Droid Bionic Software Tour

The Droid Bionic is the latest in high-end smartphones from Motorola for the Verizonnetwork. In this in-depth, detailed video we'll look at all the built-in apps, the Bionic's UI, and run some benchmarks to see just how well this powerhouse of a phone performs.

Benchmarks

We start the video off with benchmarks: running Linpack Pro, Quadrant, and Smartbench 2011. We found that the Droid Bionic did not perform nearly as well as one would expect. This isn't a problem with the phone, rather, it's a problem with the benchmark utilities. Specifically, the current generation of benchmarks simply aren't designed to put the high-end devices through tests that push their capabilities. It's a chicken-and-egg problem: benchmark authors can't write benchmarks for cutting-edge hardware until said hardware is out. That said, here's how the Droid Bionic tests out using today's benchmarking apps:

Linpack: 3.9seconds, 42.885 MFLOPS (multi-threaded)
Quadrant: 2500, with some graphic anomalies
Smartbench 2011: did not complete

Data Speeds

When running Speedtest.net on the Droid Bionic, the first thing I noticed was how fast the entire app was. Very fast, very smooth. Running the test itself was also very, very fast.

Wi-Fi: 18ms ping, 15.72Mbps down, 4.09Mbps up
3G: 181ms ping, 0.39Mbps down, 0.84Mbps up
LTE: 79ms ping, 4.2Mbps down, 1.29Mbps up

It should be noted that 3G data is over the CDMA network, which is shared with voice, so you can't be on a call and getting data at the same time. That's nothing new, but for those of us who have T-Mobile or AT&T can do both voice and data simultaneously. When you're under an LTE umbrella that CDMA limitation goes away -- data and voice co-exist perfectly and seamlessly, just like you'd expect.

Included Apps

I'm a purist. The user-interface isn't what we're used to in the "pure" Gingerbread version of Android -- but it's so subtle, and so close to stock, the changes aren't obtrusive. They build on the existing UI and very subtly improve upon them. Coming from me, that's saying a lot. Check the video starting at 16:00 to see what apps come with the Droid Bionic.