Motorola Atrix MB860

Need no further intro. This phone has been in the wild for some times. Indeed, it's considered a dated phone as the 2nd generation has been leaked in numerous tech blogs. Oh well, just few months of ownership and it's now a dated one. Perhaps Apple is much better in protecting its customers' "ROI", at least iPhone owners are always "in" for minimum a year.

Nevertheless, I still like its specifications which have not disappointed me...

The internal 16GB storage is partitioned into a 1GB+ application storage which is more than enough to house all your applications. You can also move the apps to the remaining 10GB+ storage. And I got myself an unnecessary 32GB class 10 micro SDHC card. I am finding the hell way to fill up the card. :)

A beauty like this needs some protection. I am an extreme minimalist, it's very hard to find a good protective case which is not bulky at all. Apple products beat all others on this arena. Fortunately Google is the savor, I found one eventually at CarryMobile...

A Melkco leather snap case that protects the phone from scratches without adding much weight and bulkiness to it. The Atrix fits perfectly with all buttons accessible...

A very well built quality product. I certainly will shop for other cases there again for my new gadgets in future.

The screen also deserves some form of protection. I thought I had but I did not capture the Steinheil Ultra series screen protector film I bought from Amazon. It really makes the qHD screen stands out like an HD screen. My friend got one for his iPad and was very happy with the quality as well, better than the one he bought from Apple store.

This Atrix is an AP Retail version bought in Malaysia, not the 4G version sold in US. It comes with Froyo 2.2. If you own one and anxiously waiting for an upgrade to Gingerbread 2.3.4, wait no more. Head to Motorola Support site, select Singapore (even if yours is Malaysia unit), select Atrix and download the MSU Motorola Software Update utility. Follow carefully the steps 1-3 and you should be able to do it without much trouble. Try unplug and replug the phone (and reboot your workstation if required) if it says "no updates available". This is what you get after the upgrade...

All your data and apps will still be intact after upgrade. You get a new Motoblur interface which is better than the stock Froyo interface and some minor additions such as data encryption feature. This upgrade is not available via OTA, the OTA upgrade will only come in November for AP Retail units. But who knows Motorola decided not to do so. They really suck in software upgrade strategy.

Lastly, the performance after upgrade...

2042 Quadrant score if the snapshot above isn't clear. The second snapshot was Linpak result with single thread follow by multithread test. Not too bad if you compare with Sammy GS2 and HTC Sensation with higher CPU speed...