The future of wireless technology, like the future of everything, I suppose, comes with trade-offs.
For the past week or so, I’ve been testing a new phone from Motorola Mobility (ticker: MMI), called the Photon 4G. The 4G refers to the faster Wi-Max network run by Sprint-Nextel (S).
The speed is breathtaking. Web pages seem to load before I even realized that I wanted to view them.
The alacrity of this device surpassed that of any other phone I’ve tried and made me bitterly resentful when returning to my Apple (AAPL) iPhone 4, running on AT&T’s (T) conventional 3G cellular network.
The downside? The battery life was down by about a third just an hour after I’d removed the Photon from its charger. in one instance, the cause was a nearly hour-long phone call. in another, I was simply surfing from Web page to Web page, gleefully heedless of the strain that the faster speed was putting on my battery.
Happily, one can dial down to a slower 3G connection to save battery life, and that connection is still quite snappy. But if you can stand the drain on battery life, the Photon is one of the better devices using Google’s (GOOG) Android software.
Will the Photon revive Motorola’s fortunes in the smartphone market? there will be a blizzard of rivals in coming months, including the hot-selling Galaxy S II from Samsung Electronics (005930.Korea) and, of course, a new Apple iPhone, rumored to be arriving in September or October.
Stiff competition, indeed.
But the Photon is stylish, good-looking and can take full advantage of lots of Android apps. It’s an excellent choice for those who aren’t on the AT&T or Verizon Wireless networks, or who simply prefer Android to Apple’s software.
It should keep Motorola a contender in the smartphone wars.
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