The Only Computer You’ll Ever Need! - Motorola Atrix Retro Review
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- Опубліковано 25 жов 2024
- Can a phone be a computer? I mean sure, but like a computer computer? What even is a computer?
The Motorola Atrix 4G released in 2011 aimed to do both-be your pocket computer and your home computer-your only computer. How did that end up working out? Well… not so great as you can probably expect.
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Quinn. The first person in history to have his voice go HIGHER in pitch as he aged.
pretty sure that's how females work
oh wait males
Billie Joe Armstrong too
@@Kromiball 😂 😂 😂
Your voice can change up to 25 - 30 , after that it should stay the same.
It's a not so trivial problem that younger singers/VA's have to deal with.
This video has everything. Even Quinn speaking Spanish (with not a bad pronunciation)
I bet he actually know how to speak Spanish and understands it.
He does, in a previous video he said he lived in Bolivia for some years
@@javierarmandocruzsantos2152 ahhh, I'm gonna go watch that, haha
In a previous video in spanish he sounded like my mom, now I’m sure
@@Wraith-Kryptos a long time ago he left youtube for a number of years to do missionary work and he's quite fluent
Everyone:New IMacs
Quinn:I am gonna pretend that does not exist
I’ll start pretending it exists when I got the one I paid for 😂
63 60
@@snazzy i appreciate reviews from people that don't get sent their stuff
iMacs suck though.
As a Mexican, I'm amazed of the really good accent of Quin's Spanish. ¡Eso chingón!
Jaja gracias che!
@@snazzy Hablas en argentino? queremos ver mas de ese lado oscuro
@@LeandroBelli He went on mission to Argentina.
Concuerdo. ¡Excelente pronunciación!
Ciertamente muy buena pronunciación, me atrevo a pensar que su español es suficiente para tener conversaciones, excelente canal de UA-cam 👍
Quinn, I love the deep dives on old tech that’s not *too* old. I think it really scratches a certain itch for a lot of us that were teens at the time when stuff like this came out and couldn’t afford it, but aspired to have it one day!
Speak for yourself. I was 31, had just switched from iPhone 4 to the Atrix and couldn't afford that dock but really wanted one.
I remember being 11 and thinking this was so LIT ahaha
That era was so much fun to live in as a kid, but sadly as a kid either of us had the money to get a hand of one these things. haha
@@PabloAndresDealbera *neither
I remember seeing this thing and heading straight to an apple store to buy an iphone back then
The thing I like about Quinn and Linus is that they explain things in-depth and do tutorials!
Except Linus has the tendency to throw out the most annoying jargon with a neutral face as if we’ll all know what he means because we heard those things since we were still in the womb. But I get it, he has a limited time for a video. I’m just saying he could do a better job at explaining stuff.
Except Linus constantly fills his videos with misinformation that he "clarifies" (walks back) later on for extra clicks, especially when it comes to anything involving Apple
Linus doesn't properly know what he's on about though
@@yeepsleep that's why they made mac address.. they took an apple fan, and left linus out of the loop
"This thing has never been opened before"
Cue Dankpods "Can you believe no one bought this?"
😂
I like your Spanish. Sounds very natural.
The concept was good. It was ahead of it's time. Unfortunately, the general public wouldn't paid extra for this setup and the phone OS was far from perfect back in 2011. Manufacturers are making similar external display today to be used for latest Android phones.
Wow, I thought the whole Linux on Dex feature was so unique and special. Now I learn it was arguably done better a decade ago.
Yeah, that’s basically the world of modern computing innovations.
Damn, I had this in 2012/13! Everybody in university was so jealous. You still can use the Lapdock with a Raspberry Pi - works great! Motorola was really innovative back then...
Your spanish pronunciation is actually very good! Great video as always, regards from Chile!
Saludos!
My first smart phone was a Motorola Atrix. I remember wanting the dock so bad but couldn’t afford it, thanks for showing this on your channel, brings back memories.
You have no idea how long I was waiting for this video Quinn, thank you
I remember that back in the early Raspberry Pi days, people used the dock to have a Raspberry Pi laptop
I remember this thing! Such a cool concept, and I loved the use of an actual desktop OS to circumvent the problems of trying to adapt Android 2.2 to a laptop paradigm.
Also one of the first phones to have a fingerprint sensor that I recall!
Shoutout to Flashback, I would've never known this existed if not for you and Steven :)
❤️
@@snazzy You weren't kidding about that CES video, that rep really did call it useless ha
Also that voice oml
I had a lapdock & atrix. AT&T was slashing prices in 2012 and I got my lapdock refurbed for $50. It was so useful in college because I could take notes and even do minor coding in my computer class while also not having to pull my phone out to check messages. Once the phone was DOA I retrofitted the lapdock with those female MicroHDMI to HDMI adapters as well as a female USB to USB cable(you had to cut the 5V return line so the battery didn't send power to your device) and used the lapdock as a mobile display and keyboard/mouse on certain computers. It was a better and longer lasting display than a lot of cheap mobile monitors for video shoots. A crazy tech experience and probably my craziest. Thanks for this video I loved it!
2 minutes into the video, I paused, exited full screen, checked the date of this video, I thought I was watching a video from 2011 lol. nice work snazzy labs!
These are the kind of videos I feel really set Snazzy Labs out from the competition. Revisiting older devices and highlighting how they shaped the modern tech landscape is a fascinating subject and done really damn well!
Thanks!!
I had to check the post date on this video like 6 times, I couldn't tell when this was even filmed
I still have my Atrix in my old phone collection. Dual core was mind blowing for a phone at that time.
It was launched when I first started working for AT&T, talk about nostalgia.
Your voice may not be as deep, but watching you flip that laptop over... 👌 Pure class.
My dad had the full setup back way when, I used to think it was absolutely astonishing. Then it became my first touchscreen phone so I always took advantage of the laptop screen for youtube back then.
Oh I miss my Atrix. Actually was looking at my amazon history and there was my dock and everything … memories.
Had and loved this phone in high school. I ended up getting a used lapdock later on and I was always amazed at the whole system.
When I was 11 this was the coolest thing. Still remember reading about it in Stuff magazine
I'm happy that Quinn is regrowing the beard to be as majestic as it was few years ago
Hey Quinn waiting for you to switch to Apple Music now that Apple Music will have lossless music.
Already a subscriber! Don’t worry, I’ll get a super good breakdown of the service as I get my hands on it. Don’t want to do a knee jerk reaction/explainer video before I can be 100% confident it’s correct.
@@snazzy Yep great going! If its as good as it seems ngl Tidal is in trouble!
@@GHSTSTRSCRM I bet tidal doesn't support it as well because of AAC codec being used.
@Common Raccoon I'd say lately if an artist is uploading .mp3s there's somethin very wrong with what they're doing.
Even the indie distribution platform I use requires .wavs (distrokid)
That being said - who knows what people were doing in the early 2000s - early 2010s
@@snazzy If you can include iTunes Match in your tests that'd be great.
I had this phone when i was in college. I got a lot of comments of people interested whenever I had it docked. With Google docs it helped me a lot and it was easy to carry. Such a great phone for the time.
I had an Atrix 4g back in the day. It was awesome. I remember that era of android fondly. Rooting phones and flashing roms. Good times.
I gad the Atrix! Omg thanks for the trip down memory lane I have a special place in my heart for this great little phone
I remember realling wanting this phone but couldn't afford it, and the laptop dock, at the time. It was so cool. I think I was on an overclocked Motorola Triumph back then, then after I got a good job in late 2011, eventually jumped to the HTC One S which was a downright awesome phone.
The NexDock is a pretty great modern take on this. I really hope we move to a future like this for business; employees are given a smartphone that has a decent amount of power behind it with cloud-based applications that one could dock into a lapdock or deskdock for productivity.
I loved the Atrix. At the time I couldn’t afford home internet and I had a legacy plan that was unlimited for my smartphone. So…I just popped in lap dock to my phone (which was $80 by the time I got it) and viola. If you boot load unlocked the Atrix you could put a version of Ubuntu that allowed for command line and installing apps. Plus the dock also charged the phone, which was necessary given how awful battery life was on that Tegra chipset. I’d get 20 hour battery life on the dock which is insane even today.
The biggest problem with the dock is the device split RAM and CPU in half docked…and there wasn’t enough. You ended up with just a single core 1GHZ ARM chip and 512mb of RAM for Ubuntu. Which was slow to say the least. It was doable if you don’t multitask and keep only 1-2 tabs open at a time on Firefox.
If the Atrix dock came out just a few years later with quad core smartphones and more RAM at a reasonable price point ($150-200) I think it would be a hit…but when Google acquired Motorola they took the patents for it and to this day it’s still sitting on Googles hands collecting dust.
I got this from AT&T for really cheap for switching to them. I had that when it first came out! It was awesome and everyone who know anything tech saw and knew this was the bomb back then. I loved it and worked it all over the place, on the bus, coffee shops, I added a USB stick with lots of TV shows to watch while traveling. When I finally got done with it I sold it for almost what I paid for it. I kept it nice and clean all the time.
Bro, this was one of my first phone that I was so enthusiast about. Thanks for making this video. Bring back lots of memories.
It was hard to get back then because it was not officially available in my country and had to import from USA.
I really wanted for this tech to work and really believe in it. It was my main portable gear back then (during early year of business course). But it lack some performance so would not really last that long and the lapdock was put aside within few months.
The phone it self is ok. survive few years of usage.
Still had those now. The lapdock just sitting there with it rubber coating melting off. The phone is now on progress to being revive. Had a new batteries 2 years ago, not waiting for me to put stock ROM to it.
Thanks again for the video. Lots of memories coming back while I watched it.
Cheers
I bought one back in 2011, mine came with a dock that had USB, audio and HDMI outputs. It was such a cool phone at the time. It also came with an awesome car dock, this was in Argentina.
Loved this trip down memory lane. I had one of these things from new for work years ago 😀
Maaan! I miss my Atrix! After the Wifi bugs I changed to iPhone and never looked back, but the Atrix was a good android, very powerful for its time and the lapdock was really amazing to use during my highschool.
It's a shame no one made it well in the following years. I'd love to have something like that on the iPhone nowadays.
I had the Motorola Atrix 4G! It was amazing for it's time. I also still have the lapdock. I use it with my Raspberry Pi! My lapdock still works and has no issues with the battery.
I remember it from back in the day when I considered Atrix. I always wondered why not use phone as touchpad instead of making useless in the back.
Recently I tried to make a laptop out of my raspberrypi and I noticed a lot of people use that dock.
I had a coworker that was a very proud owner of one of these way back when. An interesting setup that never really went anywhere.
Honestly, if Dex were a little bit better I could certainly see myself having a set up like this sometime in my lifetime.
I really liked the Razer Project Linda that they teased at CES 2018. The phone screen became a 2nd screen for the laptop, and your track pad.
I have very fond memories of playing around with my Motorola Atrix, installing cyanogenmod and being amazed by its fingerprint reader.
Who needs Google IO 2021? This is the important tech I needed to hear about!
This is honestly amazing. Like now with docks like the NexDock something that can view both Android apps for high performance (like video editing apps) and run full debian/manjaro Linux subsystem at the same time would be awesome with today’s tech.
Samsung Dex + NexDock is the modern version of this btw
And Dex works wirelessly now.
I kinda loved my Atrix! The fingerprint reader on the lock button was amazing.
Hearing you reading the manual in Spanish actually confused me a lot for a moment xD. But I could get used to hearing you in my mother tongue I gues...
I was working at Best Buy when the Inspire, Atrix and Infuse were released. I do remember Motorola being the only OEM who bothered to release accessories like this, and them always being out of stock on our shelves if anyone ever asked.
I'm pretty sure I have the HD dock for the original Motorola RAZR/MAXX floating around a closet somewhere.
I never did see these accessories in actual practice but I sold the heck out of the Atrix and its successor, the uniquely named Atrix 2.
Why does the 17 year old you sound different and older than the present you? That was weird as hell. Lol
I thought Quinn was in his late 30s or early 40s. He's 27-28!!?!?!?!?
@@prkrmc6457 I was certainly surprised he was younger than me. Not because of his appearance, but I was expecting the same age range because of his mannerism, choice of words/vocabulary, interests and in-depth knowledge.
@@prkrmc6457 there are quite a few tech UA-camrs who look older 😅
Seventeen year olds want to prove themselves, sounds older and more masculine. People in their late twenties are more confident in themselves and willing to just be themselves.
There is only one explanation: Time travel! Did you noticed how we never see him? How do we know it's actually 17 year-old Quentin? *mysterious music intensifies
Dude!!! Your Spanish is extremely good!!!!! I couldn't even tell you're American/Canadian. Your accent is almost gone. You sound like someone from DF.
Anthony, Linus and you really underscore the difference between tech experts and tech enthusiasts.
OMG haven't watched snazzy labs in a while. Had to come and listen to the one guy who really knows his stuff and...... QUINN looks older. Looks like he's got 5 kids now. Me likes that lockdown beard.
Hi, MKBHD viewers.
Is it us only?
Can’t do it after all too young and not in the us
Would you hire me if I hate Apple?
@@gandalfwiz20007 good question
hire me im not qualified and also likely not old enough buuuuuut you should still hire and pay me to do nothing.
I'm excited that Motorola began going back to this and worked on "Ready For" their dextop experience. Its surprisingly really really good for a first gen dextop. I'm hoping Lenovo will go all the way and give us a Lenovo Atrix one day
I love these retrospective videos Quinn, I remember when this came out and I think this video was a better review than anything I saw then. Also, love the music you picked for the end of the video!
I had one of these back when it came out. There was also a dock you could connect to TV. The concept was great and ahead of its time but performance suffered due to limited hardware
Everyone: New IMAC !
Quin: look at this laptop from 2011.
“You can never trust old technology”
The next video in my queue is an Amiga 500 restoration video. My perspective on “old” is somewhat different.
Adrian's Digital Basement? or perhaps RMC? Or maybe.. Jan Beta? I can't remember who has and who hasn't.
@@Raletia RMC, it was. One of his old ones, for a bit of revision.
@@NoobixCube RMC! One day I'd love to hop the pond and see the museum he's making.
Ha! My first smartphone! Never thought I’d hear about the Atrix in 2021 holy crap.
This idea was my dream for college (which I started when this device came out). You bring your phone and stick it into your desk's computer and you're off and taking notes. You can check one out at the library when you need to write a paper or something. It definitely didn't make sense given the chips at the time, but with such capable mobile chips nowadays, I hold out hope some company will make it work.
At some point for security reasons, I can see this coming back and being very convenient.
Quinn Speaking Spanish 🥳 no, seriously you have good accent don't sound Gringo at all!
Hak5 used to sell an adapter kit that allowed one to hook up the LapDock with any HDMI / USB computer. I used mine to hook up to Raspberry Pi’s and headless servers on the go.
Great video! Love when you bring these cool gadgets of the past to the channel! Seems like the industry has gotten pretty boring over the last few years, and watching this reminds me of how cool tech is, and why I love it so much.
Oh my god! This brings so many memories!!! I bought both and the only thing that made me so mad with AT&T was the fact that they forced you to add a tethering plan to it. I believe that it was by the gb too and was kind of expensive since you also had to pay for the unlimited data plan.
This was one of my favorite Smartphones! I even had the laptop dock. It wasn’t great but it was super cool!
This phone was ahead of it’s time. It even had a finger print scanner that almost no other phone had at time time.
I got mine for $12 new at Radio Shack back when it was discontinued. I removed the battery when it swelled some years ago and I still use it as a second monitor in my computer setup.
Remember this device quite well, could also use the dock with keyboard and mouse with external monitor. Did see the laptop for sale but didn’t bother with it. It was cool it had fingerprint reader in it as well
Also remember the Motorola defy which came out around the same time which was one of the first water resistant smart phones of the time
I’ve got the Lapdock and an Atrix phone. I use my Lapdock, though, with a Raspberry Pi as a portable writing machine/word processor. When writing with it, I tend to use a terminal-based word processor, called WordGrinder, which is something like using WordStar from back in the day. But it’s very simple and speedy, and exports to markdown, so it makes me happy. On a Pi, it flies. (Plus, I can turn off that horrible trackpad that the LapDock has, and go strictly keyboard-based) :-) Using the LapDock to power the Pi too, I can get up to 4 hours of battery use.
Quinn, I suspect that in your situation, your problem may not be your dock, but your phone. You should maybe try another phone or a Pi with your dock to see.
I had the Motorola Atrix and I actually loved it!!
I still have the Mini HDMI cord that came with it lol
I would have loved something like this for my Lumia 950 back then. Continuum would have been perfect for this.
As an Atrix owner who had the dock, the biggest issue was the outdated version of Linux and Firefox (by several years) that it shipped with, and there was no way to upgrade Linux, and it took a lot of fiddling to upgrade Firefox.
The Sentio Superbook is an updated version of this. With a companion app that gives you a properly scaled desktop environment and all your apps in resizable windows. Unfortunately, it eventually came out right when Android was upgrading and a load of the permissions changed. ADB commands were required to get some stuff working and my phone developed an issue where resizable windows would glitch. Aiming to keep it as a cheap product and target people in education meant that build quality suffered and the trackpad required several firmware updates to make it useable. Phones with a notch also lose an inch down one side of the screen! You can use apps like secondscreen and Taskbar to resize and recreate a desktop environment and I'm hoping I'll still be able to get it to work better with a new phone that doesn't glitch.
had one rigged up with a raspberry pi velcro'd to the back for a long time, these things were awesome!
Reminds me of those new Samsung Dex docks they make. I still think they're the future of tech, eventually. The magic keyboard for iPad is almost that too
I actually owned the Verizon variant of this setup with the Droid Bionic smartphone (and eventually adding a Motorola Xoom to the list of devices i carried everywhere lol). It worked well, but most people didn't understand what it was for, as they thought it was a laptop and not a dock with extra features..
I remember testing one of these out at a Verizon store, though I don’t think it was an Atrix which was docked. I honestly don’t remember the phone but seeing a Linux machine powered by a phone in 2011 was impressive.
I had the Motorola Photon 4G that was on Sprint and the Lapdock. It was really fun to use.
The spanish part was not expected , great cherry on top
I still have a Atrix and a Lapdock and they both still works perfectly!!!
I used one of the lapdocks for years with an OG Pi. Was very nice.
I had the droid bionic, which was very similar to the atrix (forget the exact difference actually) I got one of these lap docks on close out. Fun fact that I remember - the atrix and bionic had the ports mounted backwards, so the docks were not interchangeable. I think it worked over LTE on the bionic but I don’t remember… but I then got into raspberry pi’s and use the lap dock to this day! It’ll power the pi through that USB port, has a built in keyboard and mouse, and even USB hub. Makes me wish there were a more modern version available intended for this purpose rather than hacking together weird adapters.
I not only had an Atrix with a Lapdock, but I used ONLY it to cover CES 2012 on Vegas for PC Magazine Brazil. Mine was "jailbroken", though, so I could run additional Linux apps (like Gimp, an Image Viewer and a basic text editor) on it.
The atrix was my first phone!!! When my dad got the first phone with a fingerprint sensor, I was jealous. He got rid of it for a Galaxy S3 but I was lucky to get it as a hand me down! It was quite an interesting phone to say the least….
Fun fact, if you unscrewed the phone holder you could swap the power and data connections and use it with motorola's followup phone the Atrix 2 and Razr HD (I think that was what it was called)
Awesome video!
I miss removable batteries, expandable storage and devices which were easy to repair... :(
great idea - fair execution. maybe a product before its time.
compute convergence is coming - your phone will dock to something, and gain better battery, gpu/cpu and storage as it moves around
I had the Motorola Atrix. I loved it back in the day. I had the first iPhone and the iPhone 3g. The atrix was my first android and i loved it. The iPhone 12 is my first iPhone since i switched to android with the Atrix.
Love this old stuff
I absolutely remember the Atrix announcement and totally remember watching your original video right when it came out. Seemed like a super cool concept for the time and still does in many ways but laptops have gotten so powerful, efficient, and small over the years that this concept feels a little unnecessary but then again, phones have made those exact same improvements. Heck my iPhone 12 Pro Max would probably destroy the mobile Intel i5 chip in my Dell XPS if the iPhone were to run a full Desktop OS. The selling point for this concept would have to be price, first and foremost. It would have to be significantly cheaper then buying the two devices separately,. The other selling feature would be have to be the convenience. It would definitely be cool to have everything I normally access on my phone, right on my laptop, but then again, there are many features on all platforms that make that pretty seamless anyway. I'm not really sure if this concept will ever go anywhere but who knows. The Atrix certainly wouldn't be the first tech product to be a decade or more head of its time.
I remember thinking how cool this thing was when it came out, especially since it was one of the first "modern" phones to have a fingerprint sensor. Someone from my high school had an Asus Padfone which seemed a lot more polished.
I bought one of these for my brand new Raspberry Pi 3 back in the day. I quickly realized the hardware hacking scene isn’t really for me. I couldn’t get a elegant setup of wires and adapters that made it look half decent in public.
its already been 10years, man time flies
so we're really gonna ignore how cool that laptop flick was by quinn at 6:36?
Thank you for that! I used many Motorola Droid's. A great devices concept,
Wow I seriously can't believe that phone was released just 10 years ago. I know we get bored about iterative updates, but those small updates each year add up to something significant over a 10 year period. There were a lot of groundbreaking phones during that time, like the LG G6 being the first to try to eliminate bezels, which was soon bested by the Galaxy S8 (which quietly revolutionized smartphone design); but outside of these important releases we have been getting iterations on design year over year. If you asked a 12 year old how old he or she thought that Motorola Atrix was, I am almost certain the guess would be something more than 10 years.