Motorola Photon 4G Video Hands-on: Meet Sprint’s New Dual-Core Powerhouse

The Motorola Photon 4G is official, and it’s shaping up to be the ultimate work-and-play smartphone for Sprint customers. It packs a blazing dual-core Nvidia Tegra processor, a bright and crisp 4.3-inch qHD display, and will work with an optional multimedia dock to leverage Motorola’s innovative webtop interface  (similar to the Atrix 4G for AT&T, though therre’s no word yet on a laptop dock). The Photon 4G also supports international calling and security features businesses demand, like remote lock and wipe.

In a summer chock-full of Andorid superphones, how does the Photon 4G stack up? Read on for more details and check out our gallery and quick hands-on video.

The Photon 4G has a more buttoned-up look than the EVO 3D, with a vaccum-metalized housing, sleek tapered edges, and a nice soft-touch matte back. During our brief hands-on time with this Android Gingerbead device, it responded instantly to our every command. But speed and beauty aren’t the only reasons to drool over this superphone. The Photon 4G sports an 8-MP camera with dual flash, 720p video recording, and 1080p HDMI output. The device comes with 16GB of storage and a full gig of RAM.

On the software front, the Photon 4G runs the Motorola Blur interface, but Sprint also makes room for Sprint ID packs, which let you change the personality of the phone with packs of widgets, wallpapers, and apps centered around themes that suit your fancy. Choices range from MTV to Green. And because the Photon 4G has a dual-core processor, the Sprint ID functionality shouldn’t drag down performance–as it did on the Samsung Transform.

Motorola showed off a couple of other cool features that will save battery life and save you time. The battery mode utility lets you choose different power profiles. For example, the Nighttime saver mode lets you tell the Photon 4G to connect only over Wi-Fi (which makes sense because you’re most often home at night) and ping Google’s s servers less often for updates. Plus, you can create your own custom profiles. The Photon 4G is also smart enough to automatically import passcodes to the phone screen when you’re making conference calls (provided the info is stored in your calendar).

We don’t know the pricing of the Photon 4G yet, but so far we’re very impressed with the fit and finish, speed, and features of this Android phone. It looks like a winner. Check out the video and let us know if you agree.