Are you a corporate Xprt? Then the Motorola Xprt for Sprint might be the ticket. Read our full review here.
Motorola Xprt Report
Are you one part business, one part casual, and all parts Sprint? Then take heed to Motorola's new Xprt, a full-featured world phone with many advanced features found on the entertainment-bred multimedia giants that reside at higher price points. This is Sprint's ultimate business machine with full enterprise class security and data connection, which are features that your IT department will need. As an informal smartphone, it runs Android 2.2, governed by a 1GHz processor and MOTOBLUR for staying socially connected. Its 3.1-inch HVGA display and 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash were not the most advanced aspects of the phone, for the Xprt concentrated its power elsewhere. Take the 1820 mAh battery, which lasted for days—a crucial necessity for the corporate employee who is glued to their phone at all times. There was also the BlackBerry-like physical QWERTY thumboard for texting, emailing, and editing documents, and it offered built-in GPS with full gaming support from the Android Market. Will the Motorola Xprt (specs) bring out the expert within you? Let's find out.
Design
The Xprt mimics so many business-oriented phones on the market, including the Droid Pro and BlackBerry Bold. The tipoff is the full QWERTY thumbboard located beneath the 3.1-inch HVGA capacitive touchscreen. If you've ever used a BlackBerry or Droid Pro, you can expect to find the same size keys and button feel on the Xprt. It's a bit cramped, and as we like to say, if you have little elf fingers, you'll be fine. Fortunately, the phone had a virtual QWERTY keyboard when the phone was rotated horizontally, so both options were available. Regarding the screen, its 320x480-pixel HVGA screen did not offer the most defined picture, but what do you want from a phone that's all business?
As far as size, it's about as tall and wide as an iPhone 4, though the phone is roughly twice as thick. The rounded edges and textured back panel aided in the portability and grip department, and it was one of the more solidly built Android phones we've reviewed in quite some time. In addition to the full QWERTY keyboard, the phone has four haptic feedback controls on located at the base of the screen: Menu, Home, Back, and Search. We got a 3.5mm audio jack and USB terminal for connectivity, and the phone featured a customizable Function button that defaulted to the calendar. In back, the Motorola Xprt has a 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash. Memory consists of 2GB on the inside and 2GB on the outside with a MicroSD card stuffed in a slot that accommodates up to 32GB. It's not the most interesting design we've seen on a phone, but for the business, user, it is par for the course.
Software and Interface
The Xprt is a quick phone, powered by 1GHz OMAP processor with 512MB of RAM. For OS, we've got Android 2.2 with a layer of MOTOBLUR. This is the Android experience we saw on the Droid Pro—in fact, the Xprt is like Sprint's version of the Droid Pro. The phone runs on Sprint's CDMA and EV-DO networks and features built-in GPS, an accelerometer, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, and 3G Mobile Hotspots for up to 5 devices. Rergarding voice and data connectivity across the globe, the Motorola Xprt runs on GSM/UMTS (HSPA) roaming services.
But it's the phone's enterprise-class security and 256-bit AES data encryption that really seals the deal for any company's IT department. This way, a company phone can be wiped remotely, restored, or altered in terms of password information. Add in corporate email with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and personal (POP & IMAP) email, and the Xprt is truly destined for the business expert. MOTOBLUR brought a socially-specified flavor to the table, and the phone's quick processor seemed to handle all of the push notifications quite fine.
We've seen the Android 2.2/MOTOBLUR concoction before, and it's not a bad team. If you are the company socialite, MOTOBLUR has plenty of widgets that support Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Photobucket, MySpace, Picasa, and more. Of course, the complete Google treatment was available, including Maps, Gmail, the Android Market, Talk, YouTube, and Search. The Motorola Xprt had 7 Home screens with the classic Android dropdown menu and customizable Home screen experience. Action was speedy, the phone never lagged, and our entire run with the Xprt was flawless in terms of interface performance.
Multimedia/Productivity/Internet
So what about fun? Well, with the Android Market, the phone supports thousands of applications, including 3D games and advanced graphics. Anything we could play on a more powerful smartphone could be played on the Xprt, like Speedx 3D or Cordy. With DLNA support, we could wirelessly stream multimedia onto compatible devices like TVs or stereos, though the phone lacked a Blockbuster or Netflix option. As far as movie watching, the Xprt was not that much of an expert, but it was a fine little MP3 player, especially with that long lasting battery. The phone even offered a Books application that came preloaded with Alice in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, and Great Expectations. For office work on the go, the phone gave us Quickoffice for managing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. And finally, the phone's browser was not entirely thrilling, though it did offer Flash support for viewing Flash content. Overall, the Xprt was one powerful business machine with a thin layer of entertainment on top.
Call Quality/Battery Life
The Motorola Xprt was a decent caller. We didn't experience any dropped calls with our review unit, and voices came in loud and clear. Of course, there was some blanketing noise on certain calls and a tinny quality to others, but for the most part, we didn't have much to complain about.
Battery life was superb. The Xprt's 1820mAh pack stood by for days and proved itself as a phone that could handle a full day of push notifications, email, and gaming on a single charge. That's one benefit to business phones—their battery performances rule, and the Xprt was no different.
Camera
Although the Xprt's 5-megapixel camera was only capable of capturing 720x480 WVGA videos, the quality was actually pretty darn good. It succeeded in producing detailed images with minimal noise and actually exhibited a strong low light sensitivity. We ran across the occasional haze from, most likely from the phone's cheap lens, but overall image quality was much better than we expected. The phone also had a robust selection of Scene modes and effects, and even offered Face Detection. The dual LED flash came to the rescue when the lights went down, and the Xprt's camera rivaled the BlackBerry Bold 9780, which is a very good thing (check out photo and video samples).
Motorola Xprt – infoSync Diagnosis
If you're looking for one of the best overall smartphones, let alone Sprint's most powerful Android business phone, the Xprt should be the first stop on your visit to the Sprint store. The phone was surprisingly fast, exhibited a fantastic battery life, adorned from head to toe with IT security and corporate email options, and showed us that a business phone could also take some great pictures and videos as well.
Although the physical QWERTY keyboard resided on the small side and the 3.1-inch HVGA screen did not excel in the high-end graphics department, we could still accomplish plenty of things on the Xprt that could be found on more expensive phones. Even if you're not a corporate slave, the Motorola Xprt proved itself as one of the best overall smartphones within Sprint's lineup, and is an example of what any decent smartphone should model itself after.
Price and Availability
The Motorola Xprt is available now from Sprint, selling for $130 with a new two-year contract.
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