Atrix Gets Gingerbread Update, Myriad of Features (Review)

At night two days ago, Motorola released the long awaited Gingerbread update for its flagship phone on AT&T, the Motorola Atrix 4G. The update bumped the firmware up to the latest 2.3.4, over the 2.2 it previously had. Gingerbread itself brings a whole bunch of new features, but since Gingerbread has been gone over so much I'll just go over the features that Motorola added in.

First off, one of the most apparent new features when you turn the phone on is the improved UI. Motorola has taken a lot of flak from consumers for their MotoBlur, but unlike previous versions, this version actually looks and runs well. Not that the previous version was all that bad, it was just the fact that the best hardware on a phone was be hampered by sub par software. The phone runs a lot smoother now, although after it first updated, it ran a bit slower. The new UI also borrows heavily from iOS, with a dock bar at the bottom where you can put shortcuts to your favorite apps.

You'll find the app drawer much improved. Instead of all of the apps in the drawer, there is an option to make your own groups of applications, with a couple of the default apps being all, downloaded, recently used, and AT&T.It is also now more of a navy blue than black in the background.

On the previous version of Motoblur, apps and widgets were limited to the 800 by 480 grid that the lower resolution phones that came previously had. So it looked like everything was squashed together. Not any more.

While still talking about the homescreen you'll find that you are now able to create different scenes for work, play, and weekend, much like on HTC sense. So far, however, I cant get it to work very well, as it keeps the same wallpaper for all of the scenes. I'm probably doing something wrong.

The notification bar is now blue, and you can delete notifications one by one.

All of the settings are now white with blue font, as opposed to black with white font. Also a bunch of new settings are included in this.

All in all, the Gingerbread update provides a much needed breath of fresh air from the old Motoblur. Unfortunately it wasn't all good, as a couple of my favorite small features are gone, such as the ability to slide along the bottom to reach different homescreens. But overall, it was a very good update.