The Motorola Photon 4G is a high end Android-based mobile smartphone that is distributed exclusively by Sprint. A very similar model is available as the Motorola Electrify from U.S. Cellular.
User interface
The Photon runs a customized interface similar to the standard Android interface with several additions. Motorola provides custom widgets to toggle settings for airplane mode, bluetooth, wireless 4G access, and WiFi access as well as resizable widgets for functions such as the calendar, social networking, a world clock and more. The Photon's customized interface has seven home screens and four main onscreen buttons at the bottom of the screen. Of the bottom buttons the left three buttons may be customized to run a program of the user's choosing, while the right-most button opens the app drawer. Capacitive touch buttons at the bottom of the screen are Menu, Home, Back and Search. Pressing and holding on the Home button brings up a "Recent Apps" view, while double tapping the Home button will either show a thumbnailed view of all seven home screens or, at the user's preference, quick launch a specific function.
Connectivity
The Photon is an international capable phone, meaning that besides using Sprint's CDMA/EV-DO network and other CDMA networks accessible internationally and through domestic roaming; it accepts a GSM SIM card with quadband GSM and triband UMTS/WCDMA/HSPA+ capabilities. The phone also, like most Android phones, features WiFi access, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, 3.5mm headset jack, and a micro-USB port for charging and data sync with a PC. An HDMI port allows for access to HDMI-mirroring and separate functions.
Business and Enterprise features
The Photon supports several important business features. It supports access to Microsoft Exchange Server mail servers, including the support of several Exchange ActiveSync profiles. Second, full encryption of the internal and external storage is supported. This last feature requires the creation of a password that is required when booting the phone. Motorola provides several additional software packages for PCs and Mac, such as Motorola Media Link and the Motorola Phone Portal.
Webtop
Similarly to the Motorola Atrix 4G, it has the integrated Ubuntu-based 'Webtop' application from Motorola. The Webtop application is launched when the phone is connected to the external display through Laptop dock or HD multimedia dock. In Webtop mode, offering similar user interface of typical Ubuntu desktop, the phone can run several applications on external display such as Firefox web browser, SNS clients and 'mobile view' application enabling total access of the Photon and its screen. In September 2011, Motorola released the source code of Webtop application at SourceForge.
In 2011, Motorola joined the Android Upgrade Alliance, promising to release operating system updates to all its phones for 18 months following initial release. However, in October 2012, Motorola announced in a forum post that several phones, including the Photon 4G, will not receive updates to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, instead offering a rebate program for users to trade up to newer devices. Punit Soni, who runs software product management for Motorola Mobility, stated "I think some of them have gotten a raw deal, We understand strongly and apologize for it."
