About the Motorola Devour

 

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The Devour. Sounds like a big dinosaur ready to eat anything that's in front when it becomes hungry. But I'm afraid it's not; this little phone here is no where near devouring Motorola's flagship product, or any of the so called "Superphones". However, Moto's clever moves in the last weeks have made this phone gather a lot of attention. And since many new Android phones will be similar in hardware, and Motorola is the second most important Android manufacturer, we feel the need to try and look a bit deeper into this device.

From zero, to Hero

That's right. Months before the Devour was officially announced as Verizon's second entry-level Android smartphone, we all knew it as the Motorola Calgary. Like many other rumors, this one turned out to be true, in all aspects. It has a 3.1 inch capacitive display, with HVGA resolution (480x320 px), a 600Mhz processor with 256MB of RAM, and a hard-keyboard, extending Motorola's portfolio of Android phones with yet another QWERTY slider. We also get the standard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2+, A-GPS and the 3.5mm jack. But, what makes the Devour different from the consumer's point of view? This ad.

Released during the Superbowl, it was the only Android ad to be seen during the match. Maybe only Android fans recognized the phone, but that didn't stop the Devour from becoming incredibly popular. I'm sure that many people are waiting in line for the store to open and buy it, even though it's not very different from the Cliq or the upcoming Backflip (except for the network provider). But again it's all about consumer awareness, and if it becomes a success for Motorola, we'll start seeing more devices with similar marketing strategies soon.

Impressions

There's a lot to say about the Devour. It will be the first of a new lineup of Android devices, including the Motorola Quench, the HTC Legend, the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini & X10 Mini Pro or the Alcatel OT-980. All of these devices will run on a more recent version of the same Qualcomm heart which powered first generation Android devices, like the HTC Dream/G1, Magic/G2, Hero, Droid Eris, Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Cliq, the announced Backflip and others. The new devices will be branded second generation Android phones, especially since most of them will be shipping with the latest and greatest Android 2.1, and that'd perfect, if it weren't because we're still stuck on the same class of old processors, but more on that later.

By itself, the Devour should be pretty much impressive just by looking at it. It's bigger than the Droid in all measurements, including weight, and the one-piece aluminum casing makes the device very strong, leaving behind the plastic touch of other devices. There is no battery cover, which means you can't install a bigger battery with a different back cover; instead, the battery is loaded from one of the sides, just like the MicroSD card, which in turn also allows the MicroSD to be hot-swappable (you can change the card while the device is on). The keyboard, with its raised edges and its sliding mechanism has given the Devour the nickname of "new Sidekick". Many reviewers have pointed out that the keyboard is in fact an evolution of the Droid's, which by some was seen as useless because the on-screen keyboard was good enough and by others a lot better than not having a physical way of typing. Some reviewers also felt the dedicated number keys were sometimes a waste of space, since the keys near the edges were difficult to press and that extra space could've been used to make typing even more comfortable. My take? Looks like the typical stuff you can get used to with time, and I can understand why heavy keyboard users will feel tempted by the Devour after trying its keyboard and the Droid's.

What about the battery? It packs a decent 1400mAh battery, which is becoming common in powerful phones. The thing is, the Devour, which comes with Motorola's Android skin MotoBLUR (Motoblur from now onwards) seems, at a distance, thirsty on battery because of Motoblur's concept: always connected to the people around you. Most reviewers pointed out that it was fine though, being able to handle from morning to evening on a single charge with average use, just like all smartphones these days. Browsing is faster than first-gen Android devices, and reliable, since we're still using Google's browser with a makeover by Motorola. However, not all reviewers think the same of Motorola's optical trackpad, which Research in Motion is making a standard in its new BlackBerry models, leaving behind the trackball. Some felt comfortable with it, but some didn't, many times because of its lack of response, which looks like the software's fault. The camera could be a deciding point for some, not because of its 3 MP resolution (against 5 in the Droid & Droid Eris), but because it lacks autofocus and has poorly saturated colors.

What about availability? The Devour will be available in Verizon stores from mid-March, at a price of 150$ and a two-year contract, while the Droid Eris sits below at 100$, and the mighty Droid at 200$. I believe the phone to be a bit overpriced, but what's more important is that the Devour is available at Best Buy stores right now for just 100$. Good? Yes indeed, if the Droid wasn't being sold at the same price, at the same store.

Motorola's Rick Osterloh, VP of Android Software and Motoblur Services presented a demo of the Devour a couple of weeks ago, in which we can see him expose some of Motoblur's magic, the surprisingly acceptable home screen loading time, and Motorola's Phone Portal app which allows us to connect to the phone via WiFi from our computer and browse our contacts, photos, videos, etc. Have a look:

The Qualcomm MSM7627

Many new smartphones, like the Devour, are starting to carry a new processor from Qualcomm, the MSM7627, or the similar MSM7227, which packs a less powerful Graphics Processor Unit or GPU. I've read in some sites that the Devour is faster than the Droid because the latter one's CPU is clocked at only 550 Mhz whilst the Devour is clocked at 600 Mhz, and that its GPU is a lot faster than Verizon's Android flagship phone because it runs at 200 Mhz. Let's take this step by step.

The Qualcomm MSM7627 and the MSM 7227 are part of a new class of processors based on the ARM11 design, so no, it's nowhere near as fast as the Droid's ARM Cortex A8. It is true though, that it's significantly faster than the MSM7200A/MSM7201A and similar CPUs powering first generation Android phones, but I don't think it can match the Droid. What makes the these two new chips faster? A few key aspects. They have a faster dedicated modem processor for handling calls and data connections, a dedicated floating point processor which the older ARM11 designs by Qualcomm lacked, a faster Digital Signals Processor (DSP) for processing the camera & microphone inputs, and most importantly, a Level 2 (L2) cache. Although the standard ARM11 design is ready for a L2 cache, it wasn't used in Qualcomm's previous design. As a quick reminder, the cache memory sits in between the CPU and the system's memory, trying to predict which data the CPU will need from system memory, store it and give it to the CPU when it asks for it. It is very small, but just as fast as the CPU. Since the system (or main) memory is very slow in comparison to the CPU, any improvement in the time the CPU waits to get its data from main memory results in an overall improvement in system performance. Having a larger cache, the new MSM7627 and MSM 7227 chips should definitely be much faster than its predecessors, but let's not make a mistake here; these CPUs are low-end chips manufactured by Qualcomm, and if it's performance what you want, you'll still need the extra punch provided by ARM Cortex A8 CPUs. ARM11 chips are outdated not only because of processor design and raw speed, they're also old because they're going to limit what we will be able to do with our devices in the long run, since they'll suffer more with an OS full of apps, and because they'll stop being supported and thus won't be able to run new software.

If you ask "Why are these low-end chips still so popular among handset manufacturers?" The answer is quite easy. These chips are very cheap to build, and the constant improvement in manufacturing processes means the chips are becoming even cheaper, and thus help provide a higher revenue per device for both manufacturers and carriers. Devices with old hardware are not bad by themselves, but the fact that we're being sold outdated hardware in brand new and expensive smartphones is terribly frustrating. It's like going into a computer store, and seeing the latest laptops feature an Intel Core processor, when the Core 2 is already becoming old, and we're all waiting to jump into the new Core i3/i5/i7 bandwagon. For more details on the difference between ARM11 and ARM Cortex A8 CPUs, check our second issue of TechTalk here.

And what about the Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) powering the Devour? Is it really fast? Is it faster than the Droid's GPU? To be honest, I don't know. I've not been able to find out what is powering the Devour on the graphics side, all we know is that it's a 200Mhz dedicated processor, supporting the Open GL ES 2.0 specification, which should make the Devour capable of running better games than the old ARM11 powered phones. In a quick sentence, OpenGL is an open source standard software layer sitting between the apps and the graphics hardware which allows developers to make the GPU draw or render on the screen, and not  worry about making their apps being able to draw for each GPU available in the market. Like OpenGL, OpenGL ES is also a standard, but for graphics hardware in embedded devices, like our smartphones. OpenGL ES 2.0 allows the developers to have more control about what is drawn on the screen than previous versions, thereby allowing developers get more performance from the same hardware as well as add new effects and deliver better graphics. The MSM7200A/7201A chip is compatible with the older OpenGL ES 1.1 standard which, to give you an idea, was supported by the first two iPhones. What's even more sad though, is that Android is currently supporting only OpenGL ES 1.0, even though we've already got devices which support the 2.0 standard, with more devices using similar chips as the Devour (the MSM7227 also meets the Open GL ES 2.0 specification) joining the club. Hopefully, the support will arrive soon... perhaps in the next Android release?

Back to our case, the PowerVR SGX 530 by Imagination Technologies inside the Droid supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and has a clock speed between 100 and 133 Mhz. But more processor speed does not mean more performance, especially in graphics. I could not find specific info on these new chips built by Qualcomm, for this post which leaves us without material to tell how powerful is the Devour's GPU in comparison. What we do know is that the Devour's GPU is definitely more powerful and flexible than the one powering old ARM11 devices, since the Open GL ES 2.0 specification requires support for more advanced features which require more horsepower. I, for one, do not believe the Devour's GPU to be faster than the Droid's. There are many variables involved in graphics hardware performance, a lot more than in CPU performance (yes, GPUs are a lot more complex), but even if both the Devour and the Droid's GPU turned out to have similar performance out-of-the-box (this would also apply to other devices with similar hardware), then this would only prove that the Droid's GPU is in fact more powerful, since the more pixels on the screen, the harder it is for a GPU to draw the same content; since the Devour's resolution is less than half of the Droid's, with the same content, the Devour's GPU will always have less pixels to "fill", requiring less power to achieve the same performance as the Droid. A test using graphic intensive apps (like games) while measuring the frames per second (FPS) or number of times the GPU can update the screen re-drawing it from scratch at the same resolution would allow us to know how much the Devour's 200 Mhz graphics chip can push.

Some computer engineering students might ask: "If the GPU does the drawing on the screen, wouldn't these new ARM11 based phones be a lot faster in all aspects of the OS?" The answer would be yes, but I think Android is currently doing the drawing for the User Interface through software (CPU) and not through OpenGL, which in the latter case would mean the GPU. Explaining how the CPU can draw all what we see in the screen and what is GPU "accelerated" and what isn't in Android is out of the scope of this post, but it's certainly worth noting that using the GPU for all kinds of rendering is faster than using the CPU, and that it could be (if it hasn't been achieved yet) a good way of improving Android's overall system performance in devices with a dedicated graphics processor.

The last question on this section would be: "Why always the Droid?" To begin with, the Droid is the obvious comparison against the Devour, but more specifically, on the pure hardware side, the Droid sets the hardware benchmark through which we recommend Android phones, because of its Cortex A8 CPU, its reasonable memory and GPU. We've not revised Snapdragon class phones with you guys, but for now you should know that the latter ones are the fastest smartphones available today, faster than the Droid.

Motoblur, the OS & Flash

Enough talking about hardware, it's the turn of what we really see in our smartphones in a day-to-day basis, the software. After all, it doesn't really matter if the hardware's not good, if the software is exclusive enough to make up for it. So, is the latest version of Motoblur enough  to recommend our readers this device?

Let's begin. The Devour is the third announced device from Motorola running their custom Android skin, Motoblur, after the Motorola Cliq (or Dext in different countries) in T-Mobile and the ucpcoming Motorola Backflip, the first Android phone to hit AT&T. All three phones are very similar, in fact, all Android Motorola phones being sold today share the same QWERTY slider design. The Motorola Motoroi, a Droid/Milestone without a hard-keyboard, will bring Motoblur to Android 2.x around March. Until the Devour though, Motoblur handsets were powered by Android 1.5, and the Devour gets the update to 1.6, which improves the performance over 1.5 and adds significant features like the new Android Market.

Even though the Devour is still in Android 1.x, it was an interesting surprise to know that we can use Google Navigation (it requires a manual install from Market), which was exclusive to Android 2.x, with voice recognition, although not from Google. This leaves Verizon's VZ Navigator, which comes pre-installed, rather useless. The Devour also has access to the latest Google Maps app from the Market, which comes with Google Buzz integration.

About Motoblur, this Android skin makes changes over the stock Android experience, but not as many as the other major Android skin, HTC's Sense UI. Motoblur allows us to focus on all of our social networks through its three home screen widgets, and it allows us to see them from a single stream of messages, independently of the service. For example, the Happenings widget, allows us to see what our friends are saying in Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and other networks within the same list. We can also update our status in all of our social networks at once, or choose in which one of them. Currently, it supports a few of the most important  social networks, but Motorola claims it's easy for them to add more, so Motoblur users can expect to see new  available soon. Motoblur also adds two home screens, for a total of five, and an indicator at the top, below the notifications bar, for navigation between them. At the bottom, Motoblur adds two buttons next to the app drawer, dialer and contacts, which are very handy, especially in devices without a dedicated call button (long-press is a shortcut for the dialer in the HTC Magic, for example). Motoblur also adds important features for corporate users, like support for Exchange. and the Motoblur account. With this account, our contacts, emails, logins, and social-network messages are backed up in the cloud, and Motorola also allows us to track our phone remotely, and what's more, erase (or wipe) its contents if necessary. Supposing our device was stolen, we could wipe it from our web browser, and if we recovered it or bought another Motoblur device, we could load our account, and keep going as if nothing's happened. Of course, we also have the Motorola Phone Portal app, which we told you earlier about. Motoblur also allows users to stop being connected if they wanted to, by simply dragging all the widgets to the trash icon, leaving a home screen close to the stock Android experience. Lastly, and this is important for potential buyers, Motorola has confirmed the Devour will be upgraded to Android 2.1.

Time to talk about Flash support. Motoblur, like HTC's Sense UI, brings us Flash Lite, which is not a complete version, but it allows us to enjoy a part of Adobe's magic in our phones. However, it is not the same as the full Flash 10.x player we've been waiting to arrive for our Android handsets, which is the same version running in our desktop computers. It is an optimized version of Flash 8 which does not take advantage of the latest improvements in hardware for handheld devices like our smartphones. Adobe recently announced that a CPU supporting the ARMv7 instruction set is required for the mobile Flash 10.1 player which, in other words, means an ARM Cortex A8 based CPU is required. This leaves not only the Devour without the full Flash 10.1 player, but also many other ARM11 devices that are stated to be released throughout the first half of the year.

All in all, Motorola's Android User Experience (UX) Motoblur, is very, very sleek. It really gets us connected to our most important social networks without doing much, and every time we turn on the device from standby, we start catching up with all of our different feeds. Nevertheless, the important matter is, would I recommend the Devour because of Motoblur? No. Motoblur is not wrong, it's Motorola's take on Android, and people who don't want to be always connected or people who don't like social networks much might not like it at all, but either way, it builds Motorola as a firm, it gives the company an image and it helps set its character, which is clearly saying "smartphones should allow you to know what's going on around you, without effort", like Palm and it's webOS. But given the fact that Android 2.x devices have social integration features out-of-the-box, and that you can get backup of contacts, SMS and even remote wipe with apps like WaveSecure, I can't recommend the Devour only because of Motorola's work on the software side.

Closing thoughts

It's not that I don't like the Devour, because I do. Just look at it; full of aluminum and rubber, hard like very few devices, heavy (which usually means expensive or premium),... All is great, until its turned around, and we get to look at its face; a small 3.1 inch screen in the middle, three buttons, a small LED, an optical trackpad and the keyboard underneath the screen. That's it? Yes, that's pretty much what there is in here. It's bigger and heavier than the Droid, and it's even being sold at the same price right now, but they're in very different leagues; one's at the top of the chain, whilst the other isn't.

But maybe the Devour is not meant to be the top of the tops, maybe it's just meant to be Motorola's stand in Verizon with Motoblur, so that the Droid Eris doesn't take the entry-level Android crown for itself without a fight. Even so, we can't simply ignore Best Buy's offer, and this is really a bummer. If the Devour were to be sold at 50$ or less, then It'd be hard to not foresee its success since, after all, Motorola's trying to make the phone an icon (which is good, even if they couldn't do better than appeal to a sex-symbol), but until mid-March, when only Verizon can sell this phone, I see less customers acquiring it. Still, when Verizon sells it at 150$ with a two-year contract, I see it overpriced against the Droid. I believe the phone is expensive to make, but they should've put in a bit more juice in it before trying to sell it at these prices. 

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not trying to discourage Motorola, because they've been doing a great job reinventing themselves, first with the Droid and now with the Devour, and we really hope there's a lot more innovation to come from them throughout this year. I'd even go as far as saying that given the choice, I'd choose a Droid over HTC's Nexus One, for reasons I'll cover soon, but I just wish the Devour shined more out of the pack by itself. Maybe, with a 3.5" screen and a Cortex A8 class CPU (even if it's not fast), the Devour wouldn't be just another second-gen Android device pulled to cunsumer awareness by Motorola's marketing campaign, but by its own accomplishments.

However, the world is not only made up of people who, like me, consider hardware specs to be very important, and that's where the Devour makes sense; a user who is not worried about how fast his device will be in the long-term, who'll not look at the latest phones, and who just wants an easy smartphone which is comfortable for all kinds of messaging should definitely get this phone if the Droid's keyboard is not good enough for them, but a consumer who wants an Android smartphone to enjoy the latest features, the latest apps, and enjoy a playing around with the OS without lag and occasional hiccups after installing tons of apps, should not get this phone. 

References:
http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.Motorola_DEVOUR_US-EN.alt
http://www.slashgear.com/motorola-devour-review-2675792/
http://androidandme.com/2010/02/news/review-roundup-verizon-motorola-devour/
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/02/25/review-motorola-devour/
http://phandroid.com/2010/02/25/motorola-devour-review/
http://gizmodo.com/5479482/motorola-devour-review-what-have-you-done-to-my-droid
http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=12500
http://www.slashgear.com/motorola-devour-review-2675792/
http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/pr_moto_devour
http://blog.7touchgroup.com/tag/qualcomm-msm7627/
http://www.datasheetpro.com/268119_download_MSM7200A_datasheet.html
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/5e93f608ddaa10b1/f66539b7182d82b6
http://www.design-reuse.com/news/14978/imagination-reveals-extended-powervr-sgx-graphics-video-core-family.html
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/news/711
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/motorola-motoroi-hands-on-with-video/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash_Lite
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/26/flash-10-1-snubbing-non-armv7-android-devices-too/