Droid Turbo 2 Review

I got a chance to spend quite a bit of time using Verizon’s Droid Turbo 2 phone by Motorola. My primary consideration for any smart phone will be its capability as a content creation device.

I don’t make nearly as many phone calls as I did a decade ago, and the basic communication features of smart phones–calls, email, text–are virtually the same on any device. Mobile apps provide the same experience across devices, so that leaves the quality of the camera and it’s ease of use as a determining factor.

In most use cases, the Droid Turbo 2 camera performs superbly. After this video review, I’ll share some examples of the type of video and photography the Droid Turbo 2 can produce:

As I said in the video review, the coolest feature of the Droid Turbo 2 is the ability to activate the camera by simply shaking your wrist a couple of times rather than hunting and pecking for the camera icon. Even if the camera icon is docked on the bottom pane of your phone, as I have it on my iPhone 6 Plus, the time it takes to look at your phone, tap the icon and orient the phone is enough to cause you to miss a fleeting shot.

With the Droid Turbo 2, you can orient the camera on your subject practically in one step.

In addition to the video review above, I’ll start by sharing the video examples I shot with the phone.

Sports Action Shot With Verizon’s Droid Turbo 2

This first one is footage from my touch football pickup game in Minneapolis. In addition to demonstrating how the phone handles sports action, you can also see how it does with varied lighting conditions, with half the field in shadow and half in sunlight.

Outdoor City Footage Shot With Verizon Droid Turbo 2

This clip is of the light rail transit Green Line leaving for St. Paul from Minneapolis at Fifth Street and Marquette Avenue.

Concert Footage Shot With Verizon Droid Turbo 2

This example demonstrates where the Droid Turbo 2 camera doesn’t perform so well. Granted, the lighting conditions are very tough. Our balcony seats were well removed from the stage, so you needed to zoom to get a decent shot and, of course, the only light came from the spotlights trained on the musicians.

Given those conditions, this is about the quality you’d expect from a smart phone camera.

Plus, we were seated behind perhaps the most obnoxious woman I’ve ever had the misfortune of having destroy the pleasure of a concert. This Big-Haired Groupie Chick was straight out of Central Casting for a requisite groupie role. She played the part with her jean jacket and swaying to and fro during every song of the concert, obstructing my view throughout.

Interior Photography Shot With Verizon Droid Turbo 2

Concert Photography

Here’s a typical shot in difficult low-light settings like the Glenn Hansard concert I attended. Kinda looks like a painting, doesn’t it?

And here’s the Big-Haired Groupie Chick who wrecked the concert.

Closeup Shot Of Ladybug

This shot is of a ladybug friend who hung out with me for about a week, showing up every now and then as I worked at my kitchen table.

Selective Focus Shot

To set the focus of your shot on the Droid Turbo 2, you just tap the part of the screen upon which you want to focus and from there, you can adjust the brightness setting with a dial that surrounds the focus indicator. In this a shot, I set the focus on my phone in the foreground to nice effect.

Bright Colors

This shot was taken at work as two colleagues carved a pumpkin for Halloween.

Exterior Photography Shot With Verizon Droid Turbo 2

Touch Football

This shot was taken on the same day as the video example shown above.

Traffic In Downtown Minneapolis

This photo was taken at dusk and demonstrates a nice effect with the foreground motion-blurring of the automobile while the background scenery remains crystal clear.

Minneapolis Skyscrapers

Finally, this photo nicely captures the diffusion of light given off by the Wells Fargo tower on a misty Minneapolis night.