Motorola Admiral Review

Interface and Software:

The Motorola Admiral runs Android 2.3.5 with Motorola Blur on top. The Admiral is not a SprintID device, but otherwise the interface is the exact same as the Photon 4G, so check out our review for a more in-depth look. With a 1.2GHz Snapdragon S2 processor and 512MB of RAM the Admiral runs very smoothly, something the Titanium struggled with. Quadrant scores were in the 2400s, which is pretty good considering the EVO Design 4G with the same processor and more memory only scored in the 1700s (Disclaimer: those scores don’t necessarily mean anything.)


Motorola includes a decent amount of pre-installed apps, such as their file manager, DLNA app and Phone Portal. You’ll find the standard Sprint apps as well, many of which are uninstallable. Quick Office Pro is included and will handle any Office file or PDF that you throw at it. There is 4GB total of internal memory on the Admiral, about 850MB of which are dedicated to apps and another 1.3GB can be used for file storage. Though it doesn’t ship with any card, the Admiral can take microSD cards up to 32GB.


Internet:

Motorola has opted for the stock Android browser with the Admiral. All the gestures you’d expect are in play, and in general it runs smooth although there are inconsequential stutters here and there. Our homepage loaded quite quickly. The Admiral is a tri-band CDMA device running off of Sprint’s 3G EVDO Rev. A network with support for the Sprint Hotspot feature. It also uses Wi-Fi b/g/n, GPS and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR with support for the HSP, HFP, PBA, OPP, A2DP, AVRC and HID profiles.



Camera:

The 5 megapixel camera did an OK job in strong, natural lighting but wasn’t so great otherwise. If you’re outdoors on a sunny day you can capture images that have decent detail and slightly-oversaturated colors, but indoors in any lighting the images become more and more grainy as the light decreases. The flash did a good job of lighting up the room, but also turned images yellow. Options are sparse with a few scenes and effects to select from and a panorama mode. Video options are even more restricted, but quality was good enough to share videos among friends and post on YouTube with.


Motorola Admiral Sample Video:




Multimedia:

Motorola uses their own music player which incorporates both your local music library with podcasts and internet radio. The first time we fired up Norwegian Wood it gave us the lyrics as the song played, but it hasn’t done that since and oddly we can’t find a setting for it anywhere. The player is a definite step up over the stock Android experience, and with so much integration is probably the best “standard” music player out there. It doesn’t, however, incorporate cloud services which holds it back.