New Droid beefs up battery and buffs up screen

Droid Razr HD smartphone by Motorola Mobility Inc.
$149.99 at Amazon.com

These days, Samsung Corp. is the dominant maker of smartphones that run Google Inc.’s Android operating system. But it was Motorola’s original Droid that became the first serious challenger to Apple Inc.’s iPhone. And now that Google has acquired Motorola, the company keeps banging out some quite impressive products.

The Droid Razr HD follows in the footsteps of the ultra-thin Razr Motorola introduced last year. That was one of the loveliest smartphones ever, but its thinness came at the cost of lousy battery life. The Razr HD is much thicker, thanks to a battery that promises to last all day long. But Motorola has kept on sheathing the phone in Kevlar. This famously bulletproof material gives the Razr HD a wonderful feel in the hand--warm, comforting and light, yet solid as a brick.

The updated Droid carries a 4.7-inch display that uses the same kind of organic liquid crystal technology found on Samsung phones. OLED screens are famed for rich high-contrast color; this one’s also especially sharp because it supports 720p high-definition video.

In most respects, the Droid Razr HD is technically middle-of-the-road, with a decent dual-core processor and 16 gigabytes of built-in memory. The new Droid is hardly a breakthrough product, but its sharp screen and solid construction make it a worthy choice for Android fans.