Another year means another release for Motorola's Droid smartphone. The Droid name helped put Android on the map even though many would forget that the G1 was the 1st Android device. Over the past several years, Motorola + Verizon's Droid partnership haven't been much a big deal. Not so great camera, good body, great battery life and only on VZW.
Enter 2014 as we now have the Droid Turbo. This is the latest from their partnership as they appear to bring their best foot forward this time. This isn't just some random device w/ a Droid brand. This packed w/ some top tier specs to make the Droid experience better than it has been in years. We'll let you know if this should be worthy of your attention and let you know if Droid is back. After handling it for a few weeks, here is our review.
Design
Display
Performance/Battery Life
Motorola wanted to make sure that the Turbo lived up to its name by providing it w/ the necessary internals. Inside lies a 2.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 805 CPU coupled w/ 3GB of RAM. After spending several weeks w/ it, I have yet to come across any notable signs of hiccups or lag. With it running damn-near stock Android, it handles everything from multitasking to simple processes like a breeze. Easily a top Android performer amongst the rest of the pack.
Powerful and the best battery on the market right now.
Motorola is known for equipping their Droids w/ some massive all-day batteries. Since they only released one Droid this year instead of 3, they made sure to put a huge one within this one. The Droid Turbo has a 3900 mAh battery that Moto quoted for a 48-hour battery life based on mixed usage. While I didn't exactly that I did manage to get just over 20 hours on heavy usage of streaming on Google Play, YouTube, navigating via Google Maps, a few phone calls, and tons of back-and-forth via Hangouts. Moderate use got just under 40 hours. You can always count on Moto to provide a great battery.
Cameras
Software
For starters, Active Display is now called Moto Display making good use of the AMOLED display. It is improved as it now shows off any notifications on the screen when you pick the device up, thanks to on-board infrared sensors. So when a new notification arrives, you still have the option to choose to open the notification or just unlock your device. I rarely used the Power button to unlock it.