Motorola Photon 4G: Hands-on

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When I think of Sprint, I don't think of performance phones; I think of BlackBerries and ruggedized flip phones meant for use on construction sites, despite the launch of the HTC Evo 4G on the network over a year ago. With the Motorola Photon 4G launch just a few days ago, Sprint continues to diversify slowly—the Photon is a performance handset with a big battery to withstand even the demands of a 4G network. But the Photon is at best a good option for a dedicated Sprint customer, and we don't see it drawing much new blood to the network.

The Photon 4G has a 4.3-inch qHD (540x960) screen backed by a 1GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. The rubberized back and beveled edges make the phone comfortable to hold, despite the sizable screen. The Photon's body is light for its size and the design is similar to the Motorola Atrix 4G, though it's thicker and has cut corners, making its front an octagon.

Like the EVO, the Photon has a kickstand, but the Photon's kickstand seems to control the phone's ability to use the home screen in landscape mode. With the kickstand kicked out and "Kickstand Enable" turned on in the settings, only then will the home screen turn to landscape mode—a mystifying restriction, but probably fixable in a software update if enough customers complain.

A sleep button sits on the top right of the Photon opposite a headphone jack, with a volume rocker and dedicated camera button along the right hand side. 16GB of storage comes standard, and a microSD slot allows for up to 32GB more.

Motorola pegs the Photon as a "worldphone," due to the staggering number of antennas packed inside: WiMAX 2500, CDMA 800/1900, WCDMA 850/1900/2100, and GSM 850/900/1800/1900. If you're looking for a phone to travel with, the Photon isn't a bad candidate.

While the front facing-camera is only VGA resolution, the rear camera is 8 megapixels with a flash and can record 720p video. Picture detail is good, better than the quick-capture preview would have you believe, though images get grainy quickly as the light levels get lower.

The rear camera on our review device was also louder than any cell phone camera we've recently encountered—entering the camera application and taking pictures made the hardware emit various high-pitched squeaks, like an ant screaming. The sounds were bearable, but we've just never heard such noises from inside a smartphone.

The whining camera, taking good pictures in spite of the noise.

A test photo with the camera in low light conditions.

The Photon is equipped with micro-HDMI and -USB ports on the left-hand side as well as a WepTop app, leading us to believe it might have been prime for swapping into the Atrix's lapdock. However, the ports are flipped around compared to the Atrix's, so it wouldn't fit. A separate $100 dock can be purchased for the Photon 4G that would allow you to WebTop with it on a monitor, with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

Performing normal tasks on the Photon makes for a smooth and snappy experience, and applications open and operate without a hitch. The phone puts up impressive numbers on Linpack for Android: 43.48 MFLOPS in single-thread processes, and 64.82 MFLOPS multi-threaded, performance roughly on par with the storied Samsung Galaxy S II. Likewise, it scored a very respectable 4045ms on Sunspider.

But the Photon fared far worse in Quadrant benchmarks. It performed respectably, besting phones like the Thunderbolt, Atrix, and even the Droid 3 that came out a few weeks ago, but performing worse than the Galaxy S II by a huge margin (which Engadget clocked at 3396).

The Photon's Quadrant scores are good, but didn't blow us away.

The kickstand that doles out landscape orientation as it sees fit.

One of the phone's best features is its battery life. The Photon's 1700mAh battery lasts for a full day (around 15 hours) of light to medium use without needing a charge or having to worry much about tweaking settings that must be attended to when trying to coax an Android phone into lasting more than a scant workday. The battery fared less well when run down by video, (logging about 5.5 hours), and using 4G tempers the battery life somewhat.

But that's more than a fair compromise when using Sprint, as the 3G service was pitiful; even with full reception, according to the Photon's indicator, we couldn't get more than around 250Kbps down and 450Kbps up with this phone on 3G. Your mileage may vary, depending upon your location, but if you're not in a WiMAX market, your 3G experience may be ugly. Come to that, WiMAX, like HSPA+, has lower speed standards than the 4G LTE of Verizon and AT&T (average download of 3-6Mbps to LTE's 5-12 Mbps).

So while the Photon 4G has some redeeming qualities, we're hesitant to recommend it with so many proven phones like the Galaxy S II on the market and the Droid Bionic right around the corner ('tis the season for handset launches, after all). The exception is dedicated Sprint customers: if you're living in a sweet spot for Sprint reception that's already been blessed with 4G and are looking for a robust Android phone, the Photon could be it.

The Good:

• Rubberized, rounded body is nice to hold
• Performance is speedy and smooth
• Battery life provides for many hours of use
• Multitude of antennas

The Bad:

• Camera is loud

The Ugly:

• No landscape home screen without interference of kickstand
• Sprint's 3G network, at six bars, is horribly slow

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