A lovely screen and rugged design go hand in hand with a very reasonable price
Daft names clearly aren't the preserve of desktop PC manufacturers, but ignore the Defy moniker and this is a gem of a smartphone. Motorola's latest model has a lovely 3.7in, 480 x 854 capacitive screen - that's a higher resolution than the giant HTC Desire HD - and a lot more besides.
If the screen doesn't catch your eye, the unusual design certainly will. With its exposed screw heads and grippy plastic chassis, the Defy looks more like a rugged GPS than a modern smartphone, but it isn't just for looks.
The Defy is water-, dust- and scratch-resistant and has an IP (ingress protection) rating of 67. There's a flap covering the USB port, a rubber-sealed battery compartment and impact- and scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass on the front. It will survive a rain shower no problem, or even a one-metre dunking.
The Defy comes with Android 2.1, with the promise of an upgrade to 2.2 in early 2011. Asa result, it was quite quick in our tests. The BBC homepage loaded in just 13 seconds, while the SunSpider test completed in 16 seconds.
General responsiveness wasn't quite as good as with the HTC phones ortheiPhone 4, though, probably due to the phone's slightly slower 800MHz processor.
The presence of Android 2.1 means no Rash 10.1 support, but you do get Motorola's excellent Motoblur software. Motoblur brings together a whole host of social networking, email and photo sharing services under one roof, grouping together contacts and contact images, updates, feeds and more. It lets you post to many services simultaneously, and the resizable Motoblur widgets for the Android desktop are as slick as anything you'll see on an HTC handset.
Aside from that, the Defy has a decent 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash, which produces sharper, cleaner shots than many of its rivals. It has good battery life, with an admirable 60% left on the meter after 24 hours of testing. And Motorola has also thrown in theSwype text-entry system, a welcome bonus that speeds up typing no end.
This is an excellent phone in its own right, and the price is good too. It misses out on an award this month only by dint of the overall excellence and slightly superior responsiveness of the HTC Desire, but there's very little in it.
Summary Performance 4/5
Battery 4.5/5
Features & Design 5/5
Value For money 4.5/5
Overall 4.5/5
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