Review: Motorola Droid 2 Smartphone

If anything, the makeover from Droid to Droid 2 is more of a brow wax than a face lift, which judging by the success of the original version, and the ghastly results of many cosmetic surgery fiascoes, is probably a good thing.

No one ever said that the first Droid was a looker, and the second version of the phone isn't doing much to change that. With its thick gray body (2.4 x 4.5 x 0.5 inches), and surprising heft (5.96 ounces), the device is neither pocket-friendly nor swoon-inducing.

The utilitarian feel is reinforced by the lack of stylistic flourishes other than the designated navigational buttons, which are flush with the surface of the 3.7-inch, 480 x 854–pixel touchscreen. The phone's rear is made of an infinitely touchable skinlike material, which will almost certainly decrease the likelihood of dropping it into the business end of a toilet bowl after a couple of glasses of pinot.

It may not be particularly pretty, but the Droid 2 is capable as a Leatherman. The 1-GHz TI OMAP processor and Google's Froyo make for speedy web browsing (only 6 seconds to fully load Wired.com) and a wonderfully sensitive touchscreen, which is made even more responsive by the inclusion of haptic feedback.

Sound quality in videos we took was loud and clear, but the 5-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash is still not a good argument for deep-sixing our Canon S90. The slow shutter response makes pictures, especially those shot indoors, grainy and unappealing. However, camera effects such as "lomo (you might know this as the hipster effect) and "solarize" are neat and go a long way toward improving the shots. Easy upload to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, e-mail or Twitter makes sharing even bad pictures a breeze.

Although getting it open still takes a push, some of the most obvious improvements over the original can be seen in the slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The pesky d-pad is gone. There's an Alt-lock key for typing lots of numbers, and the formerly flat keys — which had our fingers sliding around like a kitten on an ice floe — are now ever-so-slightly domed, preventing us from accidentally typing things like, "Intepesting!"

Despite these improvements, the actual experience of navigating the Droid 2 makes about as much sense as lead weights in a running shoe. The seven home screens seem superfluous and confusing, and many applications lack their own back button — forcing you to return again and again to the home screen. Even for those of us familiar with the original Droid, there was a learning curve.

Which is not to say that it's not a good phone. The Droid 2, with its dual mics and Verizon network, made awesomely clear calls pretty much everywhere we tried it, which really cannot be overvalued in a device originally meant as a tool for talking to people.