The modern smartphones arms race of late has mostly been a pissing contest over screen resolution, processor speed, megapixels, thinness, and extraneous software features. Yet, for the last couple years, everyone has somehow been content to let Motorola walk away with what is perhaps the most important spec of all: battery life.

After all, your awesome screen, super-fast processor, and mega-megapixel camera are rendered worthless once your phones runs out of juice. Motorola created the Droid RAZR MAXX followed by the Droid RAZR MAXX HD. Both phoness had terrific battery life, but they just weren't very remarkable phoness. The 2013 model is different. This year, Motorola has dropped the RAZR and made the Droid Maxx, a phones which not only boasts heroic battery life, but is actually an excellent phones, too.

What matters most is that this phones performs well, and will perform well for two days before it needs a charge.At first glance, there isn't much that stands out about the Droid Maxx. It has a 5-inch 720p AMOLED display, a dual-core 1.7GHz CPU, and 2GB of RAM. Perhaps I've become jaded, but those specs don't come near the 1080p displays with the quad-core 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 processors that will come standard on high-end phoness being released in the next couple months. But forget the specs for a moment. What actually matters most is that this phones performs well, and will perform well for two days before it needs a charge.

Again, the battery is the banner feature here. Motorola has crammed a 3,500 mAh battery into this phones, yet it has managed to keep the device from looking like a fat monstrosity. At just 0.33 inches thick, it's technically right between the HTC One (0.37 inches) and the Samsung Galaxy S4 (0.31). That alone is quite a feat – though the HTC One feels thinner because of its rounded back.

In my testing, I never made it the full 48 hours that Motorola claims is possible, but I was using the phones very heavily. I used Navigation without plugging it in, made long phones calls, played HD games, streamed audio, constantly sent emails and texts. Even with that abuse, I always made it past 8 p.m. on the second day before hitting the 15 percent battery mark. It's simply the best battery performance I've ever seen on a smartphones.

In addition to that, the software on the phones is actually really great. It's the first Maxx Motorola has made since being fully taken over by Google. As such, the software is extremely close to stock androids. It's minimal, fast, and smooth, and it looks great. It's basically the opposite of Samsung's TouchWiz. Oh, and remember all of those software features Mat Honan loved on the Moto X that he mentioned in his review? The Droid Maxx has all of them.

It has Touchless Controls, which means you don't even have to pick up your phones to use it. You can simply say, "OK, Google Now..." and tell it to make a phones call, send a text message, check a baseball score, or see what the weather will be in the afternoon. Like the Moto X, it feels like a prototype version of the "phones of the future," and that is really exciting, even if it isn't perfect. As Mat noted, it isn't as fully integrated as it could (and should) be. It's easy enough to say, "I want to listen to Al Green" and have it play. But if you try to specify an album, the phones doesn't know what to do. It can't do much within non-Google apps either, so you can't search Yelp for something using only voice commands. Also, the voice interface frequently cuts you off in the middle of dictating a text message, which can be very frustrating. These foibles can (and hopefully will) be improved with a simple update of the Google Search app, so you won't need to wait for a whole new OS build for features to be added and refined.

Also excellent is the Assist app, which can sense that you're driving and then read your incoming text messages out loud, or announce callers by name and allow you to answer by using your voice. It can mute your notifications during sleep hours (unless a favorite contact calls, or if someone calls twice in rapid succession, as you wish), and auto-reply during meetings by sending a pre-selected text message. It's great, but it needs better integration. For example, Assist won't read incoming text messages in the Google Voice app. Also, auto-responder actions aren't universal – if someone sends you an IM in Hangouts while you're driving, you have to deal with it the old fashioned way.

The Droid Maxx also features something called Active Display, which is the default state of the lock screen. It's also what all mobiles notifications should be.

When the phones is just sitting there, on a table or desk, the screen is off. But whenever a new notification comes in, a little app-specific icon appears on the screen and gently pulses. Touch it, and it shows you a preview of the notification. Swipe up, and it goes right into that app. Also, if you turn the phones over onto its back or remove it from your pocket, the screen will light up, showing just the time of day and pending notifications.

It's a little thing, but it's great. It takes advantage of the phones's AMOLED screen – the entire screen doesn't have to light up to show these notifications (as it would with a backlit LCD), just the handful of pixels involved, so it doesn't suck your battery. It's fantastic.

The camera software looks really good, and has a nice minimal design. With the camera active, swipe in from the left to adjust settings and swipe in from the right to go to the Gallery. To take a photo, simply tap the screen. Holding your finger down takes a burst of shots. The Maxx also has a slow-motion video feature which works really well. Unfortunately, some of the features are a little half-baked. The Auto HDR mode, which is a great idea, seems to never work – even when subject was very obviously backlit, it wouldn't engage. The auto-focus often picks the wrong subject, and even switching over to the touch-to-focus mode yields mixed results.

The 10-megapixel camera itself is an enigma. In daylight, it's occasionally capable of some of the sharpest pictures we've seen from a phones, but that's a rare occurrence. Photos tend to be usually dark and somewhat hazy, like there was smoke in the air. Colors are generally muted (though manually putting it in HDR mode helps), and low-light photos are a noisy mess, despite the camera's f/2.4 capabilities. The Moto X (which has the same camera and software) suffered from these same problems. It's the best camera Motorola has put into a phones, but considering Moto's long history of godawful cameras, unfortunately, that says very little. I suspect some of this could be fixed with better firmware, but otherwise, a camera rethink is in order.

The phones's design is well-considered, though not quite as refined as the Moto X's. The Moto X wastes no space, where as the Droid Maxx continues to use the three capacitive navigation buttons on the bottom. Especially considering that Google now owns Motorola, this makes no sense, since these buttons are completely unnecessary in androids 4.2.2 (which is what the Droid Maxx comes loaded with). It also doesn't have that same curved back that the Moto X has, and of course, you can't customize the phones's color scheme a thousand different ways like you can with the X.

That said, it's a rock-solid piece of hardware, with its laminated Kevlar back and splash-proof construction. And considering the colossal battery, it's pretty svelte. It's on the large side, which makes it more of a struggle to use one-handed. The Moto X is a lot more physically compact, despite the screen only being 0.3 inches smaller. The Droid Maxx does exhibit some space-saving tricks, though. I couldn't for the life of me figure out where the SIM card goes. Turns out, it's hiding behind the removable volume rocker. Very clever! There's no micro SD card slot, but it comes with 32GB of built-in storage.

While the phones doesn't have the fastest processor available, it's extremely fast and smooth the majority of the time. There is no stutter or lag when scrolling through the home screens or app drawers, and even HD games (like Dead Trigger) play just fine with the graphics cranked all the way up. That said, apps don't open as quickly as they do on the HTC One, and as games get more graphically intensive over the next year, this phones will be left behind. It's not very future-proof. But for the majority of people out there, most of whom aren't hardcore gamers, this phones will be plenty fast throughout the two years you'll be stuck with it.

Ultimately, if you're a very heavy user or a person who might not make it to a charger every night (you cad!), it's probably just what you're looking for. It's a Verizon exclusive, and it will cost you $300 with a two-year contract. That's a serious commitment, but if you're constantly struggling to make it back home with juice to spare, it's worth the extra coin.

WIRED Fantastic battery life. Very close to stock androids. Additional features that actually don't suck, like Touchless Controls, Active Notifications, and Assist. Good, loud speakers.

TIRED Unreliable camera performance. Unnecessary capacitive buttons waste space. Not quite as fast as other high-end smartphoness.