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Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx review

Most of today's smartphones, especially those of the LTE-enabled persuasion, have earned a bad rap for exceptionally bad battery life, with large displays and hungry radios that suck the juice out faster than a three year-old can down a CapriSun. The race to construct the thinnest phones on the market doesn't help much either, since whittling down handsets results in less space for generously sized battery packs. The Motorola Droid RAZR is currently the slimmest phone this side of the Pacific, offering a thickness of 7.1mm at its thinnest end, and the title likely won't hold for long as new phones like the Huawei Ascend P1 S aim to knock the RAZR off its throne. But at what point do we stand up and insist on adding a little extra heft for the sake of having a bigger battery?

Enter the Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx. A mere two months after its predecessor was released on Verizon, this new contender came around to challenge the battery life of every single next-gen phone we've ever used. Its back end has been filled out somewhat to make room for a bigger battery, but at 8.99mm, it's still slimmer than a huge number of competing handsets on the market today. So what makes the Maxx different from the RAZR? Is it worth paying $300 with a two-year commitment -- a $100 premium over its original? Read on to find out.

Hardware and design

The Maxx looks like original Droid RAZR would if it made a trip through a maze of funhouse mirrors. Realistically, the two are complete twinners in every way but one: the Maxx measures 8.99mm at its thinnest point, while the RAZR's much slimmer at 7.1mm thick. In reality, a difference of 1.9mm doesn't seem to be that much -- and we agree. But in the mobile world, however, it's the thinnest devices that reign supreme and ultimately earn ultimate bragging rights.

The Maxx cuts a skinnier profile than the iPhone 4S and Galaxy Nexus on Verizon.

The Maxx isn't looking to win that title, but it still shouldn't be considered bulky by any means. After all, at its thinnest, it cuts a skinnier profile than the 9.3mm-thick iPhone 4S and the 9.47mm Galaxy Nexus on Verizon. Granted, the Maxx still sports the same 10.6mm-thick hump as you'll find on the original RAZR's back cover, though this time around, the slope running up from its thinner end is less pronounced. And frankly, we don't mind the dimensions one bit. We understand that thin is in, but the heft makes for a much more comfortable grip.

The Maxx is also a smidge heavier than its 4.48-ounce (127g) predecessor, tipping the scales at 5.11 ounces (145g). Again, this is definitely manageable and still bests the Galaxy Nexus. This begs the question, though: why does it matter that this phone is slimmer and lighter than Sammy's flagship ICS device? Because the entire reason the Maxx exists is to accommodate that mammoth 3,300mAh battery built inside to deliver superb battery life. We'll do a deep dive into the performance later, but the fact that the thicker and heavier Nexus uses a smaller power pack goes to show that there is no more excuse for poor performance in this category. If Motorola can push out stellar results in such a thin profile, why can't HTC or Samsung?

Let's not overlook one key factor here, which is the lack of a user-removable battery. Certainly Motorola had to make a few concessions in order to cram more stuff into less space, and a battery cover missed the cut. With such a lengthy talk time, most people won't blink an eye at this, and we feel the same way. We had plenty of concern with the first RAZR, since we knew enough people would find a genuine need for an extended battery, but being stuck with such a large juicepack on the Maxx won't be quite as frustrating for heavy users.

Aside from the larger battery and plumper profile, the Maxx has the same specs and design as the original RAZR. Leave that out of the equation and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the two of them. The ports are all in the same place, the lackluster PenTile qHD display is left unimproved, the firmware and cameras remain unchanged and the hardware itself is still fashioned out of tough materials like Kevlar and Gorilla Glass. To learn all the fine details about what makes the two RAZRs tick, check out our review on the original version.

It's a slap in the face to power users that bought the RAZR but would've waited for the Maxx had they known it was coming.

This feels like a slap in the face to power users that purchased the original Droid RAZR during the holidays but would've waited for the Maxx had they known it was coming in two months. The situation isn't dissimilar to the ruckus ATT caused by announcing three versions of the Samsung Galaxy S II -- the GSII, Skyrocket and Skyrocket HD -- within a span of four months. On one hand, we can definitely and relate to the frustration. On the other, such rapid turnover has turned into standard practice in the US, a cautionary tale to keep in mind when buying a phone. Will this handset serve your needs, regardless of what may come to market over the next 18 to 24 months?

We suppose it could have been worse for heavy-hitting RAZR owners if Moto and Verizon made improvements to other components as well, but that's exactly what the two companies should've done. More specifically, we were disappointed that the qHD display was left untouched, and would've enjoyed seeing a 720p HD panel get tossed in to help the Maxx match wits against the Galaxy Nexus.

Battery life

Two words: holy smokes. We took the phone off the charger at 8:30 AM, began our standard video rundown test that consists of an endless video loop while connected to 3G, walked away and waited. And waited. And continued waiting until 1 AM the following morning. That's right -- the Maxx lasted 16.5 hours playing the same video over and over before giving up the ghost. Running the same test on the original Droid RAZR yielded nine hours of battery life, which is respectable, though nowhere near this impressive. We charged up the Maxx again, used it moderately for a full day and a half and the phone was still at 40 percent. The next morning we awoke to find the Maxx was still sitting pretty at 20 percent. Had we left Smart Actions turned on, it likely would have saved us even more juice. In other words, it lasted a solid two days with moderate use before it cried out for another charge. We'll update with more results as they come, as LTE tests are still in progress.

The Maxx lasted 16.5 hours on our video rundown test, and a solid two days with moderate use.

We expected the Droid RAZR Maxx's 3,300mAh battery to last us a long time, and we were aware that the talk time for the phone is rated at 21 hours. But interestingly enough, despite the fact that the battery life didn't last as long as advertised, we still found ourselves in awe, wondering where this phone had been our whole lives.

Camera

As with the Droid RAZR, the Maxx sports an eight megapixel rear shooter and 1.3MP front-facing camera. As mentioned before, the sensors are identical to the previous phone, and as such don't expect to see many different results here. Colors are still muted in direct sunlight, it struggles in low-light situations and indoor images are once again a bit noisy. We were pleased to see only a limited amount of shutter lag, thanks to the phone's continuous autofocus feature. Panorama shots were hit-or-miss, with nearly a half of our images not even merging together without looking blurry or disjointed.

As ever, the 1080p video capture is above average. Granted, we still experienced a little bit of compression, but everything was crisp and the movies we made were perfectly fluid. The camcorder is set to 720p by default, so you'll need to go in and manually switch it up the first time. However, when we used the lower resolution we were still pleased with the results.

Software

We won't dive into a whole lot of detail here, because frankly there isn't much to give this time around that wouldn't be directly copying our review of the original Droid RAZR. Why? Because the two phones run virtually the same ROM, build and skin. Using the RAZR and the Maxx side-by-side, we came to an interesting realization: nothing about its firmware is different from its mentor. There is no new firmware build, no nifty tricks added in for the heck of it and no improved specs. When we mentioned earlier that the Maxx really is the OG RAZR with an extended battery built inside, we were speaking quite literally.

Wrap-up

The Droid RAZR Maxx may deliver a lifetime of mammoth proportions, but we can't help but have mixed feelings. Why? As too often is the case (the Samsung Skyrocket series on ATT comes to mind), Motorola and Verizon are hard at work pushing too many RAZR devices at once, and early adopters are left as the victims. We're sure there were a few people that purchased the original phone because they were bedazzled by its incredibly thin profile, but how many owners would much rather have a device that's still very reasonably svelte and offers astronomically superb battery life?

How many of us would love to have a device that's reasonably svelte and still offers superb battery life?

Power users who need to have the longest lifetime possible will have no choice but to pick it -- a notion that's just cause for disappointment. At its worst, it's an original RAZR with a $100 extended battery pack attached. At its best, however, the Maxx is proof to every phone manufacturer that it really is possible to make a slender (and absolutely stunning) device that can actually survive more than a full days' worth of heavy use. So what does the Maxx really offer to the rest of the mobile community? A sense of optimism.

Edgar Alvarez contributed to this review.

Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/31/motorola-droid-razr-maxx-review/

FurniGadget: N+ew freezes your e-waste into a stool

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AR goggles take crime scene technology to CSI: Miami level

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Steam mobile beta now open to all, still of questionable utility

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Toshiba announces Q3 earnings: revenues down, posts $139 million loss

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Amazon announces Q4 2011 results: sales jump to $17.43 billion, but profits drop 58 percent

Amazon.com Announces Fourth Quarter Sales up 35% to $17.43 Billion; Kindle Device Sales Nearly Triple During the Holidays

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 31, 2012-- Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced financial results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2011.

Operating cash flow increased 12% to $3.90 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $3.50 billion for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2010. Free cash flow decreased 17% to $2.09 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $2.52 billion for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2010.

Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards totaled 468 million on December 31, 2011, compared with 465 million a year ago.

Net sales increased 35% to $17.43 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $12.95 billion in fourth quarter 2010. Excluding the $101 million favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales would have grown 34% compared with fourth quarter 2010.

Operating income was $260 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $474 million in fourth quarter 2010. The favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter on operating income was $5 million.

Net income decreased 58% to $177 million in the fourth quarter, or $0.38 per diluted share, compared with net income of $416 million, or $0.91 per diluted share, in fourth quarter 2010.

"We are grateful to the millions of customers who purchased the Kindle Fire and Kindle e-reader devices this holiday season, making Kindle our bestselling product across both the U.S. and Europe," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "Our millions of third-party sellers had a tremendous holiday season with 65% unit growth and now represent 36% of total units sold."

Full Year 2011

Net sales increased 41% to $48.08 billion, compared with $34.20 billion in 2010. Excluding the $1.09 billion favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year, net sales would have grown 37% compared with 2010.

Operating income decreased 39% to $862 million, compared with $1.41 billion in 2010. The favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year on operating income was $53 million.

Net income decreased 45% to $631 million in 2011, or $1.37 per diluted share, compared with net income of $1.15 billion, or $2.53 per diluted share, in 2010.

Highlights

During the nine-week holiday period ending December 31, 2011, Kindle unit sales, including both the Kindle Fire and e-reader devices, increased 177% over the same period last year.
Kindle Fire is the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 17 weeks ago.
Amazon launched Kindle Stores at Amazon.it and Amazon.es. Kindle moved to the top of the bestseller list on launch day in both countries and held the top spot this holiday season. The new Kindle was also the bestselling product on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and Amazon.fr.
Amazon.com announced the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, a benefit of Prime membership that offers over 80,000 books to borrow for free – including over 100 current and former New York Times bestsellers – as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates.
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) announced KDP Select, an annual fund of at least $6 million dedicated to independent authors and publishers who participate in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. In December alone, customers borrowed 295,000 KDP Select titles, and KDP Select has helped grow the total library selection of books by over 16X.
Amazon continued to expand its catalog of title offerings for Prime Instant Video, announcing licensing agreements with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, which added the popular FOX and FX television shows Glee and Sons of Anarchy, and Disney-ABC Television, which added popular television shows including Lost and Grey's Anatomy. These deals bring the total number of Prime Instant Videos to more than 13,000 movies and TV shows from partners such as CBS, Fox, NBCUniversal, Sony, Warner Bros., PBS, ABC-Disney and many more.
The number of videos purchased or rented from Amazon Instant Video and the number of Amazon Instant Video customers both more than doubled year-over-year in the fourth quarter. In addition, the number of Prime Instant Video streams increased nearly 300% in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter.
Amazon Appstore for Android customers nearly tripled in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter. In addition, customers downloaded more apps from the Amazon Appstore during the fourth quarter than they had during all previous quarters combined.
North America segment sales, representing the Company's U.S. and Canadian sites, were $9.90 billion, up 37% from fourth quarter 2010.
International segment sales, representing the Company's U.K., German, Japanese, French, Chinese, Italian and Spanish sites, were $7.53 billion, up 31% from fourth quarter 2010. Excluding the favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 29%.
Worldwide Media sales grew 15% to $6.01 billion. Excluding the favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 14%.
Worldwide Electronics and Other General Merchandise sales grew 48% to $10.91 billion. Excluding the favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 47%.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the launch of its new South America (Sao Paulo) Region and U.S. West (Oregon) Region, bringing the total to eight geographic regions worldwide to which the company has deployed its global cloud computing services.
AWS announced the launch of Amazon DynamoDB, a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides extremely fast and predictable performance with seamless scalability. With a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, customers can launch a new Amazon DynamoDB database table, scale up or down their request capacity for the table without downtime or performance degradation, and gain visibility into resource utilization and performance metrics.
AWS announced that customers can now run their Microsoft Windows Server applications within the AWS Free Usage Tier – a program designed to help new AWS customers get started in the cloud. Developers and businesses with Windows Server applications can take advantage of 750 hours of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Micro Instance usage per month, at no charge for a one-year period.
Financial Guidance

The following forward-looking statements reflect Amazon.com's expectations as of January 31, 2012. Our results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, such as fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and consumer spending, world events, the rate of growth of the Internet and online commerce and the various factors detailed below.

First Quarter 2012 Guidance

Net sales are expected to be between $12.0 billion and $13.4 billion, or to grow between 22% and 36% compared with first quarter 2011.
Operating income (loss) is expected to be between $(200) million and $100 million, or between 162% decline and 69% decline compared with first quarter 2011.
This guidance includes approximately $200 million for stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets, and it assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions or investments are concluded and that there are no further revisions to stock-based compensation estimates.
A conference call will be webcast live today at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET, and will be available for at least three months at www.amazon.com/ir. This call will contain forward-looking statements and other material information regarding the Company's financial and operating results.

These forward-looking statements are inherently difficult to predict. Actual results could differ materially for a variety of reasons, including, in addition to the factors discussed above, the amount that Amazon.com invests in new business opportunities and the timing of those investments, the mix of products sold to customers, the mix of net sales derived from products as compared with services, the extent to which we owe income taxes, competition, management of growth, potential fluctuations in operating results, international growth and expansion, the outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, risks of inventory management, seasonality, the degree to which the Company enters into, maintains and develops commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, and risks of fulfillment throughput and productivity. Other risks and uncertainties include, among others, risks related to new products, services and technologies, system interruptions, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. In addition, the current global economic climate amplifies many of these risks. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Our investor relations website is www.amazon.com/ir and we encourage investors to use it as a way of easily finding information about us. We promptly make available on this website, free of charge, the reports that we file or furnish with the SEC, corporate governance information (including our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics), and select press releases and social media postings.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics Computers; Home Garden; Toys, Kids Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes Jewelry; Health Beauty; Sports Outdoors; and Tools, Auto Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. The new latest generation Kindle is the lightest, most compact Kindle ever and features the same 6-inch, most advanced electronic ink display that reads like real paper even in bright sunlight. Kindle Touch is a new addition to the Kindle family with an easy-to-use touch screen that makes it easier than ever to turn pages, search, shop, and take notes – still with all the benefits of the most advanced electronic ink display. Kindle Touch 3G is the top of the line e-reader and offers the same new design and features of Kindle Touch, with the unparalleled added convenience of free 3G. Kindle Fire is the Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games and web browsing with all the content, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync, Amazon Silk (Amazon's new revolutionary cloud-accelerated web browser), vibrant color touch screen, and powerful dual-core processor.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.it, and www.amazon.es. As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/31/amazon-announces-q4-2011-results-sales-jump-to-17-43-billion/

Humble Bundle expands to Android with World of Goo, Anomaly and more

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Apple updates Airport stations and Time Capsule, brings bug fixes and iCloud support

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Boxee desktop app being removed from servers tonight, get it while you can

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