The cool, business-like blackberry feel, mixed with the fun and endless free app market of android… put these two features together and you might just have one awesome phone. Amazingly the new Admiral is actually made by Motorola, though it clearly derives its sleek and plain design from Blackberry. The Admiral does not necessarily bring any new technology or groundbreaking design to the table, rather it seeks to refine and rework some already well-liked phones. The idea of taking something that currently owns the market and tuning it for an entirely new crowd of customers seems to be a growing trend.
Let’s start out with the physical features of this cell. As we have already mentioned it attempts to bring both the effectiveness of business phones and the fun of android devices together as one. There’s a nice touch screen display that tops the phone, sitting right above a full qwerty keyboard. For comparison, the Admiral seems extremely similar to the Blackberry Curve, only slimmer, and even resembles a Palm Pre. The display is a solid 3.1 inches, which may seem small in comparison to today’s enormous display devices, but fitting a screen even that large on the same piece of hardware as a full tactile keyboard is an accomplishment in itself. Also found on the device are four Android touch-sensitive buttons, a headphone jack, and a micro USB port. The only true downside that we have found in the Admiral after short-term testing is the unfortunate design flaw found in the rugged feel of the phone. To clarify, in an apparent attempt to style the phone with beautiful curves the creators unfortunately made the top half of the phone noticeably thicker than the bottom half. This creates an odd feeling when a user tries to type a longer text or email.
The phone is running Android 2.3 so you can rest assured that it has the latest and greatest in software. Furthermore, the phone has a fully upgraded system of components over its predecessor the XRPT. Coming in with an upgraded processor, a generous amount of memory, and even Sprint’s Direct Connect feature. The last feature happens to be one of the more innovative ones that is being introduced to mobile phones these days, the ability to turn a cell-phone into essentially a walkie-talkie that can have live communications set up between multiple devices. To sweeten this deal even further, the phone only costs $99.99 with contract of course. Overall the Motorola Admiral is a good looking, odd feeling, and solidly performing device that brings a lot of machine to the table for a very affordable price.
