Motorola BRAVO

Available now
6th October 2010

Heading for AT&T in the US, the Motorola BRAVO is an Android smartphone sporting the same 3.7" 480 x 854 pixel screen found in the DROID and Milestone series, but without a QWERTY keyboard and with a more rounded design. In terms of specifications, the BRAVO is very close to the Motorola DEFY, but without the rugged casing.

This is an Android 2.1 smartphone, which means that it's a very capable device when it comes to multimedia and downloadable applications, but it isn't running the somewhat more polished Android 2.2 operating system which is a shame, although perhaps it will be available as a later upgrade.

The BRAVO is a quad-band GSM phone with 850 / 1900 MHz 3G support, which pretty much means that it will only work on AT&T. The BRAVO supports 3.5G downloads and uploads of up to 7 Mbps and 2 Mbps respectively, and the phone also supports WiFi, GPS and comes with an FM radio.

The camera is a disappointing 3 megapixel unit, when really a decently specified Android device like this should have 5 megapixels or better, in our opinion. We wouldn't expect to see anything great when it comes to video capture either, but it will probably still be good enough for YouTube.

The large 1540 mAh battery is quoted as giving a maximum of 6.8 hours talktime and 10 days standby time, but Motorola haven't said if those are 3G or 2G figures.

Inside is a useful 512MB of RAM to help applications run speedily. There's an 800MHz TI OMAP 3610 processor inside which isn't quite as fast as some of the competition, but it's certainly better than that found in the original DROID and Milestone smartphones.

Multimedia support is pretty comprehensive, and the BRAVO comes with a 3.5mm audio socket and stereo Bluetooth. The standard Android software package is here, enhanced with MOTOBLUR which will look after all your social networking, backup data and even allow a remote wipe if the phone is lost.

The BRAVO will be available on the AT&T network sometime this quarter for $129.99 when taken with an appropriate data plan, more details can be found at att.com/bravo.