SpecEagle review · Motorola

Motorola Atrix 4G review: The laptop-dock phone that imagined desktop convergence.

SpecEagle Editorial·Mar 2011·$500
Overall
56/100
Class rank
#31 of 70
Tier
Flagship
Buy?
Look elsewhere
The verdict, up front

The phone-as-PC dream.

Motorola Atrix 4G imagined desktop convergence a decade before Samsung DeX — slot it into the Webtop laptop dock and it became a full Firefox desktop. It also had a fingerprint sensor in 2011. Ahead of its time, even if the execution was clunky.

01Display

62/100

62/100 — right at the average for flagship phones of 2011.

TypeTFT PenTile LCD
Size4.0 inches
Resolution540 x 960 px
FingerprintRear power-button fingerprint sensor (early!)

02Camera

54/100

54/100 — right at the average for flagship phones of 2011.

Main5 MP, f/2.8, dual-LED flash
SelfieVGA
Video720p

03Performance

64/100

At 64/100 this is one of the strongest performance showings among flagship phones of 2011 — 13 points above the cohort average.

ChipsetNvidia Tegra 2 (dual-core 1 GHz)
GPUULP GeForce

04Battery

60/100

60/100 puts it above the 56-point average for flagship phones of 2011.

Capacity1930 mAh removable

05Build

66/100

At 66/100 this is one of the strongest build showings among flagship phones of 2011 — 7 points above the cohort average.

What works
  • Webtop laptop dock — desktop convergence a decade early
  • Early fingerprint sensor on the power button
  • Dual-core Tegra 2 was fast for 2011
What doesn't
  • PenTile display looked grainy
  • Webtop docks expensive and clunky
  • Weak 5 MP camera
Cross-shop it against
Nexus 4 (LG)
$299 · score 80/100

How this review is built: every section score, spec row and comparison on this page comes from SpecEagle's tracked catalogue — scores weight measured specs against the 70-phone cohort of flagship devices released around the same time. We don't publish invented lab anecdotes. Spot an error? .