For anyone who'd rather type on a physical keyboard as opposed to touch screen, Motorola has put out more phones that any other Android manufacturer. The Motorola admiral is another portrait screen/keyboard combo.
The handset is very well designed with its rounded corners setting it apart from the minimalistic slate iPhone lookalikes that the smartphone market is dominated by. Still, it's not all just aesthetics. As the name implies, the Motorola Admiral is Military Spec 810G, which means it offers protection against dust, shock, vibration, radiation and is able to operate in extreme temperatures. Unfortunately, there is no protection against water damage.
Anyone who can't let go of the satisfaction of the popping sensation of a physical button press won't be disappointed. Like on most Motorola devices, the keys are pretty big and it's easy to type texts and emails without typos. The capacitive buttons between the display and the keyboard are also pretty responsive.
Speaking of the display, the resolution is 480x640, which may not sound great on paper, but is more than enough for the smaller 3.1 inch screen.
The stock operating system on the Motorola Admiral is Android 2.3.5 Gingerbead. While it's not yet clear if the device will get an Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update, there does appear to be an unofficial ROM in the works. Alternatively, there are tons of free apps on the Android Marketplace to design your own look, such as Go Launcher EX.
The Admiral comes with a 1.2 GHz processor and 512MB of RAM, which makes it run very smoothly and able to run all the apps from the Android Marketplace without a hitch. Despite the lack of 4G connectivity, data speeds are pretty fast with most pages loading in a couple of seconds, even with Flash support enabled. Even though only 1.3 of the 4 gigabytes of internal storage is user-accessible, the Admiral can support microSD cards of up to 32GB for storing your movies, music and other files.
The 5-megapixel camera puts out sharp pictures with only slightly oversaturated colors when shot under strong lighting conditions. It gets a little more blurry in the dark, but the flash helps that quite a bit. The video shooting options are a little restricted, but the videos turn out more than good enough for sharing on YouTube.
With all the protection from the elements, the Motorola Admiral is a phone designed for the outdoors, which means battery life is an important factor. Fortunately, it's rated for over 9 hours of talk time, which means it can easily get you through over a day of moderate usage. The battery's capacity is 1860 mAh, which is solidly above average.
The Motorola Admiral is a mid-range phone, but it does have its strength despite the lack of a dual core processor and 4G connectivity. Its solid build quality, well-designed keyboard and protection from the elements make it a great phone for anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors and does a lot of texting and/or e-mailing.