Today I’ll be showing you a thing or two about the Motorola DROID Mini. First off, and this is important to mention, if you’re not in a country that supports Verizon, it wouldn’t really be recommended that you read the review of this phone. You can probably still get this phone, but I am sure that certain limitations or restrictions will apply.
So, getting down to it, the Motorola DROID Mini is a pretty damn good phone. This device offers a lot of good features for a pretty decent price. This phone shares the design of all Motorola DROID phones, and that’s a pretty good thing ( in my opinion ). I feel that I should also clarify the phrase “decent price”. This phone is available for a multitude of prices, but perhaps the cheapest and fairest price I’ve managed to find it for is circa 540 dollars ( I’ll even provide you with a link at the end of this article if you’re interested in this phone ).
SUMMARY
A very interesting issue to discuss about this phone is value. Some would think: is the value good enough considering the somewhat steep price. With all things considered, I can actually say that this phone is more than worth the value. You see, I look at things this way: are the things in it worth the price demanded for the phone – mathematically, even. Imagine it this way, if you will: divide the value of the phone by the price ( or something similar ) and if the result is 1 or a number bigger than 1, then the phone is worth it. The particular case of the Motorola DROID Mini is this: the result is positive, but not all that more than 1. In other words, the phone is pretty much worth its price, though it’s not the cheapest phone you might get out there.
GENERAL
The Motorola DROID Mini is available in two forms and shapes. Network-wise, this phone uses both CDMA networks and regular GSM networks. It all depends on you whichever you prefer. Also, aside from the 2G and 3G networks, this phone also has 4G LTE on it. The type of SIM card on this device is Nano-SIM. Also, this phone has been available for a while now: ever since August 2013, actually.
BODY
Keeping with the tradition set by the DROID phones, the Motorola DROID Mini is also covered head-to-toe in a Kevlar-weaved body. The phone, thanks to its build, is also Splash Resistant. It’s not all that big, but were it up to me I wouldn’t really place it in the Mini department. The specifics of this device are: 121.3 x 61.3 x 8.9 mm ( or circa 4.78 x 2.41 x 0.35 in ) and it weighs approximately 130 g ( or 4.59 oz ).
DISPLAY
The screen of the Motorola DROID Mini is quite something. This phone has a TFT screen with 16 million colors. This phone’s screen is 4.3 inches large ( see, hard to put in a “Mini” category ) and it holds a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels, while also having a great pixel density of 342 pixels per inch. The screen is also protected by a neat sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass.
SOUND
The audio output of this device is nothing to be truly impressed about – and I’m not saying that to sound mean, but truth be told it is somewhat lacking of any real sound enhancements. Usually, when a phone has none, the audio is as good as default can get, but it ever hurts to add a bit of extra quality.
MEMORY
The memory on this phone isn’t too much. It’s disappointing to see that the Motorola DROID Mini doesn’t have a MicroSD card on it, especially considering that it is only available in a 16 GB storage version. On the RAM side, however, the Motorola DROID Mini is doing well for itself – this device has 2 GB of RAM on it.
DATA CONNECTION
The Motorola DROID Mini is really well-equipped as far as data connections go. This device has both GPRS and EDGE on it, it’s equipped with NFC, it has Bluetooth v4.0 on it with A2DP, LE and EDR and it also has a really good Internet speed ( both LTE and normal ). The WLAN of this device is really something to behold as well, with a Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with support for Dual-Band, Wi-Fi hotspot and DLNA. This phone also has a MicroUSB v2.0 port on it, however, it doesn’t have any support for MHL or SlimPort or something like that.
CAMERA
Both cameras found on this device are really great ones. The Motorola DROID Mini is equipped with a main 10 MP camera and a secondary 2 MP one. The main camera can record video in 1080p format at 30 frames per second. Sadly, this camera doesn’t have a lot of features on it, but among the features of this device are: autofocus, LED flash, touch focus, geo-tagging and face detection.
BATTERY LIFE
The battery of the Motorola DROID Mini is a pretty strong one. This device has a standard Li-Ion 2000 mAh battery. Sadly, I can’t really tell you how much life this battery can offer, but allegedly it’s good for circa 28 hours of talk-time.
HARDWARE
Hardware-wise, the Motorola DROID Mini is doing relatively well. This phone isn’t the strongest out there, but it gets the job done. To be more precise, the phone’s equipped with: a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4Pro chipset, a Dual-Core 1.7 GHz Krait processor and an Adreno 320 GPU as well. All things considered, these components are just about enough to run most of the apps and games out there.
SOFTWARE
I’m really pleased about the software of this phone. The Motorola DROID Mini has Android OS v4.2 Jelly Bean on it when you purchase the phone, but it does have an official update available, an update to the latest version of Android, actually – Android OS v4.4 KitKat. Quite a bunch of phones are getting the update nowadays, but take warmth in knowing that this was one of the first phones to receive this update.
FEATURES
The Motorola DROID Mini has quite a bunch of features on it. It’s loaded with sensors ( like accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass and barometer ), it has HTML5 for the browser, it has GPS with A-GPS support and GLONASS and it has Java through MIDP emulation as well. Sadly, this phone doesn’t have radio on it. The messaging on this device can be done through: SMS ( with Threaded View ), MMS, E-Mail, Push E-Mail and IM ). This phone is available in two colors: Black and Red, both of which look great, but I prefer Black to Red in this case.
Here’s a brief list of what the Motorola DROID Mini can do:
- SNS integration
- Droid command center
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail
- YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa
- MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA player
- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
- Organizer
- Document viewer/editor
- Voice memo/dial/commands
- Predictive text input
This concludes our little review of the Motorola DROID Mini. I tried touching the most important parts here and talking about everything as briefly as I could, without going into too many technical or boring details. I do hope it has proven somewhat enlightening to you all and that at the very least it offered you a bit of extra info about the device. If you like the phone and would like to purchase one for yourself ( keep in mind that, if you’re not in a country with Verizon it won’t do you much good ), you can get one easily from HERE
.
