The Atrix 4G uses a NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor,[3] and was the first Android smartphone with 1 gigabyte of RAM, a fingerprint sensor, and a quarter-HD PenTile[4] display with 24-bit graphics.

When the phone is placed into its HD Multimedia Dock or Laptop Dock accessories, the user can access an Ubuntu-based desktop featuring access to the phone and its applications via the Mobile View application, integration of Android notifications into the desktop, multimedia playback through Entertainment Center, file management through Nautilus, and the Firefox web browser (along with support for Prism for the site-specific browsers used on Webtop mode).

[27] When the Atrix was shipped to AT&T, root access was available, but Motorola locked the bootloader by request of AT&T, meaning that custom versions of Android (ROMs) were not able to be installed.

Many customers wrote to Motorola, including on their Facebook page, and eventually a method to unlock the bootloader was released.

After CyanogenMod 7 was finished, Motorola's support pages stated that the latest version (at the time) of Android, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), would be released to the phone.

This would be important for the development of CyanogenMod 9, since the existing kernel of the Atrix (based on Linux 2.6) was incompatible with Ice Cream Sandwich drivers.

A variant called Motorola Atrix TV was released in some markets including Brazil, featuring an antenna for digital television.