Motorola launched the atrix 2 in india late last month. Almost six months after they launched it in the US.

It seemed like a good vfm phone given the market price of around 22,000 INR and the many positive reviews all around the internet made it seem like an awesome buy!!!

So i thought i should check it out.I ordered it,from probably india’s answer to amazon flipkart. it arrived 3 days post order. Packed snuggly in couple of layers of bubble wrap which i enjoyed popping! :P.

Lets open it up and check it out!

Overview
The atrix2 comes with pretty standard stuff inbox. A 2gig micro sd. A pair of earphones , that i will probably never use! A data cable. A charger with a USB socket. So that you can directly plug in your datacable into the charger and it becomes the charging cord! Most manufacturers now-a-days ship phones with a female usb so that people can just plug in the datacable itself and charge their phones!! I think its cool! The battery that comes with the phones a li-po battery with a capacity of around 1785mAh max(1735 mAh Typ.)! Thats awesome and reviews everywhere say that the large battery really helps a lot in keeping the phone alive and kicking for like more than a day,  and with super heavy use! Infact the big battery and the dual core processor were the biggest factors that made me go for this phone!

Hardware
As i said the phone is powered by a dual core processor. Infact the phone is based on the TI OMAP4430 chipset with 2 arm-cortex A9 cores!! And the gpu is a powervr SGX540. The hardware was able ti handle 3d games pretty easily! I tested the 3D capabilities with the bundled EA games that came free with the phone. Dead space looked stunning and i was able to play the game without a single frame being dropped!
I also ran a few benchmarks with the Quadrant Standard Benchmark. And It scored a decent 1756. and Even bettered the galaxy nexus in the 3D scores.

The Sound quality was decent.The true Quality was not evident with the bundled Headset. But Sounded good on my Skullcandy Inkd Ear Buds.

The Display Is a qHD 960×540 TFT. The resolution and Pixel density is awesome .The colors appeared a bit yellow. Sunlight Visibility was okay. Overall the display is ok ,but a better quality display would have been much appreciated.

The Phone also Supports USB HOST.But i haven’t tried it out yet .Will be trying it out soon. And i will post about it soon,as soon as i’m done.There’s also a mini HDMI Jack for connecting to a monitor or a TV set. The cable is not bundled with the handset.

There are two camera one on the front for video chat and another on the back .The rear Camera has a 8Mp Sensor and has a single LED flash.Low Light performance is ok. Better than Most cameras. The images can be shot in various modes and at various resolutions. I liked the widescreen Image option Where the image is shot at a widescreen aspect ratio. and the resolution is around 6Mp.Full HD Videos can be Shot With the camera.Here’s a Sample of a Video that i took with the camera. (Thats Hemanshu Playing the bass Cover for Billy jean in the video).Videos Came Out Pretty good at 1080p  and even at lower resolutions.Even at night the videos Came out pretty decent.Infact I think the videos came out better than the Images shot in low light!

Software

The Phone Comes with android gingerbread 2.3.6 out of the box. And a ICS update for the Asia pacific model (the models available in india) is expected in 3q 2012. That’s actually pretty late considering that most devices will be getting their ICS updates in 2q and there are already devices running Android 4.0 in the market!

Moto phones are bundled with their Custom version of the Android UI called MOTOBLUR,which i really like ,Much better than Samsungs Touchwiz UI which Is more like a clone of Apple’s UI. and even HTC SENSE which i don’t like at all.

The default Music Player App is Actually great in some aspects. It fetches the lyrics asn album art for you as the song is being played. It does not save the lyrics though hence to enjoy the lyrics you will need internet connectivity when the song is being played.It uses Tunewiki for fetching the song info.

There also this thing called the Universal inbox.Its basically a Place where all your unread Fb messages and texts are displayed in a single widget.Kinda Cool but haven’t used it much yet.

The Phone has on-board storage of like 8Gb. But it cant be used to store data files. Only application data Can be stored.Rooting can probably Solve this ‘issue’ and allow the on-board storage to be used more efficiently.

The Lock Screen interface is nice and i really like it.

There is Also the motorola phone portal that allows to sync your phone with your PC not only over USB but alos using wifi!! That’s actually Neat! You can manage all your data ,contacts and message .Using a simple Browser Interface. Internet explorer is the only browser supported to allow data Management though! :(.Other things such as Contacts and Messages can be managed with virtually any browser.

The Dialer interface and contacts app Kinda Sucks and takes time getting used to. And Unlike in HTC devices the Contacts from different sources such as facebook,twitter and your phone book are not merged but appear as separate contacts! WTF??. The Contacts App implementation of HTC was way better in this aspect!.It used to  give me contact match suggestion and it even merged contacts from various sources automatically. So that if a person in on  FB,twitter and Also is in my phone book.It appears as a single Contact. Instead of Multiple contacts!!!

You get 5 Customizable home screens.The Other UI elements are pretty much standard Android nothing much to add in this department!

Design

The Size of the Phone is perfect and Fits snuggly into your palms. The back of the phone is Rubberized and has a fabric like texture to enhance the grip.

4 standard Android Keys are present at the bottom of the LCD.

The Key placement should is a bit too close to the edges and would have been better if it was placed a bit higher. The Keys get accidentally activated when typing with both hands. And can interfere and reduce the typing speed drastically!. I strongly recommend some sort of body cover for this phone.The Phone Seems Slippery,Especially when using it single-handed.I used a silicon jelly case from amzer. It improved the usability drastically!.And Also got a more comfortable grip on the phone.

The Earphone jack is the Worst part of the design,i feel. I tends to scratch the surface of the earphone Plug . I tried it with a couple of earphones. And the Plugs of both the Earphones were scratched badly!.I really hate it very much!

The rocker keys for the volume and the camera key on the side of the device are wedge shaped and have a sharp edge.Its a bit difficult to press them  due to the shape. But i guess  one can live with that as its not that bad actually!

Bottom line: The Real Good stuff :battery life ,qHD display, awesome Hardware,Decent Camera. The Let Downs The Silly Earphone Socket,the Display Is a TFT-LCD(Blacks are usually just grays,If you own a phone with an AMOLED display You will Find the display weird because of the poor contrast ratio),The Phone’s Design really makes typing with both hands in landscape Mode difficult.The rocker keys at the side could have been better designed,the phone lacks grip and hence neccesitates a body cover fro the phone

This Video Review Helped me a lot in making my decision but i think they didn’t cover the downsides of the device well .

Disclaimer: All the views expressed are totally based on my personal experiences and i am not affiliated to nor was paid by any of the organisations/companies mentioned in the above post.