Motorola DEFY+

Available now
16th August 2011

Motorola's announcement of the DEFY+ comes the day after the surprising news that Google has agreed to buy Motorola for a staggering $12.5bn. And although the announcement of a single handset is not that important compared to a massive takeover like that, the DEFY+ is still quite an important handset.

The original Motorola DEFY was launched last year, and it was the first Motorola smartphone to make any serious inroads into the European market for some time. As with the DEFY+, the DEFY's almost unique selling proposition was that this was a ruggedised but fully-featured Android smartphone that appealed to those customers who found standard smartphones a bit too fragile.

Although the DEFY sold quite well, it had a couple of major weaknesses - the processor was relatively slow at 800 MHz, and the operating system only went up to Android 2.2 rather than the latest Android 2.3. The new DEFY+ builds on the old handset's strong points and brings the DEFY line bang up to date.

The CPU is now a 1 GHz unit and Android 2.3 ships as standard, with makes the DEFY+ much more competitive under the hood. Motorola have also given the DEFY+ a much bigger battery, with a 1700 mAh cell fitted underneath giving up to 7.1 hours talktime and 16 days standby time. You can never have too much battery life with Android, so this is also a help.

But of course the main feature of the DEFY+ is the ruggedness. Built to IP67 standards, the DEFY+ is highly resistant to dust and water and the Gorilla Glass screen is scratch resistant too. Don't expect it to be indestructible though as big screen devices like this can still break relatively easily if impacted in the wrong place.

The other features of the DEFY+ are pretty much like the old handset, with a 3.7" 854 x 480 pixel display, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and autofocus on the back, an FM radio, WiFi, GPS and an electronics compass and 3.5G support. Android 2.3 of course comes with a comprehensive media player, web browser, turn-by-turn navigation and access to thousands of application in the Android market. The DEFY+ is the same size and weight as the old model, despite the larger battery, at 107 x 59 x 13.4mm and 118 grams.

Motorola say that the DEFY+ should be available in the early autumn in Europe, Asia and Latin America. No guidance was given on price, but we would expect the DEFY+ to retail for about €400 at launch.