Motorola Defy (T-Mobile) - read this before making a decision

Kick it. Drop it. Scratch it. Bury it. Sink it. The first "rugged" Android phone for consumers, the Motorola Defy ($99 online with a two-year contract) can withstand all this and more. It sports a sturdy build, sealed ports, and a Corning Gorilla Glass display. But more than just providing a greater sense of security for the accident-prone, the Defy offers Motorola's Motoblur interface for quick access to Facebook and other social networking services, the ability to make phone calls over Wi-Fi, and pretty good performance. Not bad for a $99 device, but is all of that enough for this phone to "defy" the lure of the competition?

Design

The Motorola Defy is an exercise in simplicity. The edges that surround the display are painted black, and screws on either side lend the phone an industrial feel. Along the sides, top, and bottom of the phone is a strip of white plastic, and the back cover is also black. The familiar Android touch navigation buttons are placed in a narrow strip beneath the Defy's edge-to-edge display.
At 4.2 x 2.3 x 0.53 inches, the Defy is around the same size as other budget Android phones such as the Motorola Cliq XT and the Sanyo Zio. The Defy weighs 4.7 ounces, so it sags a bit more in the pocket than the Cliq XT (4.6 ounces) and the Zio (3.7 ounces), but we wouldn't call this device bulky.
The Defy's casing isn't very cluttered. Beside the covered headphone jack at the top is a rubber on/off button. On the left is the microUSB port, and on the right, a volume rocker. The microSDHC card slot is underneath the battery cover, which can only be removed by pulling on a latch on the back, just below the 5-megapixel camera and LED flash.

Durability

The Defy won't survive being run over by a car or stay intact after a two-story drop onto concrete, but it can survive an unusual amount of torment.
Rubber trim around the face of the phone protects against light drops. The 3.5mm headphone jack along the phone's top rim and the microUSB port on the left side are covered with rubber stoppers, keeping the Defy secure from water and beverage spills as well as dust, sand, and dirt.


The Defy's 3.7-inch display is made of Gorilla Glass and can withstand key scrapes, face-down landings (read: drops from about four to five feet), and similar abuse without suffering the types of battle scars you may find on other phones.
The Defy withstood our abuse like Jack Bauer in an interrogation room. We submerged the entire phone in a glass of water, buried it in dirt, and dropped it on wood, linoleum, and concrete floors from about five feet. Unlike most phones, the battery never flew out of the chassis, and the rubber caps over the ports kept dirt and water out. The only visible signs of our tests were a few small scratches on the phone's plastic shell. Our attempts to scratch the display left it unscathed.

Display

The Defy's 3.7-inch display has a higher resolution (854 x 480) than more expensive phones such as the myTouch 3G slide (3.4 inches, 480 x 320) and the T-Mobile G2 (3.7 inches, 800 x 480). The display was crisp when surfing the web and browsing the user interface. Colors, too, were bright and splashy. The touchscreen was also very responsive; we launched small web links in our first try, and pinch-zooming in Google Maps was velvety smooth.

Source: laptopmag