Another year and another Droid. It seems like just yesterday that we reviewed the Droid 2, but it's been almost a year, with the Droid 2 Global in between. The latest Droid by Motorola holds dear to what we like best about the phone: an elegant and slim design, quality materials and a roomy hardware keyboard. The Droid 3 is an evolutionary phone that bumps specs to keep up with the big boys without adding anything novel. Those of you who have a Droid 2 are likely still under contract and won't be looking at this phone as your upgrade, but original Motorola Droid owners should definitely check out Droid the third.
The Droid 3 is a 3G EV-DO Rev. A smartphone on Verizon with world GSM roaming capabilities. It has a Texas Instruments 1GHz dual core CPU that scores a healthy 2477 on Quadrant, 16 gigs of internal storage, a microSD card slot, a front camera and rear 8 megapixel camera that can shoot 1080p video. The display is larger and higher resolution than the Droid 2 at qHD 540 x 960 and 4".
Build quality is excellent with plenty of metal, a soft touch finish and a luxurious keyboard slider mechanism. The phone runs Android OS 2.3 Gingerbread with Motoblur software. Verizon and Moto throw in some business oriented software like Citrix, but there's fun stuff too like the game Nova HD (playable demo) and all the Adobe Flash you can eat. The phone is available now for $199 with contract. Battery life is pretty good with the stock 1540 mAh Lithium Ion battery (a consolation for not getting 4G LTE).
Here's our Motorola Droid 3 video review. Full review to follow in the coming days.