A Phone That’s the Life of Your Laptop

Does the redundancy of your gadgets ever bother you?

You have a phone. A laptop. A desktop PC. A GPS thing. A TV. Maybe a tablet. Each contains the same stuff: a screen, a processor chip and some memory. You’re buying the same components over and over again — in duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate — just so each device can perform identical functions in different situations.

Well, that does bother Motorola. For several years now, it’s been hammering away at a central idea: Since the modern app phone is essentially a computer, why can’t it become a brain that you slip into different docks? That was the idea behind the Bedside Dock (phone becomes touch-screen alarm clock) and the GPS Dock (attaches to your windshield) for certain Motorola phones.

Now comes Motorola’s most compelling, ambitious and exciting idea of all: a phone that can become the brain for a full-blown laptop.

The Motorola Atrix 4G ($200 with two-year AT&T contract) is a beautiful, loaded, screamingly fast Android phone. The companion laptop — sleek, light, superthin, black aluminum — has no processor, memory or storage of its own. Instead, you insert the phone into a slot behind the screen hinge. The phone becomes the laptop’s brains.

That’s a powerful idea. It means, first of all, that you don’t have to sync anything. Everything lives on the phone; the laptop is simply a more convenient viewer.

It also means that when you’re sitting on a plane or at your desk, you can work with a trackpad, full screen and traditional keyboard.

And it means that your laptop is always online, thanks to the phone’s Internet connection.

Finally, it means that you have to reverse your usual thinking about battery life. The laptop is basically a giant battery. With the phone inserted, you can happily work away for eight or 10 hours on a single charge. In fact, the laptop actually charges the phone while you work. Yes, that’s correct: you’ll get off the plane with a more fully charged phone than when you got on.

Both the phone and the laptop are gorgeous. The phone has the usual Android goodies, like front and back cameras and hi-def video recording, and it uses Motorola’s MotoBlur software, which can unify the address books and messages from your various online accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and e-mail).

But to make it powerful enough to drive a laptop, Motorola had to give it far more oomph than a typical phone. It has a dual-core processor, which, in English, means “faster than any phone you’ve ever used.” We are talking slick, responsive, satisfying.

The phone also has a fingerprint sensor built into the power button on the top back of the phone. That is, you can unlock and turn on the phone with a single finger. It’s better in theory than in execution, alas: it often takes several finger-swipes before the phone recognizes you. (You can also set up a regular typed-in password, or none.)

This phone doesn’t do much to address America’s cellphone obesity epidemic; you could probably fit an iPhone inside its body cavity and still have room for a pencil. On the other hand, the screen is gigantic — 960 x 540 pixels — which is great when you’re viewing GPS maps, documents and photos.

The laptop looks and feels like a black MacBook Air: 2.4 pounds, all cool brushed aluminum. The flat-topped keys poke up through the aluminum — again, very MacBook Airish. They’re slightly smaller than standard size, but still fine for rapid touch-typing.

The best thing about the whole phone-laptop concept is that you don’t have to think. You can pop the phone into the laptop, or yank it out, without shutting it down or entering any kind of special mode.

After about 10 seconds, whatever was on the phone’s screen appears on the laptop’s screen. It’s wild: you actually see your phone in a window. All of the buttons and icons are clickable with the trackpad clicker. You can even make phone calls in this setup — the laptop becomes a speakerphone. It’s a crazy, mind-blowing experience.

You can even run all your Android apps on the laptop’s 11.6-inch screen. Sadly, the apps don’t actually exploit the much larger laptop screen real estate. If you click the Full Screen button on the phone window, the software magnifies beautifully; if you’re over 40, you’ll have no problem reading “small” type, which is now bumper-sticker size. But you’re not seeing any additional area — only an enlarged version of what was on the phone screen. Good thing the phone’s screen has such high resolution to begin with.

The laptop also lets you open a second window, containing the Firefox Web browser at full size. That’s handy for doing e-mail, checking online calendars and, of course, surfing the Web.

All of this is so thoughtfully executed, so beautifully designed, that recommending it might seem like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, it’s ultimately a some-brainer, because there are a few flies in the Atrix ointment.

First, scrolling is a serious problem. On the phone, you scroll things with a quick swipe of your finger on the touch screen: your e-mail Inbox, your Twitter feed, your Applications list and so on. But when the phone’s in the laptop, swiping is far more difficult. While pressing down the recalcitrant clicker button, you drag one finger on the trackpad. It’s spectacularly awkward, especially because the phone frequently misinterprets the initial click as an “I want to open this app” gesture. There are Page Up/Page Down keystrokes, but they don’t function in phone apps — only in Firefox.

Second, remember that this is an Android laptop, not a Mac or Windows laptop. You can edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files very comfortably, using the built-in Quickoffice software. But you won’t be running the kinds of programs you could run on a real laptop — games, Photoshop, whatever.

Because the phone runs Flash video, you ought to be able to enjoy TV shows atHulu.com. But maybe because it’s phone Flash, it’s so jerky that it’s unwatchable, even on a fast Wi-Fi connection.

Third, the Internet speed isn’t what it should be. If you’re in one of the cities where AT&T has finished upgrading its network to 4G (fourth-generation equipment), you’re supposed to get superfast Internet service. In practice, though, the 4G adds nothing. Even when you test it in a 4G town like New York (as Engadget did) or Boston (as I did), the Atrix has an even slower Internet connection than a non-4G phone. (At&T’s explanation: the 4G indicator may appear on the phone even when the area’s 4G network upgrade isn’t yet complete.)

Fourth, the phone and the laptop together cost $500 (after $100 rebate). Now, for that money, you could get a nice phone and a full-blown Windows netbook that runs faster and does it all. Of course, you lose most of the perks — a single storage gadget, eternal battery life and so on. And the netbook you buy won’t be anywhere near as beautiful as the Atrix laptop.

But it’s not just the price of the hardware. To use the browser on the laptop, you’re required to pay AT&T an additional $20 a month — a “tethering plan.”

You can also buy a TV dock for the Atrix, with remote control, so that you can view your photos, videos and other stuff on the big screen. There’s also a beautiful wireless Bluetooth keyboard and mouse; together with the TV dock, you can turn any TV into a full-blown Android PC.

The Atrix, then, is three things. It’s an extremely fast, powerful, superbly designed phone. It’s a gorgeous, lightweight, long-lasting laptop that’s tragically clumsy to use.

Above all, it’s a really, really brilliant idea. Here’s hoping that Motorola sticks with its team of fresh-thinking engineers long enough to produce an Atrix II.