You can keep your 4K screens and 41-megapixel cameras. Before they continue to refine already excellent smartphone features, what if smartphone manufacturers took a little while to fix some of the glaring issues with the space? Things that genuinely affect users on a day-to-day basis far more than ultrahigh-definition image capture?
Two aspects in particular stand out: durability and battery life. What I'd really like is to stop worrying about having a charger on me at all times. Also, it would be nice to not have to spend the next two years reading my emails through a glass spider web, should my butterfingers ever lead to tragedy.
To be fair, Motorola's been in the minority here—at least so far as its Droid line is concerned. Durability and longevity have long been a cornerstone for these devices, and the Turbo 2 happily abides.
The Verizon-branded handset is the first to offer Motorola's new ShatterShield technology, so naturally the company christened it by dropping it onto a cinderblock a whole bunch of times in front of a room full of journalists. And, naturally, it came out mostly unfazed.
The second feature is a lot tougher to show off on the fly, but it's the single most overlooked major feature in smartphones today. A big, massive battery. One that won't conk out halfway through the day. In fact, Motorola's promising a full 48 hours.
The latest entrant in the line once synonymous with Android handsets has a lot working for it, all while maintaining relics of a time when carriers considered phones as much their property as that of the consumer.
Design
Motorola's design language is nothing if not consistent. You can identify one of the company's phones from a mile away: the rounded body, the curved back, the landing strip with the iconic Motorola M on the rear.
Though, lest you forget that this isn't technically a Motorola phone, the handset's branding is notably absent from the front of the device. This isn't a Motorola phone. And in a sense, it's not really your phone either. It's Verizon's, and for the next two years, you're just leasing it.
That's not to say that Verizon went overboard with the branding. Considering how hog wild it and other manufacturers have been in the past, Big Red's presence is pretty subtle—on the hardware, at least. While it's bumped out Verizon a spot on the front, the company has eschewed the full name in favor of a simple checkmark logo on the sizable bottom bezel, sandwiched between two small speaker grilles —or, rather, a mic and speaker grille.
Up top, the earpiece is flanked by a large flash and front-facing 5-megapixel camera. The whole thing is covered with a layer of Motorola's new proprietary ShatterShield glass, the many charms of which we'll happily explore down below. But for all of its charms, the covering is extremely glossy and adds a level of plasticky artifice that somewhat cheapens the feel of an otherwise premium-built phone. Given what it adds, however, that seems like a pretty small price to pay.
Along the edges a curved, metal frame that lends the phone a solid line, broken up on the corners by exposed antenna bands. On the right side is a volume rocker and a power button with a ribbed surface to better distinguish the two while blindly fumbling for the buttons. The top houses the power jack and sim/SD slot and the bottom, naturally, is where the microUSB port lives.
The Turbo 2 is, notably, the first Droid to harness the customizing powers of MotoMaker. Such choices go beyond simple fashion here. Take, for example, the leather-backed units at the company's press event (while "Shattered" by the Rolling Stones played in the background, naturally). The units were already starting to show signs of scuffing and wear, somewhat defeating the whole rugged nature of the handset.
The one Verizon sent us, thankfully, came with the far less scuffable, more humane, and generally better looking ballistic nylon backing. This stuff has its origins in World War II flak jackets, so it should, at the very least, hold up better against your car keys. You've got a number of different options through Moto Maker, but if dropping, sitting on, or some other bit of unintended abuse is likely in the phone's future, I'd suggest ballistic nylon.
The material has a nice threaded effect that adds a bit of texture, which makes for better gripping, along with the slightly curved backing that has been a key part of the company's design language for some time now. The rear of the device is, thankfully, free of additional Verizon branding. There's just a small droid logo on the bottom and a little Motorola "M" at the end of the now-familiar metal landing strip that also houses the camera and flash.
It's really a lovely looking back, the way the metal sides converge flush with the rear. It marries the sort of military chic fashion of its predecessor with the modern smartphone feel Motorola has gotten a lot better at designing of late. The same can't be said for the front, but all in all, it feels like a small price to pay for a phone that won't shatter into a million pieces the first time it meets the harsh, cold reality of the pavement below.
Audio/Visual
Let's get the boring display bit out of the way. All right, maybe "boring" is too strong a word, but let's face it, no one is going to be spending much time discussing resolution in conversations about the Droid Turbo.
Like the midtier Moto X, the Droid Turbo features a 1440 x 2560 display—albeit jammed into a 5.4-inch display. It's a sharp screen, at 540 PPI that does quite well with high-def video. The colors are bit oversaturated to my eyes, but many seemed to prefer the similar color balance offered on Motorola's other recent offerings. And for those who don't—like myself—it's possible to fiddle with the developer settings to adjust the colors to a more manageable level.
Until front-facing speakers become the industry norm, I'm happy to award points to companies that position their grilles toward the listener. Even still, I was fairly underwhelmed by the speakers.
They get reasonably loud, but the sound is tinny and muddy at top volume—and despite appearing to be stereo, only the right grille actually emits sounds during music playback. If you're planning on listening to music for any extended period, I'd strongly suggest Bluetooth headphones or maybe one of those fancy new Chromecast audio dongles.
Smashing Performance
So here's the fun part. On a personal note, I've been a bit overwhelmed by the number of handset reviews I've had to write of late, so it's true that there's a certain level of gadget catharsis that comes with being able to repeatedly drop the units. I also can't overstate the fun of dropping an expensive new smartphone in front of a bunch of strangers on a crowded New York City street.
But enough about my extremely unscientific dropping methodology. Here's what you need to know about Motorola's new ShatterShield technology. For starters, it goes beyond a simple sheet of Gorilla Glass. It's a five-layer dip of smartphone protection, beginning with the aluminum chassis that includes a flexible display for absorbing impact and multiple protective layers.
In fact, the top protective lens did have some air bubbles around the corners, not unlike the variety you see when you apply your own screen protector.
The result is a screen that's really hard to break, as evidenced by the launch event, in which the same handset was repeatedly dropped onto the same unforgiving cinderblock. Ditto for my dropping. No cracks. That doesn't, however, mean, that the thing is scratch-proof. Check the fine print on the Droid Turbo 2 product page:
"[S]cratches or other damage to the protective lens is not covered by this warranty."
And indeed, there were a number of dings from the drops—though I suspect they are pretty easily fixed by swapping out the protective lenses should the scratches become too distracting. Less forgiving are the dings to the aluminum chassis. While the screen itself is extremely tough, it's also quite possible to ding up the sides, even with a straight up phone face plant.
But if you don't want a handset that's built like an actual tank, you're going to have to put up with potential scratching. That's just how it goes.
Internals
The Droid Turbo 2's battery life is, simply put, terrific. A 3,760-mAh battery is insanely large for a phone of this size. And that's a great thing. Motorola promises 48 hours of battery life, and we can confirm that you'll be able to get a couple of days out of the phone with moderate use, no problem.
This is the sort of phone I'd love to have with me for a show like CES—the kind of device you can use as much as needed without constantly worrying about running down the battery and getting to the nearest outlet.
Equally compelling, when you do run out of juice, the Turbo features the same sort of super-fast charging seen on the Moto X, so when you do find yourself needed to plug in, 15 minutes of recharging will go a long way, so long as you remember to pack the right charger.
The rest of the specs are solid, as well. The processor is a 2.0 GHz octacore Snapdragon 810, a step up from the hexacore 808 found on the Moto X. There's a decent 3 GB of RAM and hearty 32- or 64-GB of storage on-board. No measly 16 GB here, plus that number can be augmented further by way of an SD card, an expandable memory option more and more companies seem to be dropping of late.
Software
For all of the great things the Droid Turbo brings to the table—and there are plenty—the device, exclusive to Verizon, still feels like a relic of bygone days when carriers held ultimate sway over hardware manufacturers. That fact came into sharp relief after I started this review, when Motorola quietly announced (due no doubt to the recent Turbo event) the Moto X Force.
The company wouldn't come outright and say it, but that's what the Droid Turbo 2 will be known as for the rest of the world, where it's free from the Verizon contractual rigmarole. The fact that Motorola made such a big show around the "Pure" nature of the Moto X also helps drive the point home.
The branding isn't just limited to the front bezel. The otherwise reasonably stock Android experience is bogged down by various pieces of Verizon bloatware. Perhaps there are those who find those sorts of branded apps useful, but from here it feels like a carrier trying to stay front and center in a space that's content to let it and its fellow service providers slip into the background.
Wrap-Up
There's a lot to like here—a shatterproof screen, a ridiculously large battery life, a good camera, customizable designs, and all-around solid specs. 2015 has already been a fruitful year for Motorola, and the Droid Turbo 2 ups the ante in a lot of important ways. Hopefully its focus on battery and rugged design will be enough to signal something of a sea change in the smartphone space.
For all of the good, however, it's a shame to see the device weighed down by carrier branding and exclusives. The Droid Turbo 2 feels like a bit of a death rattle for the old model—one almost immediately undercut by the announcement of the Moto X Force. It's a shame, because such deals are keeping a good phone from becoming truly great.
