Droid Bionic by Motorola Review

You'll find the latest version of Android, version 2.3.4 (Gingerbread), loaded and running on the Droid Bionic. Motorola has made some tweaks to Android, though. Below any of the five customizable homescreens, you'll notice four icons in a "dock." The first three of these icons can be customized to your liking. By default, they provide access to the dialer, text messaging, camera, and all applications. Below these icons, you'll find the phone's touch-sensitive hardware buttons which provide haptic feedback when pressed. By pressing the Home button twice, you'll get a thumbnail view of each of the five homescreens.

Click to enlarge

Like many of today's phones, the Droid Bionic comes with preinstalled software. Although you can't uninstall many of these programs without rooting the phone, you can place apps in groups. Out of the box, the Droid Bionic has four predefined groups: All apps, Recent, Downloaded, and Verizon Wireless. From the upper left corner of the app screen, you can add additional groups. To add an app to a group, simply tap the plus "+" icon in the upper right corner of the app screen near the Android Market icon. For easy access, you can place a shortcut to any of the app groups on one of your homescreens.

Click to enlarge

One of the unique apps that is preinstalled on the Droid Bionic is ZumoCast. This app lets you stream videos and music and access documents from your computer wirelessly. In order to use ZumoCast, you'll need to install a free app on your desktop computer. During our tests, we found the app to be very easy to use. Another app known as MOTOPRINT lets you find and use networked printers from your smartphone.

Motorola and Verizon Wireless are also offering various custom widgets for the Droid Bionic. Some of the widgets can be resized to your liking.  One of the widgets called Data Usage will be particularly useful to customers who don't have an unlimited data plan. With this widget, you can easily see how much data you've used.

The Droid Bionic comes with both the standard Android keypad as well as the SWYPE keyboard.

Click to enlarge