Droid Turbo review: Motorola's big red phone is almost unkillable

The Motorola Droid Turbo is a powerful smartphone with the latest high-end components, a better-than-average rear-facing camera, and a guaranteed two days of battery life—but it’s only available to Verizon Wireless subscribers.

That’s the Motorola Droid Turbo’s biggest setback, and one that will likely keep it from becoming a best seller. I’m impressed with how much thought Motorola put into this handset, but the fact that it’s tethered to Verizon’s network means that only a limited few will have the option to experience it.

It’s what’s on the inside that counts

When it comes to specs, the Droid Turbo is one hell of a smartphone. It’s packed with a quad-core 2.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB of RAM, and a whopping 3,900mAh battery pack, which we’ll touch upon in the next section.

Display

The Turbo features a fantastic 5.2-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display with a pixel density of about 564 pixels-per-inch. The display is fully visible from any angle, and its color profiles aren’t overly saturated like Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays. My only complaint is that it would have been nice if Motorola extended the display down a bit and used soft, on-screen buttons instead of off-screen capacitive buttons.

Moto fixed its camera problem

ROB SCHULTZ

Finally: Moto packs its smartphone with a rear-facing camera that doesn’t make me cry.

One of the reasons I’ve refrained from switching to a Moto X as my daily driver is that itsphoto-taking abilities are subpar. However, the Droid Turbo’s rear-facing 21-megapixel camera made me rethink my stance: the photos it took were remarkably clear and it certainly gave its counterparts a run for their money.

Lab shots with the Droid Turbo include a low-light shot (left), flash shot (middle), and regular shot (right). 

Its low-light performance could have been better, but compared to how the Moto X fared I’d say this is a huge improvement—just try to ignore the graininess. 

I snapped this photo out my window while driving home. Pretty good for rolling through at 20 mph.

Outside, mid-morning.

Thankfully, Motorola stuck to its own camera app for the Droid Turbo, rather than Google’s stock Android camera. It’s easy to use, too: tap on the screen to take the photo, and then slide from the right to get to the Gallery. If you need to adjust something, slide over from the left to bring out the Settings.

The Droid Turbo’s camera interface.

Video capture tops out at 24 frames-per-second in 4K recording mode and 30 frames-per-second in 1080p recording mode. I recorded video while driving down my suburban streets, and was impressed with the phone’s ability to maintain exposure, though with no image stabilization, the scene can get pretty jarring if you don’t hold the phone still.

The Droid Turbo runs near-stock Android 4.4.4 KitKat, though it will soon get an update to Android 5.0 Lollipop. The interface is plain vanilla for the most part, and will require some tender love and care when you first bring it home. It also doesn’t utilize the nifty Google Launcher on phones like the Nexus 5, where Google Now lives on its own Home screen.

Motorola’s add-ons are almost indispensable.