Motorola Atrix 4G
 

There's already a topic for this, but it's off-topic as it's in General forum.

This is the Motorola Atrix 4G smartphone:
http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecac...ix-desktop.jpg

What's interesting about this smartphone is not that it's running a Tegra 2, but that it is the modular computational-unit that can be placed in a dock, or a laptop-shell to make it act in more of a PC-like manner.

This is most impressive. While underpowered for a laptop, it's certainly good enough to do basic tasks. What's more is that the next generation ARM should put this combination on par with ATOMs which can run desktop apps reliably.

I would like to see this concept extend to a tablet-shell. Basically you get a smartphone and tablet in a single device. Add an extender battery for added life and you get a smartphone and tablet for [presumably] much less than the two alone.

Check out the video at the link above. It runs very well on a 24" screen.

What do you think?

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

So you created a duplicate thread instead of using the "report this" link to have it moved to the appropriate location?

Just askin.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

Yes. Yes I did ;)

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

Here's the original Engadget thread*!

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/m...dock-hands-on/

* with video!

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

It is running the Tegra 2. Or am i missing something?

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

It is..

Actually, there's a better thread for this:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=67974

The title is somewhat confusing, but it's talking about the Atrix.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

Hi
Didn't Always innovating come up with a similar idea? http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/smartbook.htm
I haven't seen it yet, but looks interesting

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

yes the atrix sounds interesting.i like the fingerprint sensor idea very much ;)
but again,16gb for a full hd recording phone is by far not enough.
for a 1080p phone there should be atleast 32gb mass storage

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

It supports microSD, you could have 48GB total.
The "netbook" dock is also intriguing:
http://i51.tinypic.com/30s8wlt.jpg

I'm interested to know how much hardware is in the docks and whether or not the Atrix supports USB OTG "natively" (the docks have full-size USB ports but it's unclear if this is a feature only the docks can support).

Additionally I hope someone makes a small/pocket-able slide out keyboard attachment for Atrix (BT would be fine)

Furthermore it is unclear if Motorola will lock the bootloader (probably) and whether or not anyone can crack it. Additionally even cracked, the modifications required to make "vanilla" Android 2.3+ work with the "webtop" applications may prove to be quite a challenge.

Unfortunately there are simply too many unknowns at this point. And AT&T isn't known to go easy on the "DRM".

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

yes but micro-sd costs you extra money and micro sd cards will never be as fast as your internal memory so for me thats no solution

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

yes microsd cards cost money but I assure you, you are paying more per GB from the phone manufacturer than your microsd purchase. As far as speed goes, a lot of these phones' internal memory is nothing more than a glorified soldered-on SD card (as opposed to NAND).

You are entitled to your own opinions, however if you are comparing to the N900 or N97, need I not remind you of the measly capacity that Nokia allots for the OS (and applications) leaving the rest of the ~32GB for media ONLY (the community had to come up with optifying packages and that's not a real solution).

I'd rather have the entire memory be microsd personally, at least then it's easier to backup (not to mention hack/modify) as well as I can take my microsd card and use it in all my devices (with adapters as required) if need be.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

I don't think it's unclear, given it's Motorola. They will definitely lock the bootloader and sign the Kernel. They told Ars this isn't for "enthusiats," which is a ridiculous statement for this kind of hardware, and it makes me wonder what kind of protections they'll put in place to keep you out.

And the way people are heralding the "death of the pc" with this, I'm hoping that some vendor out there sees fit to not be an *** about things.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

Didn't nokia do this already with the N8?

btw, their dock "connector" seems to be a duo of micro-usb and mini-hdmi. So it could be that their dock only acts as a hub of sorts.

btw, kinda interesting to see the thing "boot" their "webtop" at first connect. I wonder if they did something similar to what archos did with the 5it, meaning that the webtop is taking over the linux environment from the java vm.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

The webtop thing runs firefox and a WM, which might well mean it runs on X. It also runs android apps. I wonder if it would be possible to take that android over X thing for the N900 so we can run android apps?
It's probably a very long shot. If it's binary only are cortex A8 and A9 compatible? (I'd have thought they are but am not sure) Here's hoping some kind of easydebian/preenv type affair will be possible.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/09/m...#disqus_thread

Endgadget posted a new hands on, unfortunately the handling of video in the full browser showed some choppiness, but the concept is still very cool.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

Naw I will stick with My IBM Mainframe and my server, this thing is to much a toy.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

Not as choppy as I were led to believe.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

The Flash video choppiness is not a good indication of anything. The linux version of Flash is crap even on my laptop (intel GPU) and "full-screen" is unusable, instead I have to use Compiz Fusion's enhanced zoom plugin. A better indication of it's capabilities would be playing some high resolution video with mplayer.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

I think phone processors have another generation to go before they can competently handle traditional desktop tasks. The Atrix laptop-dock is a really cool concept, but a mite before its time.

Still, it's useful in that it adds a keyboard to a smartphone, and for simple tasks (light surfing, sshing, emailing, document editing, etc) it could be very useful for a select few.

Does anyone know the duration a user can use the phone and laptop shell together? I would expect that the shell would need a battery to drive that large screen, and I would bet that it could charge the phone as well.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

This comes down to what one see a "traditional" desktop task.

they can clearly already do browsing, audio and video playback, and even games. Tho i suspect multimedia editing may give it pause, depending on the resolution of the source data. But how "traditional" is that, exactly?

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

Of course, you are right -- it's variable.

I think something akin to ATOM performance would qualify for most users. I own a netbook, and it can quite comfortably handle most tasks, though the heavy ones are somewhat painful, though still usable.

In any case, next generation ARM should meet ATOM in performance and certainly work as a netbook replacement for even traditional OSs. Interestingly enough, linux distros seem to be the only ones positioned to take advantage of this.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

Unless/until we get the same os running on both hardware types, and can therefor try the same workloads, it will be hard to tell if the cortex series will match, have matched or perhaps even surpassed atom.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

I'm afraid to say that, the N900 is falling back....

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

it's not falling anywhere, it is aging in a very quickly moving market.
consider where smartphones were two-three years ago. expect as much change the next two-three years.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

What is the advantage of this docking station over existing models of computer-smartphone integration? I would think the only reason you would do this would be an easy way to access/edit your files on a larger screen and with a larger keyboard. It would seem to me that if you are going to carry something as bulky as a netbook, you would want the extra processing power as well.

Plugging the phone into a laptop/netbook and using Ovi Suite (or similar software) would seem to do the trick without sacrificing processing power.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

Well T20, as powerful as it is, simply shows sub-par browser performance compared to even IE8 running on 1st gen Atom -- an app certainly not optimized for mobile. Not scientific, but I'm quite certain that it's an indication that ARM isn't there yet.

What the future will hold is another story.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

I guess it's a great phone.
BUT, how about support.
(same with n900, great phone, but zero nokia support. altough a great community)

The future of mobile devices is here - how cool is this?
 

check out this new device with docking station and 4g built-in:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/m...dock-hands-on/

take a look at the video presentation

http://admintell.napco.com/ee/images...rola_Atrix.jpg

Re: The future of mobile devices is here - how cool is this?
 

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...light=motorola

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...light=motorola

Re: The future of mobile devices is here - how cool is this?
 

I've used VNC through USB-networking on N900 and also X-applications on N900 using PC as a console.
I am sure many have.

Using video-out with USB-mouse and keyboard is closer to that demo though.

But, yes it is pretty cool. HDMI-output is nice to have but I hope Nokia will put also the 3.5mm AV-output in future devices.

I wonder how easy that Atrix is inserted to that docking station so both HDMI and microUSB connectors plug in properly.

Re: The future of mobile devices is here - how cool is this?
 

But having a docking station that turns your mobile into a full desktop computer that is all i need, pluging/unpluging cables is nor cool nor is the future, in fact all big flat screen tvs now-a-days have a PC connection, so there is no need to even have a computer screen, just drop the phone into the docking station and you ready to go, you could even have a wireless keyboard and mouse, you could use from the sofa or even in bed :)
or you can take docking station when you go abroad and plug it into a Tv with a pc connection while abroad.

when Google first announced that they were going to build a free OS, many people in the software industry panic about their job prospects, well this is it, this mobile device and google have made it.


oh by the way, nearly forgot to say, this device also has 4G broadband connection, that is faster than most you get in your fast home broadband connection, shame 4G is still only available in a hand full of areas, but then again 3g is more then enough for most of us :)

Re: The future of mobile devices is here - how cool is this?
 

There still is those same HDMI+microUSB-connectors to plug with or without docking station. Without you can get smaller package to carry around when you would have only Bluetooth keyboard and mouse plus HDMI-cable.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

The thread "The future of mobile devices is here - how cool is this?" (5 posts) has been merged into this thread.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

someone posted a insteresting comment in the engadget comments as follow:

has anyone else realized that atrix is matrix without an m, cause it blew my mind!

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

I'd say the announcement of MeeGo some 6 months into the life cycle of the N900, the WONTFIX issues, the shift from having Flash Player 10.1 being shown at Adobe MAX to never appearing and the controversy therein, the lack of an official update from Maemo 5 to MeeGo 1.x... I'd say that the N900 fell back quite a while back.

The denial was just too damn heavy.

Only the community based projects are worthwhile on Maemo 5 now.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

N900 is HAL 9000 if you replace N with HAL and multiply with x10, but it does not blow my mind.

Atrix is cool, but nothing really revolutionary new.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

Not really shocking. When it was first announced (before it was blogged and re-blogged to death) a google search for "atrix" redirected to "matrix" (and not just "did you mean matrix?" it didn't ask, you then had to insist that you wanted to search for "atrix", that really annoys me -_-)

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

I really love this idea!! What a amazing devices! I am interested to get a one when it is launched.

However, I wonder what happen when it is plugged into the 10" Netbook docking. That will show multiple Android application in the same time or just change it to full screen?

The UX of mobile and netbook is totally different. It may be trouble to use a mobile application in netbook.

May be MeeGo is more suitable for this concept. As you could run mobile application (Nokia driven) and netbook application(Intel driven) on the same device.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

yes: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/...g-Down-Android

however, when docked, it appears to be running plain old ubuntu, which depending on how they've done it might be the device's security's achilles heel.

--edit: slashdot comment--
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments....2&cid=34936278

maybe a sim-free one bought as unlocked will be less locked down? one can hope, but I don't think so.

Re: Motorola Atrix 4G
 

The security system they're using has no achilles heel, short of someone leaking Motorola's private key or a lucky, early hit on the encryption key.

Didn't help anyone who bought the Milestone in Europe.