Okay Geek Farm
The Motorola Atrix 4G - Future of Computing As We Know It
Jason Tsay
Looking back at this year’s CES, we tried to find something that was truly meaningful and interesting to us. Heck, we even interviewed Myriam Joire about it. After going through all the crazy announcements and wacky smartphones, we came upon the Motorola Atrix 4G. In case you haven’t heard about it already, we think this is going to be the future of computing as we know it.
The Hardware
In order to fully understand what makes this the future of computing let’s take a quick look at the specs; The Atrix 4G, running on AT&T’s 4G network, sports a 2 GHz dual core Tegra 2 processor and 1 GB of DDR2 RAM. When a phone has beefier specs than most laptops on the market, you know you’re dealing with a serious device. Throw in a qHD 4” 960 x 540 display and you’ve also got a Retina Display competitor. A front camera and rear one capable of HD video recording are present as expected. Storage is not an issue as you can get up to 48 GB of flash memory with this phone, with 16 GB already built in. To power all this, Motorola has dropped a monstrous 1,930 mAh battery in the device.
The Docks
Motorola has announced 2 docks to go along with the Atrix 4G phone. Here are the descriptions straight from their press release:
- The Motorola HD Multimedia Dock has three USB ports and an HDMI port enabling connections to a keyboard, mouse, speakers and HDMI-compatible monitor for working at your desk/office, or connecting to an HDMI-compatible television and home theater audio system for interacting with content and enjoying video, music, games and more in your living room.
- The Motorola Laptop Dock has an incredibly thin design with an 11.6-inch screen, full keyboard, stereo speakers, 36Wh three-cell battery that delivers up to eight hours of battery life and weighs just 2.4 pounds. Users simply dock their Motorola ATRIX 4G into the back of the Laptop Dock to turn it into an active, connected machine to experience true mobility at work, home and playing on-the-go in a form factor that’s lighter and smaller than most laptops on the market.
Why this is the Future
Here comes the meat of the story; Why does the Atrix 4G entice us so? The highlight feature of the Atrix is not the super fast CPU, nor the high resolution display, but rather the fact that it can dock into various stations and work as a continuous client.
Let me explain — you’re loading a webpage on your phone and then plop it right into the laptop dock. Not only is the webpage done loading but you also get to take advantage of a full desktop OS. You may be asking, “What’s so special about that?” Well, this is something we nerds have been dreaming about for years and years. The fantasy that we would carry around a “larger than iPhone” device which would contain all our data, be very powerful, and stay connected all the time. At the same time, we want to keep the advantages of a full sized computer (mainly the screen and keyboard). With the Atrix 4G, you get blazing “4G speeds,” quite ample storage, and the screen size of 4”.
The possibilities are truly endless when it comes to what you can do with the Atrix. No longer will you be syncing your iPhone to the desktop computer at home. You won’t even have to bring a laptop with you for “portability.” The phone is the computer, and the computer is just a chassis waiting to be filled. Not to sound too much like an ad, but the future starts now - with the Motorola Atrix 4G.
