz CPU, dual core.
16GB of internal memory (up to 32GB can be added via a microSD card).
1540 mAh battery.
Micro HDMI port.
Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP.
WiFi B/G/N
FM Radio.



It's a big phone, weighing 184g. However, it's thin considering that it has a sliding keyboard (about 12+ mm). The display is outfitted with Gorilla glass made by Corning, which resists scratches to some extent. In fact Howard managed to drop it face down as he was stepping out of a car and the screen still looks brand new. The keyboard feels solid and there is no play when opened or closed. Although the battery has less capacity than the one in Atrix, it lasts well over a work day with moderate to heavy use.



Layout:
- Micro USB & Mini HDMI ports are at the bottom (left).
- Power button and 3.5mm headphone jack are at the top.
- Volume rocker is at the top (right).



The keyboard has an incredibly useful row of keys at the top for numbers.



The keys are raised and very easy to type on. Coming from an HTC ChaCha, I had to adjust a bit to the spacing of the keyboard as they are not closely bunched together. Dedicated keys for @, OK, / and Enter makes typing quite easy. It's probably one of the best keyboards I've used on a Smartphone. The only caveat is that the keyboard is somewhat stiff, so you have to pull it out, instead of sliding it out.



The display is similar to the Atrix, and is quite crisp although not as crisp or bright as other High Res phones such as the HTC Sensation and iPhone. This is due to the battery saving PenTile Matrix arrangement of the sub pixels. Skin tones are not accurate and colours appear to be slightly dull. That being said, the display is quite good for web surfing and text intensive applications.



There is no more Motoblur. There is no Blur sign-on, but most of the Motoblur widgets have been retained. A new theme and screen transitions have been added for a pleasant touchscreen experience. Useful apps like Quickoffice are included for viewing MS Office documents on the go. The powerful CPU drives all this with no lag whatsoever.



I liked the ability to sort Apps with the following options: recently used, alphabetical or frequently used. They can also be segregated into categories like Games etc. Exchange works really well: I had no issues configuring personal or corporate Exchange accounts. The music player has Shoutcast support. The browser is fast & plays Flash very well and has all the stock Android features.



The camera takes a while to load, but is good, delivering crisp images in adequate light. However, low light shots show more noise grain, compared to the Samsung Galaxy S2. The UI is simple with an option to auto-load images & video to Facebook. Video is good in adequate light and has minimal jitter.


Motorola Milestone, Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro, Moto XT860, Apple iPhone 4

As with most other Motorola devices, call quality and reception are very good. Talk time is well over 9 hours and noise cancellation is quite good.



The XT860 doesn't really excel in most areas, but is pretty solid all around: Jack of all trades, but master of none. It's best feature is the keyboard, which will appeal to enterpise users looking to move away from Blackberry. It's well suited for messaging and social media applications. If you can handle it's size and weight, then the XT860 is a solid option for a QWERTY keyboard slider.



Pros:
- Great keyboard.
- Tasteful UI with pleasing transition effects.
- Auto upload to Facebook of images and videos.
- Good battery life.
- Text looks very good.
- MicroSD card support.
- Fast CPU.
- Great build quality.
- Stellar call quality and reception.


Cons:
- Large and heavy.
- Pentile Matrix pixel layout displays inaccurate skin tones and colours.
- Camera's high ISO performance in low light is bad.
- Gets warm quickly.

[desertbunny]

So, GSM version of the Droid 3?
Is it actually going to be marketed as a Milestone 3?

[Furry Atom]

So, GSM version of the Droid 3?
Is it actually going to be marketed as a Milestone 3?

No that would require the marketing department putting effort in. They're literally marketing it as the Motorola XT860 4G. Why bother making names, just take the model number and shove 4G on the end.

[pnjunction]

The keyboard on the Moto Dext loaner that I had for a few weeks did grow on me (especially being able to hit numbers quickly as pointed out in the review), but these things are just such bricks compared to the touchscreen-only phones.

Also dual-core but only 512MB RAM? Lame.