Discussion on:

Motorola Droid Razr Teardown: Better hardware should anger Bionic buyers

Would like it or a similar device to come over to AT&T.
With LTE and HSPA+ it would very likely do well.

I think I'll keep my Bionic for this reason.

Having a user-replaceable battery was once a must-have for any phone I owned. But having used an iPhone for the past three years, the installed battery really hasn't been a problem. Even when I used phones with replaceable batteries, I never found myself actually buying a second battery.

Sure, there are people who truly do need a communication device that allows for regular battery swaps. But, I've come to the realization that I'm not one of those people. And given the success of phones without user-replaceable batteries, I think most others are as well.

From what I have been hearing online and from my co-workers, the iPhone 4s has a serious problem with battery drain that still has not been resolved.

I keep a spare fully charged battery in my bag and I have a battery charger to keep the other one topped off.
I use my phone heavily (data mostly). My office has poor cell reception so the battery drains in 8 to 10 hours.
I often switch the battery at the end of the work day.
You can't do that with the iPhone and some newer Androids. I see it as a problem.
I hate having my phone attached to a car charger or an external battery pack when I am using it.
The replaceable battery works better for me.

Does your office have a wi-fi network that your phone could connect to instead? Our house has marginal 3g coverage but solid wi-fi, so I usually just switch that on when I get home. Faster speed, stronger signal, less need for the phone to search for data.

Also, when my Ally's original battery was old and not holding charge as well, I got into the habit of connecting it to a charger at my desk in the afternoons when I knew I'd be stationary for an hour or two. That would usually kick it from the 30% it'd hit by then back up to 70%, which was good enough to get to bedtime. Chargers are cheap, even direct from Verizon. However, I did finally replace the battery, and that plus a new optimized ROM made a world of difference.

Yes, wifi is better than 4G at the office. The only thing is I used to forget to connect to the wifi.
Now I use Tasker to help manage my battery. Tasker is location aware so it automatically turns off wifi and turns on GPS when I am in the car and turns wifi back on when I am in the office or at home.
It can even set off an alarm, go to airplane mode, and / or send an SMS when the battery goes below X%.
I am just scratching the surface of the capabilities of the app and having a lot of fun with it.

the IPhone 4s battery issue has been resolved through the latest update that took place a couple of weeks ago. Also i understand your work flow with respect to needing multiple batteries. User preference.

Although there was a software release recently, my friends who have iPhone 4s' are telling me that it did not significantly improve their battery's performance.
Yes indeed - it is my preference to use 2 batteries. I knew I wanted the extended battery so I bought that on day one. That means that I had the smaller battery available as a backup. and I bought a battery charger for $20. Lucky me.

Especially since, from what I've heard, the 4G/LTE radios are a serious power suck -- leading to a need for more recharges. Do you know the number of cycles that the Razr's battery is expected to give before dying out?

The Editor's Note in the email says "Beginning Dec. 20th, the TR Dojo newsletter will have a new name, "Cracking Open". The newsletter will still be delivered twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm excited about this change. I hope you are too. -Bill"

I'm saddened to see the demise of TR Dojo. It was one of the last bastions of high-end "guru" tech on TR. It had in-depth information for those of us who go beyond point-and-click, and aren't afraid to "get our hands dirty" on the command line. There was information in the Dojo that was scarce anywhere else.

Teardowns are mildly interesting, but the elimination of "deep" tech means I'll be dropping my subscription to the Dojo newsletter. It's not a Dojo any more, just a chop-shop.

Sad.

I will defiantly miss TR Dojo. Hopefully it will still pop its head up now and then and give me that useful knowledge that it dispensed so well.

Thanks for the compliment. And, don't worry. TR Dojo will still be around in 2012.

I've been splitting my time between TR Dojo and Cracking Open for about a year now. If you look back at the newsletters and blog, I've done one of each post/video/gallery each week.

Next year, we're actually planning to expand Cracking Open and keep doing TR Dojo.

Indredible gadget, but im happy with my droid 3. Motorola is doing a blitzkrieg on the smartphone market with all this powerfull devices and i think they are becoming a major brand in this category. Just like Apple long ago, I though this company was about to be purchased by a competitor like samsung and vanish in time like many big and forgotten companies. But i think Google did the miracle.

"Non-replaceable" does come in degrees, and at least with this one, it's not seriously non-replaceable. We have a Droid Razr at work to use for testing new mobile functionality (yay modern age) and it sure is nice to handle, although I'm not used to a screen that big.

Don't you go taking your stuff apart.Ten years from now you'll see how smart you were because you didn't take your stuff apart.

I own a Razr. After 3 weeks I have discovered a poo camera, battery that won't make it until the end of the day, it cant sync with ms outlook, without gong thru a cvs file. 4g coverage is spotty at best and slow because of the traffic, I guess. The I phone is a better choice. Or at least not a motorla android. They have not figured out some of us are serious business users and need a native outlook connection.

Motorola DROID RAZR has launched with nice features. It has 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display that supports quarter-HD resolution with 8 Mega pixel camera and Also the 4G LTE mobile hotspot features accommodates up to eight WiFi devices at once. You can read other features here:
http://www.themobileindian.com/news/3455_Motorola-RAZR-with-4G-LTE-support-formally-announced