Motorola Droid Turbo review

Droid. It's the name that arguably kicked off Android's popularityback in 2009 and one we've still yet to completely shake as an inaccurate descriptor of just about every phone running Android. Verizon's marketing machinery is strong, but has thankfully toned back in the last two years to match Motorola's new direction.
Motorola now has an exclusive dealto provide Verizon with a steady stream of "Droid" branded devices for the foreseeable future, and since 2013 it has been bringing its new "less is more" mantra from the Moto X seriesover to the Droid line. The Motorola Droid Turbo is the 2014 flagship from this Verizon/Motorola tie-up, and the best way to describe it is as a "super" version of the 2014 Moto X.
No spec has gone un-bumped, and no design decision was made without considering how it would exude the "Droid" brand for Verizon. This is a Droid through and through, and one that could easily be considered as the best choice on Verizon today.
Read on for our full review of the Verizon Motorola Droid Turbo.
About this review
We're writing this review after a week of using the Droid Turbo as our primary device, in the greater Seattle area with excellent Verizon LTE coverage. For the majority of the review we also had an LG G Watchconnected to the phone via Bluetooth. We have the red metallized glass model with 32GB of internal storage. The software version of our review unit is 21.21.15, and we received no software updates during the review.
Droid Turbo
Hands-on
Hardware
Display + Sound
Software
Performance
Cameras
Battery life
The Bottom Line
Comments
Droid Turbo video walkthrough
Droid Turbo hardware
Big. Beefy. Bold.
The Moto X is somewhat reserved, beautiful and subtly powerful. Conversely, the Droid Turbo (as the name would suggest) is bold, brash, a little edgy and packed full of hardware muscle. It takes a relatively similar form factor to its predecessors — the Droid Ultraand Droid Maxx— as well as design cues from the Moto X and wraps it in kevlar, along with a new ballistic nylon or metallized glass finish. And yes, it comes in screaming Verizon red.
The Turbo is furnished in kevlar, ballistic nylon or metallized glass — and yes, it comes in screaming Verizon red.
There's no way to look at the Droid Turbo and not know what carrier it's from or what manufacturer makes it (particularly with this red model I have) — this is an iconic smartphone design, for better or worse.
Most of the device is surrounded in a single solid back plate, which wraps around the sides and "chin" of the phone, and meets a shiny plastic rim that connects to the display glass on the front. The edges are broken only on the right side for a textured power button and volume rocker, the latter of which doubles as a Nano SIM tray.
My review unit is the "metallized glass" coated option which is semi-glossy and has far less texture than the "ballistic nylon" one — I still found it to be grippy enough for use, though. A simple camera pod on the back housing the 21MP sensor is surrounded by two LED flashes (but not in a ring flash style) and a textured Motorola logo. Verizon and Droid logos round out the look at the bottom of the back.
Around the front, there's a large single speaker at the top of the Turbo that functions as both the earpiece for calls and loudspeaker for any non-headphone media playback. That's flanked by somewhat-controversial capacitive navigation keys at the bottom of the device, laid out and designed in the old Android 4.xstyle. This means you always have access to the full 5.2-inch display, however they can become a bit intrusive since they'realwaysactive and touchable, even when playing games or full-screen media.
Even with those capacitive keys and large speaker, the bezels on the Turbo are quite small, though not mid-blowingly small like the LG G3's. They help the phone stay right on the edge of one-handed usability, though I still found myself shuffling it in my hand for some cross-device thumb reaching.
Say what you want about the tough and intense design of the Droid line, the Droid Turbo is actually really well built and can hold its own against rival flagship hardware. It's brash, bold and tough, but it feels solid and has all the right features.
Droid Turbo specs
The Droid Turbo is marginally taller, wider and thicker than the current Moto X, and it's also notably heavier at 176 grams, compared to the X's 144 grams. That's mostly due to the Droid Turbo taking on higher-end specs than the Moto Xin every aspect, with a Snapdragon 805 processor, QHD display (in the same 5.2-inch size), 3GB of RAM, 21MP camera and an absolutely absurd 3900mAh battery filling up the case.
You definitely notice the increased weight, width and thickness when you're trying to hold the phone in one hand, but depending on how much you're lusting after the high-end internals you won't care. The specs make this phone future proof far beyond how long it'll be supported by the carrier or manufacturer, surely, which is an intriguing prospectMotorola Droid Turbo
2.89 in
73.3 mm
0.31-0.42 in
7.8-10.6 mm
5.65 in
143.5 mm
Black Ballistic Nylon: 176 g (6.2 oz)
Metallic Red, Metallic Black: 169 g (6.0 oz)
5.2" QHD
2560x1440
565ppi
AMOLED
3,900mAh
Lithium ion
Mixed usage up to 48 hours
Rear: 21MP, 4K 24fps video, 1080p 30fps video, 720p slow-mo
Front: 2MP, 1080p video
Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor
Quad-core 2.7GHz
Adreno 420 GPU
3GB RAM
32-64GB internal storage
LTE/CDMA
Wi-Fi 802.11ac
Bluetooth 4.0 LE
NFC
Android 4.4.4 KitKat
Moto Display
Moto Voice
Moto Actions
Droid Zap
More: Motorola Droid Turbo full spec sheet
Droid Turbo display and speaker
Insane resolution, but not the best panel ever
Quad HD displays are the cool thing to have in 2014, so naturally the Droid Turbo has one. Even though Motorola didn't choose to put this panel in its flagship Moto X, it tossed it in the Droid Turbo — likely because of the larger battery and more powerful processor to handle that resolution.
Putting 2560x1440 of SuperAMOLED a 5.2-inch panel, gives the Turbo a pixel density of 564 ppi — that's notably higher than the Galaxy Note 4, LG G3 and just about anything else on the market today. But displays aren't just about resolution, particularly when we start getting this dense with pixels, there other characteristics that are just as important.
The display on the Droid Turbo is insanely crisp, of course, but it also has solid color reproduction and viewing angles that put it right up there with other phones released this year. I will say that compared to its competitors the Turbo has a "warm" tint to it — making whites appear yellowish — and viewing angles aren'tquiteas good as the best out there. Basically, it's similar to the Moto X's display, just at a higher resolution.