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The phone has three microphones, which specialize in noise cancellation; leading to a great performance that matched the best smartphones we've seen this year. Stellar Verizon coverage helped too, and we never experienced dropped calls or static.

When it comes to phone’s call quality, it is hard to beat the Motorola [DROID X]. Voices on our end were exceptionally clear and natural sounding.... People that we called said we also sounded very clear on their end.

Motorola managed to cram three microphones into this beast: Two for noise-canceling purposes and one for regular squawking. This arrangement produced a surprising degree of call clarity.

"Call quality was great. Conversations on our end sounded mostly clear with just some slight background noise, but nothing too distracting. Our friends didn't complain about any background disruption or voice distortion and were quite happy. They didn't even notice when we switched over to speakerphone."

"Motorola has always made phone call quality a priority, and they try a new trick on the Droid X: three microphones, two used for noise cancellation. The trick works: I didn't get any background noise on the other end of calls made with the X, even when I made the calls standing next to a roaring city bus."

"Call quality was very good over Verizon's network. My contacts were impressed with how clear my voice sounded, with little background noise--even during a blustery day in San Francisco. A few of my contacts sounded a bit tinny over the phone, but I'm not sure whether this was due to their phones or to the Droid X."

"There are two additional microphones for noise cancellation that improve the Droid X’s call quality: one is located on top of the device, left of the 3.5mm headphone jack and power/lock button, while the other is located on the lower back."

"We admit it feels awkward to hold such a big device up to the ear for phone calls."

The DROID X supports H.263 and H.264 encoded MP4 videos, WMV, and DivX encoded AVI. Our test videos in 720x306 at 1500kbps looked excellent on the large display, and played smoothly without any dropped frames.

The music library on the Droid X is similar to the old Droid, although we had issues connecting the smartphone to a computer to load music onto it; third-party apps like Pandora may be your best bet to listen to music out of the phone's decent speakers.

"It's no surprise that multimedia plays a huge part. Much like the HTC HD2, the smartphone offers a dedicated Blockbuster On Demand app where you can preview and download movies--to rent or to own--on the go. Once purchased, you can watch the video on another connected device, such as a TV, a Blu-ray player, or a PC, using Blockbuster software."

"The Droid X is an excellent phone for watching video.... YouTube videos in HQ (480p) mode streamed over Wi-Fi looked sharp, and Verizon's $10-per-month V CAST service has assembled a decent list of content partners. The phone will also stream full NFL games with an upcoming app.... The phone plays AAC, MP3, WMA and WAV music... [which] sounded rich and clear."

"YouTube and the Blockbuster app really take advantage of the large display; movies looked superb, and content loaded considerably quick, especially over Wi-Fi. Too bad the Blockbuster app does not work with the HDMI output, only content that you capture."

"The X's 4.3-inch, WVGA 854-by-480-resolution display is a knockout. Colors look vibrant and details are crisp…. The Droid X is just begging to be a portable video player."

"The Droid X has 8GB of onboard memory and ships with a 16GB microSD card, but the expansion slot supports up to 32GB cards, so you can essentially have 40GB of storage."