Droid Razr Maxx HD - any chance for a review at AT?

[dguy6789]

The idea behind that feature is it is supposed to save battery life by having the wifi radio not drain battery when the phone is in your pocket all day thus saving you from having to turn WiFi on and off manually. This is something iOS and WP have by default on also. Of course predictably having WiFi turn off when your screen turns off can cause some issues sometimes. In a phone like the Razr HD battery life is so excessive that it doesn't really matter if WiFi ever sleeps or not so set it however.

 

[podspi]

I personally have found that my battery life is better on WiFi than it is on 3G or 4G. The phone is still syncing in the background, regardless of where it is placed.

Is this just a quirk with my or older phones (Droid 4, same effect with a Bionic though), or what?

 

[jacktesterson]

I charge my Razr V (almost same as Droid Razr, GSM version of it) almost every night.

The Maxx version has twice the battery size.

So I think your looking at charging every 2 days with moderate use.

EDIT - missed that you have the HD version. Nevermind.

 

[jacktesterson]

I personally have found that my battery life is better on WiFi than it is on 3G or 4G. The phone is still syncing in the background, regardless of where it is placed.

Is this just a quirk with my or older phones (Droid 4, same effect with a Bionic though), or what?

My phone is WAY better on Wifi than 34/4G with my Razr V, in my experience.

 

[Eug]

Jelly Bean for the Canadian RAZR HDs is supposedly coming next month.

 

[Bateluer]

Jelly Bean for the Canadian RAZR HDs is supposedly coming next month.

Good for Motorola. Little late, but not obscenely so.

 

[Eug]

Just a heads up for the Canadians: The Jelly Bean update for the RAZR HD actually came out today.

 

[Bateluer]

Just a heads up for the Canadians: The Jelly Bean update for the RAZR HD actually came out today.

I start bitching in February for a 4.2.x update.

 

[Eug]

Jelly Bean update notification wall of text:

Now that I finally have 4.1.2, and now that it's February, we can start bitching for 4.2.

It is a bit smoother, although still not iOS on dual-core smooth. Some fonts and icons have changed.

 

[Eug]

Cool. The home screen and lock screen both autorotate to landscape mode in 4.1.2, when you attach an HDMI monitor. On 4.0.4, the home screen was locked to portrait mode, which was really irritating since all TVs are always in landscape mode.

However, while 720p works with my 720p 42" TV, it's a no-go with my extra unused Samsung monitor. The monitor downscales everything to 640x480. I guess I'll try to find a 720p-compatible monitor somewhere. Also, for video playback it seems that the phone struggles with certain material when an HDMI monitor is attached.

I'll have to test some more before I consider buying the RAZR HD universal media toolkit.

 

[Eug]

Nope I was wrong. It seems to be outputting 1080p via HDMI. I guess that explains why it is so choppy. The GPU probably just can't support displaying both 1080p and 720p simultaneously this way. There are no HDMI settings for HDMI output either. Quite frankly, this effectively makes the HDMI output useless to me. Why include the feature and make a media dock for it if it can't play media? I guess the good news is that I won't be spending $50 on a media dock.

I guess it works OK as a web surfer but regardless, you would be better off with 720p, for a few reasons.

1. The 1080p isn't true 1080p. It is 720p upscaled. Outputting 720p might be less stress on the CPU/GPU.

2. Many older TVs can't even take 1080p inputs. With 1080p you get a blank screen. They only take 720p and 1080i. Granted nearly all new TVs understand 1080p, but 720p would be most compatible and it's the phone's native resolution anyway.

3. If a computer monitor has less than 1080p resolution, it likely won't accept a 1080p signal. Many of these will accept a 720p resolution though.

4. It is impossible to get 1:1 pixel mapping for best text clarity. Since it outputs 720p upscaled to 1080p, text will always be slightly blurry, even on a 720p monitor.