Motorola Defy review

There have been a whole collection of ruggedized phones added to the market and the Motorola Defy fts into this category nicely.

However, its SP is that it's ruggedised without looking like an eyesore.

It’s still a little on the chunky side however at 59x107x13mm and 118g and its outdoorsy pretensions are betrayed by the bulky rubber grommets covering the micro USB power/sync and 3.5mm headphone slots as well as the rather ostentatious screws holding the casing together.

Around the back there’s also a slide lock which holds the battery cover firmly in place.

The 3.7-inch capacitive multi-touch screen delivers beautifully sharp 480x854-pixel resolution from behind its tough Gorilla Glass covering.

Button controls are kept to a minimum with just a power button on the top and a volume rocker on the side.

The four standard Android buttons on the front of the Motorola Defy are touch-sensitive so they’re safe enough and incidentally it runs on the still not totally out of date Android 2.1 rather than the very latest 2.2.

It’s designed to be dust, dirt and water resistant, and in this case the claim is backed up by IP67 certification, which says it should be able to resist water up to a metre deep for ten minutes – which ought to be enough to withstand a dip in a pint glass or a drop in a puddle.

It’s also supposed to be shock resistant, so a drop from head height onto a hard surface should pose no problems either.

The screen stood up to some fairly hefty knocks on the side of a table, tossing into the air onto a pavement and some smacks with the sharp end of a kitchen knife without any ill effects.

Likewise, it worked fine after a dip in the sink, though it has to be said that water plays havoc with the responsiveness of the screen – we had to wipe it down and restart it after which it was business as usual.

Then again, Motorola is making no claims for it as a diver’s phone.

Once you get past the rugged aspect, there’s a very decent low to midrange Android smart phone inside too.

The Defy has Wi-Fi, GPS and all the usual basics that not too long ago were once considered luxuries. It also comes with Motorola’s cloud-based Motoblur service, which has a host of selling points.

For one thing it pulls together your Facebook, Twitter, email, text feeds and more into a single stream so you can easily keep up with your latest updates whatever the source, and also display direct links to your favourites’ update feeds.

It will also maintain your contacts and other info in the cloud (well, Motorola’s servers really), so you can access them from anywhere if you happen to lose your phone.

You can also resize the windows on Motoblur, which will please anyone who’s ever tried to squeeze too many widgets onto their homescreens (seven in the Defy’s case).

The processor is 800MHz rather than 1GHz and is backed up by 512MB RAM but there are occasional signs of lag, though nothing too disastrous.

The standard Android keyboard comes preloaded with Swype, which takes a bit of getting used to, but allows you to tap out words and phrases without taking your fingers off the screen – rated by the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest way to text, apparently.

The Android web browser is untroubled by any additional features from Motorola and works perfectly well helped by pinch to zoom and the sensitivity of the screen.

The Motorola Defy's 5-megapixel camera is workmanlike if not exceptional, and offers autofocus, flash, scene modes including macro, and a digital zoom operated by the volume rocker.

There’s also geotagging, but no smile or face detection or touch focus. Pictures are reasonably sharp, though we consistently found them a little on the dark side, even in good light.

Video recording is 640x480-pixel at up to 30fps, which isn’t bad, but noticeably down the scale from the Motorola Milestone 2’s 720p doings.

Video looks good on the sharp 3.7-inch screen and there’s a useful option to stretch films to fit the screen. There’s also a basic video editing tool.

The music player sounds pretty good, even through the cheap-looking supplied headphones, and can be integrated with connected extras such as Last.fm and TuneWiki to help you share tracks and find new ones. There’s FM/internet radio on board and you can identify mystery tracks using songID as well as sourcing lyrics.

There’s a respectable 2GB of memory on board for storing tracks and vids and it comes with a 2GB microSD card, though you can boost this to 32GB if you like.

Battery life held up fairly well, giving us about a day and a half of moderate to heavy use.

There are other Android handsets that are more svelte, others with more features and, to be honest, others with more class.

But the Motorola Defy can justifiably lay claim to being tougher than the rest, and if that’s what matters to you, you won’t be disappointed.