Fast talker
Street View and Google Earth both ran as quickly on the Defy as on the HTC Desire HD I looked at earlier in the month and 720p Xvid/DivX video playback was as fluid as anyone could wish for using vPlayer. Even having multiple apps running didn't slow things down.
DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot options
A slightly slower chip does pay dividends on the power front though. Combined with the fair sized capacity battery I was able to get the best part of two days from a charge once the battery had settled down.
Quadrant speed tests
There is nothing much to report on the snapper front. The front facing camera is remarkable only by its absence and the rear facing 5Mp unit is nothing more than we've all seen before on any one of a dozen other Android phones. It comes with auto-focus, a single LED light, a reasonably quick turn-around time and turns in a decent performance overall.
Next page: Sonic boon
COMMENTS
MotoFail
2.1?
"Motorola says it has plans to upgrade the Defy to 2.2 in the admittedly slightly vague sounding "Q2""
"Has plans" my arse.
Until the device prompts you to download the update it's all wind and piss.
Speaking from bitter experience with Android-powered Motorola devices.
Motorola 'updates' again
I'm afraid it's the same old Motorola story again, ship with an ancient version of the OS and promise an update at some unspecified time in the future which never arrives.
I'm a DEXT owner you see, and that's what they did for us.
It's a nice phone to be sure, but as a Motorola owner I'd say only buy it if you're going to be happy with the OS that'll be on it at purchase because their upgrade promises aren't worth the screen pixels that make them up.
Or make it easy for yourself and buy your Android phone from someone else.
I wouldn't hold my breath..
..for an update. Motorola builds excellent hardware, but they are either uncapable or unwilling to support their devices with software upgrades once they've sold them.
My theory is that they believe people will go and buy a new phone if they don't upgrade. Which is actually true - I will buy a new phone, just not from Motorola. Ever again.
Froyo on the Milestone
Yeah, I got bored of waiting and finally installed Cyanogenmod. There's quite f ew hoops to jump through, though, thanks to Motorola being dicks about the boot partition: but RSD lite 4.9 will allow you to install a vulnerable bootloader, followed by OpenRecovery 1.46 (installed from /sdcard/update.zip), which you then use immediately (as a reboot will cause the device to copy back the original bootloader) to install another zip of the cyanogenmod ROM.
prepared to take Motorola at its word???
The only slight disappointment is the absence of Froyo but I'm prepared to take Motorola at its word that an update will arrive before June 30th...
They've been promising to update the Motorola Milestone to 2.2 for several 'quarters' now. After repeatedly failing to deliver in 2010 they now claim 'early Q1 2011' - which we are already a third of the way through... I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for an update on any Motorola phone. If Motorola can't update the Milestone - which is vanilla Android - what hope does the Defy have with MotoBlur on top?
