Motorola Atrix 4G Smartphone Doubles As LaptopMotorola Atrix 4G Smartphone Doubles As Laptop

The Motorola Atrix 4G was announced by Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha at the Consumer Electronics Show today. The Atrix 4G is a formidable smartphone, which offers dual-core 1GHz processors, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage with the possibility of expanding up to 48GB with the microSD card slot.

The Atrix runs Google's Android platform (version 2.2 Froyo), and offers Motorola's Motoblur user interface elements. It will be one of the first handsets that AT&T brands with the 4G label. Rather than include Long Term Evolution, which AT&T is deploying later this year, the Atrix 4G will run HSPA+. AT&T is following T-Mobile's footsteps and will begin referring to its HSPA+ network as 4G. Neither AT&T nor Motorola specified how fast the Atrix 4G's 4G would be.

The Atrix also has a massive 1930mAh battery that is stuffed into a 10.9mm handset. Motorola claims the Atrix has a qHD display. Such a display should offer a quarter the resolution that HD does, so that would boil down to 960 x 540 pixels (similar to the iPhone's retina display).

Perhaps the most exciting -- though unoriginal -- idea behind the Artix 4G is that it can dock in a special "laptop dock." Similar in theory to the Palm Foleo from several years ago, the laptop dock will allow Atrix 4G users the ability to use their device with a full screen, full-sized keyboard, and additional niceties such as USB ports and the Flash-enabled Mozilla web browser.

The laptop dock itself is made of a magnesium alloy, measures 13.9mm, and weighs in at 2.4pounds.

Pricing and exact availability of the handset and laptop dock were not provided.