Before Galaxy, there was Droid—a brand so synonymous with Google's OS that few people knew or cared about the full Android namesake. But as the Samsungs of the world gained ground, the killer robot brand languished, while Motorola itself turned its attention towards the fresher, cleaner Moto moniker. The new Droid Turbo ($199 with contract, 32GB ) is a course correct for the Verizon-Motorola partnership, from iterative to innovative. Brimming with the latest specs and features, the Droid Turbo is appreciably better than the new Moto X ($249.00 at Amazon) in nearly every way. The display is sharper, performance is better, and the battery is significantly larger. The killer-robot motif is dead, too, allowing this verifiably killer phone to speak for itself. The Droid Turbo earns our Editors' Choice award for Android phones on Verizon Wireless.

Design, Features, and Call Quality

The Droid Turbo isn't as elegantly designed as the Moto X, skewing towards utilitarian and vaguely militaristic like Droids past. It comes in two flavors: one with the familiar rubberized Kevlar back and one with a new woven ballistic nylon back. Our review unit came with the latter, which I prefer between the two. For now, the ballistic nylon is also your only choice if you want 64GB of internal storage; that model costs $50 extra. The nylon feels like a robust canvas fabric and neutralizes smudges and scuffs better than normal plastic would. My only worry is dust and fine particles getting caught in the weave's crevices. For good measure, the Turbo features a nanocoating inside and out, protecting it from spills and light rain. It's not waterproof, though, so don't test its limits in the shower or pool.

Despite excesses elsewhere, Verizon and Motorola show relative restraint with the Turbo's size—at 5.65 by 2.89 by 0.33-0.44 inches (HWD) and 6.2 ounces, it's comparable with the Galaxy S5 ($58.99 at Amazon) more than the Galaxy Note 4. The rubberized Kevlar model is a hair thinner (0.31-0.42 inch) and lighter (6 ounces) than the nylon. It doesn't fit quite as nicely in my hand as the Moto X, but the rounded edges and textured back make for a comfortable grip. It's a good size in my opinion, and those lamenting the loss of one-handed use have very few options, unfortunately.

The 5.2-inch 2,560-by-1,440 AMOLED display is a beauty. It's impossibly sharp at 565ppi, besting both the LG G3 (534ppi) and the Galaxy Note 4 (515ppi) in pixel density. While you might not necessarily be able to appreciate the added sharpness over the Moto X's 1080p resolution, the Droid Turbo's display looks brighter and produces cleaner, if still somewhat beige, whites. I'd give the edge to the Note 4; its display is even brighter, manages the bluish tint of AMOLED better, and produces the cleanest whites of any AMOLED display. Viewing angle is still very wide here, but there's a mild color shift when off angle. Between the three Quad HD phones we've seen, I like the Note 4, G3, and Turbo displays in that order.

Below the display are capacitive navigation buttons for Back, Home, and Recent Apps. They use the older Android iconography and will only look more dated as devices move on to the newer Android Lollipop icons. Above the display is a single speaker port that, in side-by-side tests, sounds indistinguishable from the Moto X's speaker—not quite as loud as the HTC One (M8)'s stereo speakers, but louder and better sounding than the Galaxy S5's.

The Droid Turbo connects to Verizon's 3G CDMA (850/1900MHz) and LTE (Bands 2, 3, 4, 7, and 13) networks, with global support for GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz) and UMTS/HSPA+ (850/900/1900/2100MHz). We found Verizon's LTE network to have the widest coverage and best speeds overall in our latest Fastest Mobile Networks tests. The Droid Turbo also supports carrier aggregation (Bands 4 + 13 on Verizon), which should provide even faster speeds as Verizon expands that network capability.

Call quality was mostly positive in my tests, with a few minor quibbles. Volume in the earpiece won't blow you away, but it's sufficient for most scenarios. Voices on the other end of the line sound clear and full, with a nice natural warmth. Transmissions through the mic were mostly clean and easy to understand, but callers reported a bit of static throughout calls. Noise cancellation dampened a particularly loud city street, but also rendered my voice a bit wobbly and muffled. Speakerphone volume isn't particularly impressive in terms of volume, but sounds good within the confines of a medium-sized room. Verizon says a software update later this year will bring HD Voice calls using VoLTE.

Performance and Android

Also onboard are dual-band 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, NFC, and GPS radios. The Turbo had no issue connecting to an Era by Jawbone Bluetooth headset. Wi-Fi performance was less than stellar in my tests, however. In side-by-side tests in an office with crowded Wi-Fi airwaves, the Turbo struggled to latch onto networks from distances that the Note 4 had no problem with. Download and upload speeds were also disappointing compared with the Note 4. On our corporate 5GHz network, the Note 4 routinely delivered 20-40Mbps down and 8-12Mbps up, compared with the Turbo's 10-15Mbps down and 5-10Mbps up. The Moto X only managed slightly better speeds, though, and we know the Note 4 has particularly strong Wi-Fi performance from past tests. It's not an indictment of the Turbo's Wi-Fi, but performance isn't class-leading here.

Performance and Android

The Droid Turbo joins the Galaxy Note 4 as one of the first to feature Qualcomm's quad-core 2.7GHz Snapdragon 805 processor. Unsurprisingly, benchmark scores were nearly identical to the Note 4's, earning the Droid Turbo top marks across the board. The only area where the Turbo didn't eclipse current flagships like the Galaxy S5 was in graphics tests, where on-screen frame rates were about equal—the higher pixel count of the Turbo appears to cancel out the benefits of the newer Adreno 420 GPU, much like we saw with the Note 4. I noticed a bit of choppy gameplay in Gameloft's new, graphically intensive Six Guns app, but it was only a mild nuisance and nothing to be overly concerned with. Everything moved along incredibly quickly in my tests, though, and the Droid Turbo met or exceeded our already-high expectations. This is a seriously powerful phone that will handle any task you throw at it with aplomb.

See How We Test Cell Phones

Verizon thankfully didn't muck with Motorola's near-stock Android 4.4.4 software for the Droid Turbo. It's essentially indistinguishable from the Moto X, save for a few added pieces of bloatware and a Command Center widget (for weather, calendar events, and battery life) that I actually like. The best features of the Moto X are also here, including Moto Assist, Moto Voice, Moto Display, and Moto Actions. We've already covered these features in depth in our original Moto X review, so read that for a full rundown. Here's a quick refresher: Moto Assist adjusts phone behavior depending on what you're doing (like driving or sleeping), Moto Voice lets you issue voice commands even when the phone is asleep, Moto Display shows notifications and time when the phone is otherwise asleep, and Moto Actions uses infrared sensors to enable touchless gesture controls. They're exactly why we loved the Moto X, and everything works as advertised on the Droid Turbo. The Trusted Devices feature is also onboard, disabling your phone password when you're within range of a trusted Bluetooth device.

The lone new feature is Droid Zap, which creates localized networks with other Zap users nearby so you can easily share photos and videos. It's available in the Google Play store, so most Android phones can get in on the action, but only Droid models will be able to share video. I fail to grasp the usefulness of this feature. For example, Verizon suggests using it at events to see the pictures your friends are taking—that seems a bit redundant, considering you'll all be in the same venue, ostensibly seeing the same thing and taking the same or similar pictures. You can create group slideshows for the Chromecast and share screenshots, but these are both easily achieved without Zap. I doubt Verizon will drum up a large-enough user base to make this worthwhile.

Our 64GB review unit came with 52.3GB free out of the box. That's a heavier software load than we saw on the 16GB Moto X, which allocated about 6GB for system files out of the box. Verizon's usual smattering of useless apps are partially to blame; none are removable and include redundant apps like VZ Navigator and Messages+, which Verizon frustratingly keeps pushing as the default SMS app on all of its new phones. You can disable them and revert to Android's normal messaging app, but you can't recover the storage.

Camera and Conclusions

In a battery rundown test, where we streamed a YouTube video over LTE with screen brightness set to max, the Droid Turbo's massive 3,900mAh battery was good for 7 hours, 13 minutes of playback. That's better than phones like the iPhone 6 , which only lasted 4 hours, 33 minutes in the same test. It's also close to the Note 4's 7 hours, 56 minutes, which is still the longest-lasting phone we've tested. Verizon throws in a Turbo Charger power supply, which took the Turbo from zero to 30 percent battery in 30 minutes in my tests.

Camera and Video

Sometimes more megapixels matter, like in the case of the Lumia 1020. Other times, they don't count for much, as is the case with the Droid Turbo's 21-megapixel camera. It's not bad by any stretch, but there's no real advantage over the Moto X's middling 13-megapixel camera. Shots look mostly good with sufficient light, but focus and exposure were inconsistent in my tests, rendering many shots unusably soft or washed out. When it nailed both, images looked nice, but still not quite as crisp or lifelike as the Note 4 or iPhone 6. The camera is quick to open and shoot, requiring less than a second to fire off shots; Motorola's wrist-twist gesture works reliably well for summoning the camera quickly. Indoors and under low light, image noise starts to obscure finer details, and long exposure times resulted in many blurry shots. There's no diffuser ring like with the Moto X, but I found the dual-LED flash on the Droid Turbo to be superior in side-by-side tests. Surprisingly, the Moto X's photos had more hotspots, where it overexposed part of each shot, and it wasn't much better than the Turbo at eliminating shadows to begin with.

For video, you can shoot 4K at 24fps, 1080p at 30fps, and 720p slow-motion video that plays back at 15fps. Video quality isn't particularly impressive. 4K video shot in bright outdoor light is full of detail, but suffers from a pronounced jelly-cam effect with even slight movements. 1080p video doesn't quite pop like footage captured by the Note 4, and things start to look pretty waxy under less than ideal light. Slow-mo video isn't nearly as smooth as the iPhone 6's.

Conclusions

Rumors of the Droid's demise have been greatly exaggerated. This is the Droid you're looking for. Pick your cliché of choice—the Droid Turbo marks a return to form for the once storied brand. It's a spec hound's dream come true, showcasing the best the Android world has to offer in a more reasonably sized chassis than the similarly equipped Note 4. Last year's Droid Ultra was an iterative afterthought, but the new Droid Turbo looks primed to unseat the Moto X from cult-hit status. It's also worth reiterating the 64GB model is only $50 more with a contract, which is very reasonable, and worth it if you like to keep files local. It's a shame this is a Verizon exclusive, because it might just be the best Android phone on any carrier.

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