Motorola Droid Turbo Give Battery Life to Your Phone
In today’s mobile world, we want one thing from our smartphones – the ability to hold battery life. The Motorola DROID Turbo is the latest in high-end battery smartphones that not only holds charge, but can recharge 30% within 15 minutes. On the Verizon Network it becomes the workhorse you need for when you need it.
Now usually I take a week or two to get to know the phone then review. Every now and then I like to slow a review period down to really get to know the phone. Would it become a phone I could use for the next two years?
I also took it with me to the biggest battleground I know of. The Consumer Electronics Show.
If you’ve ever went to a major event like this, you know two things – at the end of the day your feet will hurt and your phone will be dead by noon unless you have a battery charger. That is how I wanted to test the Droid Turbo.
Before I get into that, let’s talk specs. the Turbo is a quad-core device with 2.7 GHz and 64-bit memory access. The graphics: Adreno 420 at 600 Mhz and the internal RAM is 3GB so it will play games and video with minimal skips.
You can get the phone in two storage options – 32 and 64 GB. Enough to store 600 songs or thousands of photos. Even a few TV shows or movies. Video can do UHD – that is 4K video. The rear camera is 21 megapixels in a 4:3 standard and 15.5 MP in 16:9. Dual LED flash will help with low-light photos and the camera will do 4x zoom and slow motion video.
Even the front camera can do 1080p through the 2 MP sensor.
Lets investigate the battery, where this device excels in. Depending on usage, you can get up to 48 hours on this device. The 3900 mAh battery has a fast charge option so you can get up to 8 hours mixed, within a 15 minute charge. So if you are in the Airport between flights, you can plug in to get through the last leg.
So we have a good idea of how this device works. When we come back, I’ll tell you how the phone worked while I was at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Pros and Cons of the Droid Turbo
So we have an idea of what’s inside. The real question – how does it work? Especially when you use it to the max.
I brought this phone and my Nexus 5 to Las Vegas. The Nexus 5 has a 2300 mAh battery and the Turbo has a 3900 mAh battery. So I knew the turbo would last longer than my phone.
But I didn’t think it would go all day without a recharge.
Both phones have Lollipop installed and the exact same apps on them. If I got notification on one, I got it on the other. The Turbo had one extra job – it was my camera for the show. I would take pictures from the Turbo, then have those photos upload to my Dropbox account. That can take some battery life just to do on its own.
Here is the kicker – At the end of the day, the Turbo would be at 20% where my Nexus would be on its third battery charge via the Mophie.
What that means is I can take one less charger and not have that much “Cable crossing” from one pocket to another.
You know – where the charger is in one pocket and the cable crosses to the other pocket where your phone is?
The Turbo also has the fast charging which comes in handy. If I do have to cable cross, its only for a few minutes with a decent charger. My phone is then ready for another round.
There are a lot of other features I really liked on this phone. Like I said, I used it more as a camera – and it did a decent job. Granted not all pictures came out perfect but most of those pictures were snap-and-go. You can see all the photos I took at cesgeek.tumblr.com.
I also liked the camera and slow motion video. This is very similar to the iPhone 6 – taking at 120 fps. I shot some video of the water show at the Bellagio. Selfies are a lot easier with the “tap anywhere to shoot” screen. You can even take a picture while recording video.
The only thing I don’t like about the Turbo is the notification blinking and the swipe to activate the screen. I actually turned that option off, but the phone screen still seems to turn on its own from time to time.
Overall, the Droid Turbo is a device I could see in my pocket for the next two years. I can get those important pictures and still have enough battery to upload and send.