The Motorola Atrix 4G is an Android-based smartphone by Motorola, introduced in CES 2011 on January 5, 2011. It was made available in the first quarter of 2011. It was introduced along with three other products, Motorola Xoom, Motorola Droid Bionic, and Motorola Cliq 2. It uses an NVIDIA Tegra 2dual core processor. It is the first phone to use a quarter-HD PenTile display with 24-bit graphics. The Motorola Atrix 4G is carried by the following wireless providers: AT&T Wireless US, Orange UK, Bell Canada CAN, Telstra AU. AT&T released Atrix on March 6. At the time of its release, the Atrix 4G was the most powerful smartphone, being one of the very first with a dual-core processor, 1 gigabyte of RAM, and a fingerprint sensor. It won CNETBest ofCES 2011 Award in the Smartphone category, and won nine awards at CES 2011. With the launch of the Motorola Atrix 4G at CES 2011, Motorola and Google had been working together to integrate the software with the hardware.
The Atrix 4G was one of the first Motorola devices to ship with its Webtop platform. When the phone is placed into its HD Multimedia Dock or Laptop Dock accessories, the user can access an Ubuntu-based desktop featuring access to the phone and its applications via the Mobile View application, integration of Android notifications into the desktop, multimedia playback through Entertainment Center, file management through Nautilus, and the Firefox web browser. In September 2011, Motorola released the source code of the Webtop software on SourceForge.
Accessories
Atrix accessories announced include:
Lapdock — Laptop dock
HD multimedia dock — Desktop dock with HDMI, audio, USB ports, and IR remote control
Navigation Dock — Vehicle dock
PowerDock — Standard dock
Software updates
On April 30, 2011 AT&T issued an update to the Motorola Atrix 4G enabling HSUPA
On July 25, 2011 AT&T began rolling out the Android 2.3.4 update to the AT&T-branded Atrix 4G
On February 8, 2012 Motorola sent out Android 2.3.6 to 1000 phones for market testing. Only AT&T customers enjoy 2.3.6 version.
On February 15, 2012, Motorola announced that an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich would be available in Q3 2012.
On September 28, 2012, Motorola announced that they would not upgrade the Atrix 4G to Ice Cream Sandwich as they had promised, prompting customer outrage.
Variants
In June 2011 Motorola and Sprint announced the release on July 31 of the Motorola Photon 4G, which has a quarter-HD multi-touch display and a 1 GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor. It has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with 720p recording capabilities, a VGA front-facing camera for video chat and self-portrait pictures, and the Sprint ID customization app.
FCC approval
Reception and awards
The Atrix 4G received largely positive reviews from critics. Engadget gave the Atrix 4G 9 out of 10, commenting on its sound quality and high-resolution display. CNET gave it 4 out of 5 stars for its sleek design and 5 megapixels camera. Atrix has been awarded 'Best of CES Awards' at CES, held in January 2011.
Development
When the Atrix was shipped to AT&T, root access was available, but Motorola locked the bootloader by request of AT&T, meaning that custom versions of Android were not able to be installed. Only pseudo-roms were available, since the kernel could not be overwritten. Many customers wrote to Motorola, including on their Facebook page, and eventually a method to unlock the bootloader was released. People began to create custom ROMs for the phone, and eventually, it gained official CyanogenMod 7 support. However, CyanogenMod support was more difficult to gain than for other phones because the Atrix shipped with uncommon features, such as WebTop support and a fingerprint reader. After CyanogenMod 7 was finished, Motorola's support pages stated that the latest version of Android, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, would be released to the phone. This would be important for the development of CyanogenMod 9, since the existing kernel of the Atrix was incompatible with Ice Cream Sandwich drivers. Though ROMs based on Ice Cream Sandwich could still be used, important features such as hardware acceleration did not work. Motorola Mobility was then acquired by Google, and the online support page still said that the Atrix would receive ICS. However, eventually the page was updated stating that the Atrix would not receive the ICS update, meaning that development would be extremely difficult to move forward. Eventually, developers were able to get a testing version of the incomplete AT&T ICS ROM, leading some to believe that ICS progress would be able to move forward again. However, that build drained battery power rapidly and did not come with the kernel source, meaning that it could not be used for stable development purposes. Some developers eventually succeeded in developing a Jelly Bean ROM from the leak with minimal bugs. Developers then decided to build their own kernel, based on the nVidia Linux 3.1 kernel. According to kernel developer krystianp, "Motorola helped the team, and give them a little boost. We can't say they played fair, but at least they help a little." As for the kernel, it is being made "with ported code derived from a combination of sources." In August 2014, a release of CyanogenMod 11 was made available.
Successor
The Motorola Atrix 2 was released in late 2011 for AT&T. This was followed by the Motorola Atrix HD in 2012. A variant called Motorola Atrix TV was released in some markets including Brazil, featuring an antenna for digital television.
