Motorola Droid 2 Smartphone, with Android 2.2, Is a Solid Update: iFixit

by Michelle Maisto

A side-by-side comparison of the Motorola Droid (right) and Droid 2. They’re so alike, says iFixit, that the repair manual for the former can be used on the latter. One distinction, however, is that the Droid 2, with its dark-blue case, is decidedly sleeker.

The inevitable comparison: the Droid 2 versus the iPhone 4. The newest Apple smartphone is thinner, but the Droid 2 offers a physical keyboard.

Let the teardown commence! With the back cover popped off, the battery can be popped out—a trick the iPhone 4, while offering a similar battery, can’t copy. Changes to internals on the Droid 2 enable it to boast 575 minutes of use time, versus the 385 minutes the original Droid offered with the same battery.

The Droid 2 comes with a preinstalled 8GB microSD memory card that can be easily removed.

“A screw here, a screw there,” writes iFixit, and one has broken the warranty and gotten a good look inside. In this photo, the speaker, which is held in place by pressure from the case’s halves, is easily pulled out.

The Droid 2’s motherboard in all its glory. The camera board, reports iFixit, is a separate circuit board that can be easily removed.

Visible on the back of the motherboard are, in red, the 8GB of NAND flash from SanDisk and, in turquoise, the smartphone’s WLAN Bluetooth/FM chip, which gives the Droid 2 its 802.11n connectivity-an improvement over the Droid’s 802.11g.

The 5-megapixel rear-facing camera on the Droid 2 offers DVD-quality video recording with six more frames per second than the original Droid.

With the black plastic rim lifted off and a few screws removed, the backside of the Droid 2’s LCD becomes visible. It’s the same 3.7-inch, 854-by-480 display that’s used on the Droid.

The keyboard of the Droid 2 (top) versus the Droid. “A large D-pad panel was ditched for individual direction keys, a new Record button was added and the Enter button was enlarged,” reports iFixit.

The whole enchilada: all the components of the Motorola Droid 2. Motorola likes to say that “Droid Does.” Unfortunately for iFixit, that slogan doesn’t apply to device reassembly.