Motorola Defy


The Motorola Defy is an Android-based smartphone from Motorola. It filled a niche market segment, by being one of the few small, IP67 rated smartphones available at the time of its late 2010 release. It is water resistant, dust resistant, and has an impact-resistant screen. The phone was launched unlocked in Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, India, Thailand, Spain, the UK, Turkey, Romania and Greece under various networks and was distributed exclusively by a number of carriers, including T-Mobile in the United States, Telus in Canada, and Telstra and Optus in Australia. An updated version of the original MB525, Defy+ is also available.

Description

The phone is a bar format with a touch screen and four Android touch buttons on the front. It has Wi-Fi, 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, speakerphone, 800 MHz TI OMAP3630 processor, a FWVGA LCD. Lacking a physical keyboard, the phone instead provides the Swype virtual keyboard and an alternative multi-touch QWERTY keyboard. The Defy shares its platform with Motorola Bravo though there are minor differences in exterior design, 3G band, lower resolution camera without LED flash and non-weather resistance. The Defy is "water-resistant" with all covers closed.

Hardware

The Defy CPU/GPU is TI OMAP3 architecture OMAP3630 and the PowerVR SGX530. The OMAP 3 is the industry's first 45-nm CMOS processor set at 800 MHz in ARM Cortex-A8 superscalar microprocessor core. Under-clocked CPU frequencies & high CPU voltage levels on the stock phone led to much lower performance and battery life on stock settings than the hardware is capable of. This can be modified on rooted phones, using 3rd party tools or custom ROMs, with stable performance over 1 GHz being common.
A minor hardware change and possible hardware refresh on MB526 models was observed, mainly noticeable by the camera lens being red, instead of green.

Customization

Although the boot loader is locked, techniques exist to root the phone and load after market ROMs. CyanogenMod is an example ROM. An official CM7.x build is available, and unofficial builds of CM10.1 supporting Android 4.2.2 and custom kernels. , XDA Developers have come up with Android 4.4 for Defy and Defy+. There is an active user community, contributing guides for improvements. The XDA Developers Forums are popular with Defy users. In November 2014, The popular XDA Developer, had managed to port Android 5.0 Lollipop from the Moto 360 smartwatch as it has the same chipset. It was undergoing development till January 2015 but due to unknown reasons the development is either stopped or paused as there is no news since then.

Gallery

Defy+, XT, Mini, Pro

Three variant/successor models: Motorola Defy Plus, Motorola Defy XT and Motorola Defy Mini, all with the same IP67 rating, have been released. The Defy Plus released in August 2011 uses a 1 GHz processor setting by default, a higher resolution camera and a 1700 mAh battery.
The Defy Mini variation uses a 600 MHz CPU in ARM Cortex-A5 microprocessor core, 512 MiB RAM, Adreno 200 Enhanced GPU at 200 MHz with a Qualcomm MSM architecture, MSM7225A chipset and a 3.2 inch screen, with a 320x480 resolution. The Mini is targeted at the low-end category of smartphones.
The Defy XT variation uses a 1 GHz CPU in ARM Cortex-A5 microprocessor core, 512 MiB RAM, Adreno 200 Enhanced GPU at 245 MHz with a Qualcomm MSM architecture, MSM7627A chipset and a 3.7 inch screen, with an 854x480 resolution. The Defy XT is targeted at the mid-range category of smartphones.
The Defy Pro is a QWERTY keyboard variant.