Hybrid Android Honeycomb devices are about to flood the market, but one of the most interesting is the Motorola Atrix smartphone.

V3.co.uk got some hands-on time with the Atrix at the MotoDev App Summit in central London on Friday and we were impressed with the business-oriented device.

The specifications are impressive: a 4in qHD display with resolution of 960 x 540, and a 1GHz dual-core processor.

Motorola also includes a generous 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage which can be increased using the micro-SD card slot. Other features include a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, and a front-facing camera.

Plugging the smartphone into the optional lapdock is shaping up to be the best feature, allowing the smartphone to become an 11.6in netbook with a full-size keyboard and a generously large trackpad.

The Atrix slots comfortably into the back of the chassis, which weighs just over 1kg and powers up in under two seconds. The netbook casing contains a separate battery and two USB ports. The Atrix acts as the processor for the netbook, so it becomes unusable when the smartphone is disconnected.

Motorola's Webtop interface is activated once the phone is connected to the lapdock. Webtop has a number of icons which can be accessed from a bar running along the bottom of the screen, similar to the 'dock' found on Mac OS X.

These can be populated with shortcuts such as phone dialer, contacts, text messaging, file manager, Firefox and Facebook apps.

Phone functionality is retained when the lapdock is in use and calls can be made and received using a loudspeaker.  The phone display is also viewable as an inlay, so customers can use the Android WebKit browser or the Webtop native Firefox browser, for example.

The ability to plug and play is also admirable. We simply pulled out when we wished to stop using the lapdock, and there was no need to initiate any form of hibernation or shutdown. When we plugged the phone back into the lapdock it resumed the same application.

Motorola claims up to eight hours of battery life when the smartphone is plugged into the chassis. This is impressive as the phone battery is also charged while in the dock.

At this stage the only disappointment is that the Atrix will run Android 2.2. Motorola has said that a Gingerbread update will be rolled out at some point in the future.

V3.co.uk will post a full review of the device soon.

15 Apr 2011