The phone feels solid, and the back has an inviting rubberized coating. At 5.6 oz., it'll be a lot to carry around, though. The Photon is not only heavier than the 4.8-oz. Atrix, but at 2.6 x 5.0 x 0.5 in., it's also larger in all dimensions. I really like the Photon's kickstand, although it takes a little work and some fingernail action to get it out of the back of the phone. When you pull the leg out, it automatically reorients the screen for landscape viewing on a table.

The phone's 4.3-inch screen is very bright and sharp. It can show 540 x 960 resolution, which matches the Atrix's screen, but the display is a generous 0.3-in. bigger. It doesn't sound like much, but you can see the difference in a less cluttered home screen and a better view of videos and games.

Like the Atrix, the Photon's display takes up almost the entire front face of the phone. Whether I was flipping tiles around or tapping on an icon, the touch screen was very responsive, although it sometimes took a second or two for the phone to catch up with what you want it to do.

Based on 2.3 (Gingerbread), the Photon is a small step up from the Atrix's Android 2.2 (Froyo) software. It uses a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor with 1GB RAM and 16GB of flash . There's room for an optional 32GB storage card for a potential maximum of 48GB.

For mobile shutterbugs, the Photon has both rear- and front-facing cameras. I tried them both out and found that, while the video I shot with the front-facing VGA webcam was a little shaky, the still images produced by the back-facing 8-megapixel camera (which comes equipped with a dual-LED flash) looked rich and sharp.