Accessorize
The Lapdock will set you back £300 though, the same as you’d pay for a cheap netbook, and as for the others: multimedia dock and remote (£76), keyboard, £75), standard dock (£33). Currently, Orange is throwing in a ‘Work and Play’ kit with keyboard (but not screen), multimedia dock, wireless mouse and remote for existing customers who upgrade to the Atrix.
Multimedia dock interfacing
Browsing is a breeze and fast too, both by 3G and Wi-Fi. In the standard Android browser pages render well, there’s support for Flash video and the pinch to zoom function makes navigation easy. The media player is a bit more than the standard Android model, with a few tweaks from Motorola, including options to search for related videos online, song ID and the ability to display lyrics where available.
Handset micro USB and docking connections
There’s also TuneWiki networking options to give you inspiration from what others are listening to and to share your tastes. The supplied headphones are surprisingly good quality too, but there’s no FM radio on board.
iTunes doppelgänger: Motorola's Media Link sync application
Click for a larger image
Syncing is achieved with Motorola’s iTunes-esque Media Link and while there’s 16GB of onboard storage and you can boost this by a further 32GB with a microSD card.
Next page: Future calling?
COMMENTS
Screwed it up...
1) Its Motorola
2) Locked down boot loader
3) Cripled Ubuntu
4) Proprietary dock
Try again, and do it right:
1) Full Ubuntu, on HDMI out, without special connector
2) Bluetooth keyboard and mouse
3) Unlocked bootloader, modder friendly
4) Updates
5) No proprietary connector, dock
Galaxy S2? You mean this one?
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/05/18/review_samsung_galaxy_s_2_android_smartphone/
Can't work who Moto think the market for this is.....
The lapdock is £300 so it's not a casual purchase or one for anyone that's price sensitive. Most owners change their phone inside 2 years and I see no commitment from Motorola that this is an Apple dock type 'standard' yet that will work with all their phones (or even just an ongoing product line) so there's a high risk you have a £300 paperweight in 2 year's time*.
If you're NOT price sensitive then you'd just buy a Macbook Air - a fully functional computer that's actually *lighter* than the MotoDock and has a better battery life as well. Either way you need a tethering connection and your documents are presumably in the cloud anyway.
If you *are* price sensitive you'd buy either a netbook (£300 buys a decent enough Dell or Toshiba) or spend a bit £100 more and get an iPad. No bigger or heavier than the MotoDock
and give a decent battery life. Neither will be a worthless paperweight when you change your phone.
Moto can give the thing away, which might make you choose this phone over another, but surely that just cuts into their already slim margins in the Android phone market. Even if they did give me one for free how often am I actually going to choose to carry it over a proper laptop or fondleslab?
It's really no different to the old folding Targus keyboards for the Palm. Nice idea but rarely actually useful and redundant and worthless when the next gen Palm launched.
RE: Don't make me laugh
tru dat. i'm still on 2.1 with my Defy. we were promised an update to 2.2 about 6 months ago.
Don't make me laugh
an update to 2.3 will be coming later this year???? Yeah, right. This is Motorola we're talking about. If you aren't happy with what is on the phone, don't buy it. Motorola never deliver updates.
