Hands on with the Motorola Atrix and Laptop Dock

By Scott Schaen on January 7, 2011

sony Hands on with the Motorola Atrix and Laptop Dock

Motorola has just announced a very interesting addition to their Android smartphone line, the Motorola Atrix. The Atrix is a powerhouse of a phone, but that’s not why it’s particular interesting.

The Motorola Atrix has the ability to lend it’s innards to an ultra-thin laptop dock. This dummy netbook, of sorts, is a charging dock for the Atrix that sports a beautiful large display, a laptop keyboard, and a battery. There is no processor or ram, it uses the Motorola’s Atrix internals to power it. With the Atrix docked, the user can enjoy a full laptop experience, with a mouse, full version of Firefox, an Apple-like dock, and multitasking with resizable windows. It’s all running off of the Atrix phone with Android 2.2.

One example the Motorola rep used was that you can go on a long flight and watch two full length movies on the laptop dock using the Atrix and its processor. Once you’re done watching you will have a fully charged phone.

The Motorola Atrix is a 4G phone on the AT&T network (US) and packs a dual core 1GHz processor and a full gigabyte of ram. It is a powerhouse indeed.

Motorola ATRIX 4G
Talk and Standby Time¹	Usage Time/Talk Time: 3G = 9 hrs; GSM = 8.8 hrs. Standby Time: 3G = 250 hrs; GSM = 264 hrs
Bands/Modes	WCDMA 850/1900/2100, GSM 850/900/1900/1800
Weight	135g
Dimensions	63.50 wide x 117.75 long x 10.95 thin
OS	Android 2.2 – upgrade to 2.3 is planned for later this year
Processor	2 processor cores running at 1GHz each
Battery	1930.00 mAh
Connectivity	3.5mm, micro USB 2.0 HS, Corporate Sync, BOTA, Wi-Fi 2.4GHz & 5GHz 802.11b/g/n Bluetooth2 2.1 EDR
Display	4.0” qHD (Quarter High Definition) (960 x 540)
Messaging/Web/Apps	MMS, SMS, Email (Corporate Sync, Google Mail, POP3/IMAP embedded, Push Email)
Audio	AAC, AAC+, AAC+ Enhanced, AMR NB, MP3, WMA v10
Video	HD 1080 p capable. Capture – 720p MPEG4 and H.264 at 30 fps. (1080p will be supported via SW upgrade post-launch). Playback – 1080p MPEG4, H.264, WMV, Xvid at 30 fps. (Playback through HDMI is 720p at launch and will be upgraded to 1080p via SW upgrade post-launch). Streaming – VGA in MPEG4, H.264, H.263 at 30 fps
Camera	5 MP AF, Digital Zoom with LED Flash , 2nd VGA imager for video chat self image capture
Storage	16GB on board – supports up to 32GB microSD (Total 48GB)
Memory	1GB LP DDR2 RAM
Form Factor	Touch screen
Sensors	Accelerometer, Ambient Light, Proximity
Antenna	Internal
Address Book/Calendar	MOTOBLUR^TM aggregates Facebook®, MySpace, Twitter^TMand Gmail^TM messages and contacts as well as syncs and merges your work contacts, email and calendar
Browsers	Android Web Kit with Adobe® Flash® Player, Mozilla 3.6.13 in Webtop Application
Location Services	eCompass, aGPS with Google Maps™, Google Latitude™, Google Maps Street View