It's also coated in Gorilla Glass 2, with ClearBlack tech and a high-brightness mode to improve outdoor visibility and the same super-sensitive touchscreen that means you'll be able to steer the phone with your gloves on.
Situated above the main native notification panel, the extra panel has a screen brightness slider sandwiched between the outdoor mode button and automatic brightness button.
To further reduce power consumption, a "no source detected" mode automatically lowers brightness to 30 percent when no display has been detected for more than three minutes.
So with the Droid 3 there are little preferences set to maximize battery life: the phone switches into sleep mode almost immediately and brightness is automatically set to its lowest levels.
Google's version requires one more tap to toggle the secondary panel for the common settings, including screen brightness, WiFi, auto screen rotation toggle and airplane mode.
Additional new touch-screen controls include on-screen sliders for adjusting brightness and Scene Effect Adjustment, which offers controls specific to the scene mode in use.
In "SmartEco" mode, the projectors automatically adjust lamp power to maximize power savings by delivering the best contrast and brightness performance using only as much light as needed.