CES 2011: Hands-On With Motorola's Dual-Core Atrix 4G For AT&T: There's A Dock For That

Android Police

By Brian O'Toole

Published Jan 8, 2011

At Motorola's booth today, we got a chance to play with the Atrix 4G - a dual-core HSPA+ equipped slate handset, sporting a whopping 1GB of RAM and packing a couple of notable features. Along with the laptop dock demoed in the video below, the Atrix 4G also has a media dock (called "HD dock") which allows you to connect it to a larger screen (and use the same WebTop desktop-like interface) as well as plug in a keyboard and a mouse. The Motorola rep also informed us of plans for regular charging and car docks, so it looks like wherever you may be, the Atrix will have a bespoke resting place.

If you don't fancy running the Debian-based WebTop interface, you can also full-screen your phone on your TV for some requisite big-screen Angry Birds action. It's also possible to run your phone in a picture-in-picture mode to access both operating systems at once. Unfortunately your phone's browser will not pick up with the webpages you were viewing in WebTop's Firefox browser when you disconnect the device. However, to be fair, as soon as you reconnect it, all the open tabs will still be there, and there is a way to access the Firefox history from within Android by using an app called the WebTop Connector.

We've got an idea though - if you install the Firefox Sync plugin on the WebTop side and use Firefox for Mobile on the Android side, there's a good chance you'll be able to seamlessly sync open tabs, passwords, history, and bookmarks.

Another notable feature I wanted to point out was a built-in file browser, albeit only available from within WebTop. It's not too surprising, considering WebTop is really Linux and not Android, but it's nice to be able to easily manage your files without resorting to relatively limited UI-wise Android apps. If you decide that you need to take a screenshot, a convenient WebTop screenshot app will take care of the task for you.

At the end of the demo, we played some Angry Birds in full screen mode on the HD monitor and found that the game was a bit laggy. Using the WebTop mode in general, we found it relatively snappy but still not as smooth as you regular desktop experience you may be used to. We are also not sure we'd commit to buying the first generation laptop dock, but the direction things are headed is definitely very interesting. Soon enough, we'll be carrying our desktop and laptop brains in our pockets and wondering what life was like back in the stone age.