Verizon has revamped its Droid line of Android Smartphones over the last few months. We already looked at the large Droid X [tracking page][review] and today we’re going to walk you through the latest of the three, the Droid 2.
Hardware
As usual, we’re going to start with a spec rundown and a hardware tour. Check out the Droid 2 tracking page for more detailed info and don’t forget about the Droid 2 gallery which includes shots that you won’t find in our review.
Specs
- Android 2.2
- TI OMAP 3 CPU @ 1GHz
- 512MB of RAM
- 8GB inbuilt storage (6.5GB user-accessible)
- Included 8GB MicroSD card (slot accepts up to 32GB)
- 3.7 inch capacitive touchscreen @ 854×480
- 5MP camera (capable of up to 720×480 video recording)
Hardware Tour
I have a Motorola Droid 1 and was hoping for the Droid 2 to have better Adobe Flash support. I even resorted to overclocking it to 1.1 GHz and video playback performance on the non-mobile optimized videos were just a little better.
If only there was something better than Flash. HTML5 doesn’t support encryption (DRM and all that) so most of the sites I visit to watch videos won’t be using HTML5 anytime soon.
Hopefully Flash becomes more resource efficient (not something Adobe is famous for) and/or these future faster ARM chipsets like dual core Cortex-A9 will be powerful enough for Flash.
For me, performance was probably less of an issue than the lack of usable controls/interfaces, but it is incredibly annoying that a YouTube video may playback just fine one minute, then is suddenly start running terribly (same video) with no explanation.