Given their widespread use, and the degree to which we rely on them, it is difficult to imagine a world without mobile phones. For new generations growing up today, this could be as difficult as for older people to imagine life without electricity. With a touch of comedy, television and movies we remember the early 90s with large mobile phones that were cutting-edge technology at the time, but in reality, the first modern mobile phone handheld was created back in the 1973.

Dr. Martin Cooper is credited with creating the first not for the use of mobile handheld portable vehicle. The head of Motorola’s John F. Mitchell is also given credit for service, and its contribution to society is pushing the portable device small enough to be used in practice. There was a tremendous race closely the development of mobile phone from Motorola and Bell Labs, and in fact, Dr. Cooper made the first call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.

The phones did not exactly take off soon because the technology to make it feasible for the general population was not exactly intact. The phones after that had a more advanced system of connectivity that depended on the ability to switch seamlessly between mobile phones sites. This made it easier to move with the phone, thereby making it truly portable. This technology has taken off in Japan in 1979. The early years saw more than 80 countries like the United Kingdom, Mexico, Canada and develop networks, but the price tag of expensive phones combined with the lack of a fully developed network has made them rare, and virtually no mainstream consumers of their property.

The next big improvement in the technology of the phone took place in the early ’90s with the advent of digital transmission over analog and even with major improvements and faster between the phones and the network. In addition, the battery life was increased and phones started getting smaller. Not surprisingly, this is what started the explosion of ownership of the phone and is really the beginning of their use on the scale we see today.

In the early 2000s it was clear that the demand for mobile phones was insatiable, and the industry has begun work on creating the fastest, most reliable networks that can support data transmission. Mobile phones started popping cameras and other devices, and that all require greater connectivity. In the mid-2000, the networks were sufficiently improved to allow for mobile phones and other devices for Internet access portable, so the modern era of mobile phones has been reached.

E ‘taken for granted now that everyone can be reached on their mobile at any time, but there was a time long ago when our current reality seemed to belong only in the realm of science fiction. We owe our thanks to those of Motorola, Bell, and other innovators from around the world during the years that have brought us to this state of advanced technology.

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BUILD & DESIGN

While many current Android devices are thinly veiled attempts to mimic the iPhone, the Droid Pro clearly has another target: the segment of business users that are mostly addicted to the BlackBerry and it’s constant email access.

I’m not a BlackBerry user myself, but I am a member of the demographic that must have a keyboard, preferably in a one-piece design like this. So I came into this review curious about the Droid Pro, both because of it’s slightly unusual design, and because it seemed to have the qualities I look for in a smartphone: a great spec sheet, simple design, and — hopefully — a solid operating system.

Screen
A key difference between the Droid Pro and its rivals is that while QWERTY-bar phones often include a relatively small  screen with a landscape orientation, the Pro has a larger portrait-oriented screen. This makes it a little longer than it’s relatives within the class, but considering everything that is packed into this device, the Droid Pro is actually surprisingly compact.

Compared directly to my usual phone, a Samsung Jack, the Droid Pro is about a third of an inch taller — and that’s it. They’re the same width, and roughly the same thickness, though the Droid Pro is actually a tiny bit thinner over most of the casing, with a small bulge along the top rear. Even granted that my Jack is cheaper and is a year old, I was pleasantly surprised by the size.

Despite it’s compact footprint, it squeezes in a 3.1 inch, half-VGA screen — not the largest or highest resolution on an Android-based device, but roughly comparable to the first three generations of iPhones.

Keyboard
Given the device’s size constraints, I had been half expecting the keyboard to be cramped. So it was another pleasant surprise that it was, in fact, every bit as usable as the better thumb keyboards I’ve tried out.

Good key travel, key separation, and feel. The number keys are spread out along the top row, instead of being placed in a conventional grid formation. The good news, though is that this is made up for by a large and very usable on-screen keypad available from the phone dialer application. Or, you can just speak the number that you want to call — but we’ll get to that later.

Other Buttons & Controls
One of the ways the Droid Pro saves space is by not having a directional pad or directional control of any kind, which is a departure for most QWERTY-bar style phones. At first, I didn’t think that I was going to be happy about that omission. Now, after having gotten to use it a bit, I’m not nearly as put out as I expected to be. Yes, there’s some situations where it would be nice to have a physical directional control — particularly navigating cramped web page elements, or relocating a cursor for text entry. But for the most part I’ve gotten along quite well using touchscreen gestures for scrolling and practicing accurate fingertip clicking.

My biggest complaint about the Droid Pro’s design lies in the four navigation buttons right above the keyboard. Because they’re part of the screen, and therefore touch sensitive, it’s fairly easy to accidentally “push” them if your finger brushes the screen accidentally. Since the center two buttons — those most likely to be hit accidentally — both take you back out of the application you’re using, it can be very annoying to have to go back and re-start what you were doing. Since you can’t vary the sensitivity of these buttons — and they really do have a hair trigger — the only real cure for this is time and practice, to get used to having them there and not letting your fingers stray.

With the memory card tucked under the battery cover, the only open ports are the Micro-USB plug on the lower left hand side, and the 3.5 mm audio jack on top. It’s nice to have a standard audio plug again, though I wouldn’t object to having all the plugs on the bottom, so that I could have a nice car dock for the thing, but that’s rather a nitpick.

Overall, the build quality feels good, the design is sleek and very usable, and it packs all it’s features into a very reasonable size and weight.

PERFORMANCE

Even if you thought the physical design of the Motorola Droid Pro was a bit basic, you’ll love what’s under the hood. On paper, this model has almost everything you could possibly want packed into a business phone.

It starts with a hardware set designed for performance: a 1 GHz TI OMAP 3620 processor and 512 MB of RAM, plus 1.5 GB of internal storage for your data. There’s also a 2 GB microSD card included.

All of this stacks up to mean amazing performance. Full-screen transitions, sliding gestures, window animations, even with plenty of stuff running in the background, it was all as smooth as an oil slick behind a Zamboni. I’m certain that there’s some situation or program which could slow this thing down, but I couldn’t find it, even when running high end games or applications.

Wireless/Call Quality
Add to that high performance base the standard wireless accessories: CDMA/EV-DO Rev. A for-voice and data on Verizon in the U.S., GPS with network-assistance and geotagging, WiFi b/g/n, and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR.

Then you start on the rarer components. A secondary cell phone connection in the form of quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band HSPA adds worldwide coverage: unlike most Verizon phones, you can take this phone overseas and it will still work.

Mind you, if you intend to use Verizon’s overseas roaming service you’re going to be charged by the limb, but that’s kind of to be expected. You can, of course, get the GSM module unlocked, and then use cheaper prepaid services around the world, at the expense of not having your usual phone number.

It also features dual CDMA antennas for better than average signal performance, giving me multiple bars in areas that are normally sketchy.

Productivity
Despite the fact that I’ve been neck deep in mobile technology for many years, the Droid Pro is actually my first extended chance to use a device running Google’s Android OS. I was very curious to see how it would turn out, since I hadn’t really developed a firm impression or opinion of the Android platform from the brief look and play opportunities I’d had.

My first impressions were extremely positive. Granted one has to attribute a lot of the software experience to having good quality hardware behind it — the smooth-as-glass performance, the advanced looks, and the robust storage all help to ease the learning curve. But more important than the performance is the true software experience. Complete interoperability between applications, down to the level of being able to hand off a scanned barcode from one app to another from a different, competing developer. Or the integration of OS-level security into the mix to allow you the protection of guaranteed apps, as well as the freedom to go beyond what Google gives you.

Speaking of apps, they’re the centerpiece of the experience. The minute that I got into the Android Marketplace, I think I fell in love. It is, to put it simply, the sort of one-look-one-touch system for finding and installing applications I’ve been looking for for years. Or put another way, the thing that Microsoft never did for Windows Mobile, and should have. If it had, the company might have been in the position Google is right now, instead of having to jettison their entire former platform and start over.

The apps that come with the Droid Pro are basic but good — a complete Office suite and PDF viewer, multiple-account email client with support for a variety of platforms, navigation apps (both Google’s own and Verizon’s VZ Navigator), along with the usual packing peanuts.

Unsurprisingly, the device’s email implementation is most friendly toward GMail. Since I normally use Exchange Server synchronization on my Samsung Jack, I attempted to set up the same, only to discover that it’s a little more complicated. Not that I should be surprised, since Exchange is a Microsoft platform, and here I am asking it to play nice with Google. Eventually, I got it working with the help of the instructions off the Motorola website, but the lesson is to plan for a little more complexity when interfacing across platform brands. Nevertheless, it does work out of the box, even before the wandering eye is drawn to Google’s support framework.

Here’s what I did: I touched the button on the phone marked “Marketplace.” About ten seconds later I was scrolling through a list of hundreds of brilliant, absolutely free applications, all of which could be downloaded and installed in the background with two button presses, while I kept searching for more apps. It’s hard to overstate how easy to use it is.

And these aren’t your run of the mill free calculators and miniature pocket dictionaries. These are some amazingly powerful applications. One of the first ones I downloaded was Google Translate — and if you’ve never actually seen this app in action, it is hard to describe just how impressive it is. Speak any phrase into it, and within seconds it can read aloud a proper translation for the phrase in the language of your choice. This ranges from “Where is the airport” to “Do you enjoy anchovies on your pizza?” For that matter, it will tell you how to ask about anchovies in Welsh or Yiddish.

Or let’s talk about Google Sky Map. This free app uses the device’s internal gyrosensor to track where exactly you’re pointing the thing, and act like a perfect window to display constellations through, and can adjust the orientation automatically based on your GPS location.

Or ZXing Barcode Scanner, which can use the camera to automatically read and look up both 2D and 3D barcodes, including the QR codes that provide instant links to application downloads or websites. And it reads them right off the computer screen.

From Google-search-by-voice to recording DVD-resolution video; from being able to solve complicated math questions almost as fast as you can read them out loud to being able to signal in Morse code using the camera’s LED flash, the standard software package is impressive, and the available add-ons are even more so.

I also need to mention the voice command integration. The impressive part about the Droid Pro’s voice command system isn’t that Android has it — we’ve been experimenting with voice-commanded computers for a very long time. The impressive part is how ruthlessly accurate it is. I have yet to have it get a word wrong when I’m enunciating properly, and it’s still far better than 90% when speaking casually. In fact, I just read the previous sentence to it, and it picked the thing up word for word. I even tested it with obscure, easily missed words like “ferrets,” “anchovies,” and “Wookie.” For the record, it had the most trouble with “ferrets,” which it mistook about half the time for “parents.” But it recognized “Wookie” fine.

In a much more practical application, right out of the box you can order it to dial your contacts by name — without recording voice tags or doing any other setup work. Once it had slurped down my contact information, I simply said “Call Adama,” and my regular cell phone was ringing. You can also dictate text messages and emails with a fair degree of accuracy — not something that you’d need to do in most circumstances, but highly useful if, say, you’re driving somewhere and need to write an urgent reply.

Entertainment
The Droid Pro isn’t sold as a multimedia phone — it’s solidly targeted at business users, a fact Motorola isn’t shy of, emphasizing the bundling of Office applications and the strong password administration support. But make no mistake, if you don’t mind the slightly smaller screen, you can have a very happy multimedia experience.

To emphasize that, the Droid Pro comes equipped for working with Digital Living Network Alliance products, a system for allowing various entertainment products to work together. For instance, being able to stream video from a set-top digital video recorder, or use the Droid Pro to control the interaction of other DLNA equipment like a remote. Lacking any other DLNA-certified equipment, I couldn’t really test this, but the concept looks like it could be brilliant if it takes off and is implemented well.

Even the default browser is quite comfortable, more so even than my usual standby of Opera Mini. I suspect that would change outside of 3G range and the high browsing speed it provides, but for now, the dynamic zoom and automatic reflowing win the day.

As mentioned above, the Droid Pro is faster than hell. And it handles all it’s applications like a champion, even the high end ones that it’s not marketed towards.

Battery Life
The only sour note I have to sound about the Droid Pro’s performance is the one which, when you think about it, is fairly obvious. The more you use all that amazing hardware, the faster you’re going to eat the battery.

I had my review unit fully charged at 2:30, and by 7 PM with all the playing I had done, the battery was down to 15%. I’ve seen worse, but it’s certainly nothing to write home about. I’m accustomed to getting a full day of heavy use, but that expectation isn’t based on a larger screen and what is, in fact, a relatively small battery for the hardware it’s powering.

There’s a nifty little OS component that will tell you in detail what is consuming your battery life. To no surprise, 65% of my power drain was in the form of the screen. The Droid Pro does have a setting to automatically adjust the screen’s brightness, however the automatic setting is too low for my taste relative to the ambient lighting, and unlike on other devices with a light sensor, you can’t give it any guidance as to whether you’d like it just a little brighter or darker than its defaults.

It doesn’t help that Android’s default menus and screens are almost all white text on black backgrounds, making them much harder to see in a lit environment. Indeed, I had to turn up the brightness considerably to be able to see clearly, which led me to my second noteworthy complaint. Specifically, Android doesn’t make it easy for you to choose anything but the default color scheme. There is no way built into the device to choose different colors, and even with some of the third party launcher replacements, you can only get part of the way. I installed ADW Launcher, which allowed me to change the color of the app drawer, but menus were still all white text on black backdrop.

This may seem like a little thing, but it’s important because it has to do with user comfort. Users shouldn’t need to crank up their screen brightness to compensate for absurdly dark colors they can’t change. When you’re not dealing with that, the automatic screen brightness is much more to my taste.

As far as the larger power issue goes, there are some settings you can tweak to help reduce battery drain, such as the frequency of data and GPS updates, there’s supposed to be an extended battery option available soon through Verizon, however it’s rated at 1820 mAh, only 28% larger than the standard 1420 mAh cell. I’d really like to see an option to add a little padding to the entire back of the device in trade for, say, 2 to 2.5 times the standard battery power. That would give the power hogs like myself the guarantee that we could get through a rough day without worrying overmuch about conserving juice. If I’m lost and depending on the GPS, or making a lot of calls to manage a situation, I don’t want to worry whether the battery will hold out.

While these two things are my biggest issues with the Droid Pro as a device, in the big picture they’re relatively minimal. Both can be either fixed or reduced by software eventually, and frequent charging is a reality of life for smartphone users, particularly high end ones.

CONCLUSION

I have to say that it’s been quite a long while since I got the raw thrill from playing with a gadget that I have from the Motorola Droid Pro.

While it’s obvious that the state of the art in mobile tech improves, the difference is more than just a hardware upgrade — it’s the fact that the Droid Pro and the Android platform are well thought out and robust in ways that others simply aren’t.

The difference is like driving every day in a basic sedan, and then suddenly being handed the keys to a well built luxury car. It shows you all the little things that you didn’t realize could be done so much better. And while in the end you may not technically need those things, I dare say that most people would choose to have them.

The Droid Pro delivers a solid business-oriented device that also makes plenty of room for recreational use. I’m sold.

Pros:

• Great hardware specs
• Sleek, easy-to-use design
• Excellent operating system

Cons:

• Can eat battery power quickly
• Some buttons too easy to push

BUILD & DESIGN

This is the latest addition to the line of relatively large smartphones, roughly the same size as Verizon’s HTC Droid Incredible and the Samsung Captivate from AT&T. It feels very solid in the hand, to the point that it’s hard to tell at first that this is a slider phone with a pull-out physical keyboard underneath the screen.

This device is weighty but not too heavy. You won’t forget that it’s in your pocket, but it won’t weigh you down too much either. Most of the weight is centered in the keyboard portion of the phone, which means that the device is still easy to hold when you have to slider open. Some phones are too top-heavy to easily use when the screen is pushed up, but the Droid 2 has a very nice feel to it.

You’ll need a large pocket to put it in, but the phone isn’t so thick that it will be too unsightly. However, you may have a hard time determining which end is up when you take the device out of your pocket — there’s not a good way to tell by feel alone, unless your fingers happen to find the ridge underneath the display.

The overall appearance of the device is a cross between modern and blocky. The corners are curved for comfort and there are some nice dull silver accents, but I wouldn’t call the Droid 2 a particularly stylish or edgy phone, at least as far as looks are concerned. It isn’t ugly, by any means, or even unattractive, but it isn’t beautiful either.

Display
The 3.7-inch Touchscreen display has a WVGA resolution (480 x 854). It looks OK, but I’m not blown away by it. Pictures and video are sharp, and there weren’t any problems with ghosting.

One negative is that colors aren’t as rich as I would like, and in some lighting conditions what should be white seems to have a slightly yellowish cast that is definitely unappealing.

Outside, however, the Droid 2 performs quite well. The display washes out quite a bit in direct sunlight, but it is still readable. You may want to shield the display with your hand in order to improve your view, but the good news is that you will still be able to use your phone outdoors – which is not something that is true of every smartphone.

Keyboard
The physical QWERTY keyboard is located under the display; you access it by holding the bottom of the phone and sliding the display up or to the right, depending on how you’re holding the phone. The sliding action is very tight, and it is possible to do it with one hand, but difficult. That may change as the phone “loosens up” with extended use.

The keyboard is nicely laid out, with clearly marked keys, and large alt, shift, space, and enter keys — something that I really appreciate.

Unfortunately the keys are very flat and indistinct, so even though they’re fairly large overall, it will take some time to get used to the keyboard.

With practice, I can type fairly quickly and with few errors, but I have to constantly look down at my hands in order to be sure I’m hitting the right keys. Thankfully the keyboard is illuminated for use in low-light conditions, because I’m not sure that I would ever be able to touch type on the Droid 2 without looking at the keyboard.

Other Buttons & Controls
The power button on the top of the phone is very small and extremely unobtrusive. I’ve had the phone for just over a week now, and I’m still frustrated by how hard it is to hit that little button. My finger can’t seem to find it and I usually have to stop and turn the phone up so that I can see the button and then punch it.

The volume buttons are on the top right edge of the phone and the camera is on the bottom right side. Just like the power button, they are rather small and hard to hit without looking.

I’m not terribly thrilled by the virtual buttons along the bottom of the display. They’re right above a ridge, where the phone gets slightly thinner, so my fingers tend to hit that edge instead of the button I’m aiming for.

Overall I found the buttons to be not quite big enough and distinct enough, making them hard to use. The virtual buttons are somewhat poorly placed, making for a frustrating experience.

PERFORMANCE

The Motorola Droid 2 is the very first smartphone to launch running Android OS 2.2, a new version of Google’s operating system. It’s based on a 1 GHz processor, a faster one than the original Motorola Droid uses.

When I first got this device, my impressions regarding performance were mixed, due mainly to whether or not the task I was trying to accomplish required heavy Internet access. Internal apps like the calendar and contacts were very responsive, but email and web browsing were painfully slow.

Thanks fully I was notified of a firmware update a couple of days ago, and now that my review unit is running Android 2.2.20, things are working much more smoothly. I won’t say that the performance now is blow-your-socks-off great, but it is good and I don’t have any major complaints.

Wireless/Call quality
Results on voice quality are quite mixed. I have no problem at all hearing my callers very clearly, but the same isn’t true on the other side of the line. When I called a fellow phone reviewer, he gave the Droid 2 a solid “B” and said that I sounded distant, and he could definitely tell that I was on a mobile phone. I didn’t have any trouble hearing him, and everything came through loud and clear on my end.

When I called one of my friends, he asked if I was “outside on a busy street in a wind tunnel.” I didn’t have any trouble at all hearing him, but just like my first caller, he had a hard time hearing me–and I was inside my extremely quiet office.

I generally have good Verizon network coverage in my area. My personal phone is from Verizon, and I have no complaints — so it’s hard to tell if there’s a real problem with voice quality on the Droid 2, whether I got a bad review unit, or if there’s some other reason for the problems my callers experienced.

I’ve tried the wireless hotspot functionality, and I’m having some problems with it at the moment. The Droid 2 shows that my laptop is connected, and my laptop shows that it’s connected to the Droid 2, but for some reason I can’t do anything that requires network access, like checking my email or using Google Talk. I’m not sure at this point whether this is a random network issue or a serious problem with the device.

Productivity
Like most Android OS phones these days, the Droid 2 comes with Calendar and Contacts applications, plus a calculator. The Quickoffice file viewer for Microsoft Office is also included. Other apps include the News RSS reader, as well as a News and Weather app that includes top headlines from several of the major outlets.

The included web browser works well, albeit rather slowly. Once the page is fully loaded, panning around and zooming in are very fast. The email experience on the Droid 2 is much like any other Android device, though again it is a bit slower than I expected.

Google Maps works great, though it was surprising to me that the phone could only pinpoint my location to an accuracy of 1300 meters. The new mass transit information was included, and I was very impressed with the accuracy of the information — train and bus departures for each station were included. The Labs features are also very cool, especially Measure, which is used for quickly finding the distance between two points without having to go through the hassle of getting directions.

Entertainment
All of the usual suspects are here, from the Social Networking app and YouTube to the Music Player and a demo of Need for Speed Shift. The game played well, using Tilt controls, but the sound from the external speaker was disappointingly tinny and not very loud, even at full volume. Video quality on YouTube was good, though again sound using the external speaker was rather disappointing.

If you want to listen to music, the built-in Music application works great, allowing you to view your music files by artist, album, or song, or you can set up your own playlists. I would strongly recommend plugging in earphones if you want a good listening experience.

There are also some preloaded extras, such as the Amazon Kindle app, which was a nice surprise. Amazon MP3 was included, if you like to get your music downloads from Amazon. Of course “entertainment” means different things to different people, and when you’re ready for more apps and games, you can head on over to the Android Market app to find what you need to keep yourself entertained.

Camera
The Motorola Droid 2 has a 5 megapixel camera. but was am not tremendously impressed with it. Many of my photos look somewhat grainy, and the quality on zoomed-in photos is only acceptable.

The camera doesn’t focus until you press the shutter button, so it takes a while to capture a photo and I found i very hard to get a decent action shot–they tended to be somewhat blurry.

As manufacturers focus more and more attention on the camera they put in each smartphone design, consumers are rewarded with better options, which means that their phone can often replace a simple point and shoot camera. Unfortunately the camera on the Droid 2 doesn’t measure up to that lofty standard. It’s OK for typical day-to-day uses, but if you’re a real shutterbug, look elsewhere — there are more capable smartphones with far better cameras out there for you.

This is a bit disappointing, as there were numerous complaints about the camera on the original Droid, and Motorola didn’t listen to its customers.

Battery Life
The Droid 2 performed well in this area, though not spectacularly.

After the first day of use, I managed to almost completely drain the battery due to syncing all of my information, taking lots of practice camera shots, etc. In normal daily use I find that battery level isn’t something I have to watch too closely, and it’s nice not having to keep the charger in my gear bag at all times.

CONCLUSION

I was excited to receive the Motorola Droid 2, but unfortunately that excitement hasn’t lasted. This is certainly not a bad phone, but it’s not a “wow” phone either.

The main disappointments, aside from a major glitch with the mobile hotspot service, are the annoyingly indistinct buttons and the mediocre voice quality. If you’re interested in this phone, I’d advise you to try it out in person before buying it.

In my opinion, there are better Android smartphone options available from Verizon.

Pros

• Solid overall design
• Nice display, usable in direct sunlight aside from some problems with yellowing
• Good battery life

Cons

• Keyboard is OK, but not great
• Small buttons
• Voice quality is average at best — I have no problems hearing my callers, but they have a hard time hearing me clearly
• External speaker is underpowered and tinny
• Disappointing Camera

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The design captures the evolution of the mobile phone in Russian Babushka doll style – starting from the earliest Motorola DynaTAC 8000X to the current Apple iPhone. A lesson or two for schools to make history more interesting.