Take a stroll to your local Best Buy and walk down the wireless aisle. Notice how most every smartphone on the market today looks the same? Hard angles, giant slabs of glass, no real differentiation until you hit the power button and see what sort of horrific changes the operators and handset makers put on top of Google’s Android operating system. The Motorola Domino+ isn’t like that. Also known as the XT531, the Domino+ has just been introduced in China. It’s kind of expensive at 2200 Chinese yuan ($340) unlocked and unsubsidized; for that amount of cash you get an 800 MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor, 512MB of RAM, 3.5 inch 480 x 320 pixel resolution camera, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, Bluetooth/WiFi/GPS, and it even runs the latest version (2.3.4) of Android. We sincerely hope this thing hits both American and European shores since it’s cute as a button, which is frankly shocking coming from Motorola, who has traditionally offered the most masculine looking devices on the market. Just look at the Droid X2 for Verizon Wireless to get a better idea of what we’re talking about.
Speaking about smartphone design, why are hardware vendors consistently dropping the ball? We hate to bring up the Apple iPhone 4, but forget about your allegiance to a certain brand for a moment and just admit that since being released in the summer of 2010 there has yet been a smartphone released that can match both the build quality and stunning good looks of Cupertino’s creation. Samsung may be an expert at using bleeding edge components, but their build quality and choice of materials suck. HTC blows all their money on hiding Android with HTC Sense, and their devices have had the same design language for years. LG admittedly makes some good looking phones, but they’re got software developers who huff cans of compressed air during their lunch breaks.
Come on everyone, try harder!
