SAN FRANCISCO — It has a name that suggests it will eat the competition for breakfast, but despite a sprinkling of positives Motorola’s new Devour smart phone left me hungry for something more.
With the user-friendly Android operating software, the Devour lets you surf the Web, check e-mail and update your Facebook status with relative ease over Verizon Wireless’ network. The phone ($100, after a rebate, with a two-year contract) is available through Best Buy and will start selling from Verizon sometime this month.
Unfortunately, the phone’s features are less aggressive than its name. A seemingly cramped touch screen, unimpressive camera and weird keyboard layout made me prefer its more full-featured, pricier cousin, the Motorola Droid ($200, after a rebate, with a two-year contract), which is available from the same wireless carrier.
At first glance, the Devour’s solid-feeling, brushed aluminum body and slide-out keyboard radiate user-friendly vibes. The phone’s face has just one mechanical button — a nifty touch-sensitive square that sits on the bottom left hand side and can be used for scrolling down lists and Web pages and selecting things.
In addition to running the Android software the Devour comes with Motorola’s super-social Motoblur software, which displays content such as e-mails, Twitter tweets, Facebook updates and news in little on-screen “widgets.”
Like the Droid, the Devour is a husky hunk of a handset — it weighs 5.9 ounces, making Apple’s 4.8-ounce iPhone look like a flyweight.
It has a smaller screen than both, though — 3.1 inches diagonally compared with 3.7 inches on the Droid and 3.5 inches on the iPhone. This is the same size as Motorola’s first Android phone, the Cliq, but because the Droid raised the bar when it was released in November this now seems irritatingly small by comparison.
Once I tired of trying to tap out messages using the on-screen keyboard, I slid open the physical keyboard and found it nicely spaced, with easy-to-press raised keys.
Sadly, its layout made it hard to type e-mails and insert common characters such as commas and the “at” symbol. Instead of using the area on either side of the space bar for character keys, the Devour breaks up the standard QWERTY format and devotes this real estate to letter and character keys. And a separate key that lets you access symbols and other special characters is awkwardly placed on the bottom far right of the keyboard. This made me, a righty, feel all thumbs.
I was also unimpressed with the Devour’s 3-megapixel camera. Many photos looked washed-out. And though it has a number of simple photo-editing options, such as the ability to adjust the color of your images, I was miffed to see it doesn’t include a flash or zoom. At least there is a good amount of space to store your photos and other media, because the handset comes with an 8-gigabyte microSD memory card.
The Devour can make phone calls, too — but sadly I felt like I was channeling Verizon’s “Can you hear me now?” commercials. Calls often sounded kind of muffled and choppy to me; my conversation partners told me the connection didn’t sound good to them, either.
I was surprised by the Devour’s external speaker, which was quite clear for listening to music or watching videos aloud. I wasn’t as thrilled with the dedicated volume buttons on the side of the phone, though: They’re located right next to a button that activates voice commands, and I kept hitting that when I tried to lower the volume.
The Devour is proficient at standard smart phone tasks, and can certainly handle basics like surfing the Web, checking e-mail and updating Facebook and Twitter. If you’re hankering for a slab of smart phone that is more advanced, though, chances are you’ll find the Droid more satisfying.
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