Verizon’s New Motorola Droids Packed With Power in Slim, Tough Frames

By Michelle Maisto

The main boast around the Droid Ultra is its slim physique, while the Droid Maxx boasts the longest-lasting battery on a 4G LTE smartphone and the Droid Mini is, as the name suggests, compact. With two-year Verizon contracts, they’ll sell for $199.99, $299.99 and $99.99, respectively.

The Droid Ultra features a 5-inch HD 720p (720×1280) display, a 10-megapixel back camera, a 2-megapixel on the front and a 2,130mAh battery.

The Droid Ultra measures 71.2mm by 137.5mm by 7.18mm. For context, the Samsung Galaxy S4, which also features a 5-inch display, is 69.8mm by 136.6mm by 7.9mm.

All three new Droids come wrapped in DuPont Kevlar fiber, for strength and a unique look, plus glossy red and black “composites,” which give them a “luxurious feel,” says Motorola.

The Droid Ultra, like its sister devices, includes support for LTE, High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and assisted GPS, and NFC technologies.

All three new Droids feature Touchless Control technology, which lets users search for something, make a call or find directions hands-free—even when the phone is asleep—by starting with the prompt, “OK, Google Now.”

The Maxx measures 71.2mm by 137.5mm by 8.5mm and features a 3,500mAh battery, said to offer 48 hours of performance on a single charge. It has the same 5-inch display as the Droid Ultra.

The Maxx features the same cameras as the Ultra and the Mini, along with Quick Capture technology, which wakes a photo with a quick twist of the wrist, helping users snap a scene before it’s gone.

The Maxx, like the other new Droids, also includes a feature called Droid Zap, which enables a user to share photos and videos with other Android devices (running Ice Cream Sandwich or higher) within 300 feet.

Most minis are smaller but also lower-end versions of larger models. The Droid Mini, however, is a smaller phone—for those who care more about pocketability than 5 inches of screen real estate—with exactly the same power as its larger siblings.

The Mini features a 4.3-inch display and a 2,000mAh battery. All the technologies packed inside it, though—from the cameras to LTE to the eight cores—are the same as in the Maxx and the Ultra.

The Mini measures 61mm by 121.3mm by 8.9mm thin. Like the other new Droids, it features Active Display technology, which shows off things such as the time and new messages without illuminating the whole screen and shortening the battery life. Like Active Display and Touchless Control, Motorola says the result of these technologies is “doing things faster and staying connected to what matters most.”

Verizon brands the Motorola phones as Droids. But under its own label, Motorola has at least one other major device planned for this year—the Moto X. The X.1? Feel free to read into this photo, which Google, in an overall very Apple-like ad, placed in several major newspapers July 3 to announce that the X will be made in the United States.