Review: Motorola Devour
Browser
The Web browser on the Motorola Devour is quite good, as I'd expect from a Google Android device. Though the Web browser comes with Flash Lite support, I've never been a fan of Flash Lite, and it didn't help the browsing experience on this phone. Videos would never load properly, and the browser came to a screeching halt when I tried to load more complicated Flash Web sites. It's no wonder that Adobe won't be bringing its more powerful Flash 10 to this phone; it doesn't seem to have the power to handle the task. Zooming in and out of pages was a bit jerky, and the phone doesn't support multi-touch pinch and zoom gestures, but the zoom controls are always front and center on the browser display.
Adding bookmarks is easy, and your favorites appear in a list format. It's too bad the browser doesn't get the thumbnail view that you'll find on more advanced Android OS phones, but it was still easy to maintain bookmarks, and besides your chosen favorites the Devour also lists your most frequently visited pages as well as your complete browsing history. It was also easy to add these bookmarks to the homescreen, which lets you jump directly to your favorite site with a single tap.
The Motorola Devour surfs the Web on Verizon Wireless' EV-DO Rev. A network, its fastest 3G service. In practice, the Web browser seemed snappy enough, though it was never in a hurry. Mobile sites loaded very quickly, but large sites, like CNN's homepage, took much longer, even compared to similar phones on the same network. I might have had an even faster Web experience if Wi-Fi worked properly, but as I mentioned, I wasn't able to connect to any Wi-Fi network consistently.
Customize
Android phones like the Motorola Devour offer significant customization options out of the box, and even more customization through apps available from the App Market. There are loads of setting options available to tweak everything from power management to touch sensitivity on the optical joystick. Besides the Motoblur interface, you can't do much to change the basic theme of the device, at least not out of the box. There are a few theme apps that can change your menus and icons, but these tend to be very resource intensive and buggy, so I'd hesitate to recommend them for Devour users.