Eventually, the battery failed. It would report being fully charged, but only run for a few minutes before switching off. Recalibrating and resetting the battery statistics failed to improve the situation.

So, time to buy a replacement Nexus 6 battery. Cost under £15 and delivered on the slow boat from China.

I followed this excellent tutorial from iFixit. Here are my notes.

• Buy proper tools. You'll need a T3 Torx head. That's quite an uncommon size, so I picked up this torx set which also contains a set of tweezers.
• Melt the glue gently. Most of the glue had already perished on mine, but for the elusive splodges you'll want to gently apply heat. I used a hot water bottle filled with boiling water. I rested the phone on top of it for a few minutes and then gently peeled it apart.
• These are delicate electronics. Be very careful. Don't tug.
• Once you've undone all 22 T3 screws, the phablet opens into two pieces.
  
• As you can see, the old battery was wrecked
  
  Although, to be fair, some of that disfigurement is caused by prying off the glue. Remember to recycle your old battery safely.
• When replacing the battery, you have to consider whether you want to glue things down again. If you don't, there's a slight risk that some of the precise connections could shift and you'll have to disassemble everything to realign them. I cheated an used a small piece of sticky tape to keep the Qi in place.
• You don't need to use the Qi inductive coil - although it also contains the NFC antenna as well. If you break it, you can buy a replacement fairly cheaply. The quad connector which wraps around the battery is for Qi charging. The long straight cable is for the NFC.
• I didn't screw everything back together until I was sure it had worked. I put in the four screws for stability and then tested both the USB and Qi charging. I also tested the NFC using a basic app.
• Success!
  
• The battery came partly charged - I reset the battery statistics just to make sure it was working. Once fully charged, I'm going to use it until it is completely empty.

There you have it! For around £25 including tools, I've got a brand new battery - and a little ego boost knowing I can do basic repairs to complex electronics.

To add insult to injury, many many many people have discovered that the back peels off due to a systemic manufacturing defect.

After only a few weeks of using the device, I found that the back cover was beginning to come loose on my phone. I thought it might be a swollen battery, but it appears to just be crap build quality and non-existent QA.

When I charge the phone via Qi (the wireless charging standard) the phone gets hot - as does the charging plate. This heat is enough to partially melt the cheap glue which holds the device together.

On picking up my phone the other morning, I could easily pry up the corners of the cover. Not great. Motorola's advice to me was that I should send it back to them and - if I hadn't changed the firmware - they'd re-glue the device for me and send it back a week later. Again, not the service I expect for a £500 handset.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Using a plastic knife, and aided with a little extra heat from a hair dryer I removed the back in under a minute.

This is what it looks like :

The thin layer of glue gave way easily. I had initially thought about cleaning it off with a little isopropyl alcohol and sticking it back on with something stronger.

Given my dissatisfaction with the back (too slippery and too curved) I decided to stick the phone in a cheap, clear TPU case.

I think it looks rather neat - the circuit design of the case nicely complements the actual circuitry of the phone.

The case adds much needed friction to the back of the phone and protects it from bumps and knocks. It can't do anything about the upside-down USB port though!

This is my attempt to review it fairly after a week of usage. Some people have accused me of being unfair in my review of the Nokia Lumia. I think I was harsh - but all of the problems I experienced were real. This review of the Pro+ is unvarnished - I paid for this out of my own pocket and am beholden to no one.

tl;dr

Almost the perfect form factor. Let down by buggy software and a laggy processor. Excellent keyboard, average screen, but constant reboots means I'll be sending this phone back to see if it's a fault across all the devices, or just mine.

Specs

Because this is an unusual and somewhat rare device in the UK, I'll let you have the tech specs first.

On paper, it is underpowered compared to the latest multi-core phones. I'm coming from a Samsung Galaxy S which, nominally, has a similar processor and the same RAM. So it has been interesting to see how fast it "feels". Honestly? It's slower than the original Nexus from a few years ago.

First Impressions

It looks like an elongated BlackBerry. The keyboard is of the same design, the back has the same tactile feel, even the charger is on the side - just like a 'Berry. It comes with the requisite USB cable and plug, as well as a pair of headphones, and a minuscule instruction leaflet. So, I stuck it on charge for a few hours (as suggested) and then let rip...

A few times I touched the screen an waited for a keyboard to popup. It took me a few moments to realise my mistake. Once you get used to it, the keyboard is close to perfect. I installed SwiftKeyX to make the typing suggestions slightly better.

The UI feels slightly "toy like". Motoblur really is dreadful and shouldn't be foisted on customers. Replacing the homescreen with something like ADW Launcher makes the interface so much better.

Graphics and scrolling is very laggy. It's only 480*640, so it's not pushing a lot of pixels. When scrolling through web pages I found that music playing in the background would stutter and freeze.

You won't be playing many 3D games - even if the processor wasn't so crushingly slow, the screen is a bit too cramped for anything immersive.

For web browsing and - crucially - writing emails, this device is a champion. When it doesn't crash.

Random Reboots

The big problem with the Pro+ is that it randomly reboots. I don't mean certain software crashes, I mean that the device spontaneously hangs, and the whole phone reboots.

I've pulled off the panic logs, but I don't know what's causing it. I've reset the phone several times but it still occurs. This appears to be an isolated problem with this unit - so I'll be returning it to see if another one exhibits the same problems.

MotoBlur

sigh Moto Blur. Seriously. Handset manufacturers should stick to making hardware. Trying to tie me in to your ecosystem by way of yet another username and password? No thanks. I learned my lesson when Nokia Ovi closed. And when Vodafone 360 swallowed my data. And whatever ridiculous service Sagem had. I'm not signing up to anything else. My loyalty to your hardware has to be earned - I won't be kept to ransom. Especially when your service rarely works.

Keyboard

The keyboard on the Pro Plus is as good as any I've used on the BlackBerry. Fast, precise, and easy to enter symbols and numbers. The only drawback is that it isn't the BlackBerry keyboard - so the symbols are all in the "wrong" place. Take a look. (Note, on the UK model that I have, the $ symbol is replaced with £.

I can understand why Motorola have made some changes, but it really does confuse this BlackBerry addict as to where the "correct" keys are. Why on Earth are ALT and shift swapped? I also question the need for a physical "voice recognition" button.

On a BB, holding down a key automatically capitalises it - on the Android, it gives you all the available accents. One of those little things which takes a bit of getting used to.

As an added bonus, there's a wiggly red line spell check - so you know exactly how bad your typing is.

Apps like the browser also have keybaord shortcuts. Pressing menu+A adds the current page to your bookmarks - for example. Though useful, they're subtly different from the Blackberry shortcuts, which may confuse some refugees.

The best feature is being able to page-down through a website by pressing the space bar!

Software Updates

I'm not a fan of how Android software updates happen. I think Motorola's recent blog post explains some of the mystery behind the delays. What is annoying about the software on this device is that Motorola won't say when or if it's getting an upgrade. Their software update pages ignore it like the black-sheep of the Moto Family. Even the Motorola community forums don't list it. This rather gives the impression that it is a stillborn device.

Because it's not wildly popular, there's no support from third party Android ROMs like Cyanogen mod. So far, there's just a solitary thread on XDA Forums.

Other Stuff

The camera is reasonably quick to start, and the flash is very bright. Sadly, there's no way to switch off shutter sound. The camera is missing some of the fancier features of other phones like face detection - but it's basically fine.

There's a multi-colour notification LED which is very useful. A front-facing camera is also built-in. Curiously, it's not available for use. Wonder why?

Final Verdict

I've used this device exclusively for a week. It has crashed enough that I am going to send it back - I hope this is just a problem with my unit though.

Ultimately, it's almost enough of a BlackBerry to convert die hard RIM-fans - but it's not quite powerful enough as an Android to turn heads.

The keyboard is a joy to use. I would quite happily suffer through the poor performance for the joy of typing on this thing.

The Motoblur customisations are shockingly poor. I'd rather have vanilla Android than this barely thought-out, cartoony interface.

If you need an Android with a keyboard, this is the phone to get. It's fast enough for day to day use - and you'll be able to play a few games on it. The screen is a bit of a let down, and general performance is a little sluggish.

For those BlackBerry refugees looking for their first taste of freedom, this is an excellent start.

The Perfect Phone?

Assuming it doesn't keep crashing, how does it score on my perfect phone scale? Pretty damn high. It should be faster, the screen should be AMOLED, there should be a lanyard strap, and the front-facing camera should work. The form factor is great and the screen isn't too cramped - although there's ample space to put in something larger or higher resolution.

Maybe I'll wait for the Motorola Pro++?

Geekyness

For those using Linux, lsub shows

22b8:2e00 Motorola PCS

So shove that in your udev rules and you'll be able to start developing apps.

Root

Luckily it is trivial to root the Motorola Pro Plus - so mucking about with it is fairly easy. I do wonder if it will ever see the latest version of Android.

Remove Camera Click

The camera click is annoyingly loud and cannot be switched off. To permanently disable it, get root on the device, then use

adb shell
su
root@umts_elway:cd /system/media/audio/ui
root@umts_elway:/system/media/audio/ui# mount -o remount,rw -t ext3 /dev/block/system /system
root@umts_elway:/system/media/audio/ui# rm camera_click.ogg