Hardware

The XPERIA ZL works with a body that’s less wide than the ZPERIA Z, complete with a smaller bezel and rubbery back panel that makes it a bit less prone to busting on a violent drop. Here the device is much easier to grip, but no longer works with the waterproofing provided in the Z. You’ll also notice there’s no massive barrage of port covers, either.

This smartphone works with a 5-inch 1080 x 1920 pixel full HD Reality Display with Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2, easily the nicest display brought to the market by Sony on a smartphone. While it’s still not exactly a display you’ll be using in direct sunlight on the regular, it’s still one of the best on the market.

Around the edges you’ll find a power button – a little above the center on the right side of the phone – as well as a camera shutter button and a volume bar. Each of these buttons rest on the right side of the phone, while the back has a rather large flap that pulls down and out to reveal slots for both a microSD card and a microSIM.

The back-facing camera on this device has a large metal rim around its lens, this allowing for some protection of the lens, but also adds a bit of difficulty to cleaning said lens without a miniature tool. Around the ring you’ll find this device’s external speakers and a single LED flash as well.

Software

Inside an XPERIA device you’re going to be working with some apps you’re not going to see anywhere else in the Android universe. You’ve got apps like WALKMAN, Sony Album, Movies, and Sony Select. Each of these apps makes the case for you staying inside a strictly Sony environment, and makes it comfortable for you to be there if you’re willing. Xperia Link also makes a similar case with a Sony-specific connection to your desktop-based files.

You’ll also see Smart Connect – similar to Xperia Link, as well as Wisepilot for XPERIA. While we were surprised by the amount of apps built-in to this system back when it was first shown, the launch of the Samsung GALAXY S 4 has taught us a valuable lesson: the average consumer doesn’t count a cleaner system amongst their must-have items in a popular smartphone – it does not seem to be an issue, as 10 million unit sales in the GALAXY S 4′s first month can attest.

Apps like “Remote Control”, on the other hand, are extremely useful and add to the value of the smartphone. The Sony XPERIA ZL has an IR-Blaster for control of your television, stereo, or home entertainment system set, and with the simple Remote Control app, it’s quite easy to implement. A couple taps through the system to find the device you want to control, a test run, and you’re off.

Beyond that, Sony’s implementation of their own user interface has proven itself to be swift and responsive as it should be, doing the processor under the hood justice. This Qualcomm SoC also lends itself to a long battery life: more info on that below.

Camera

The camera here is 13 megapixels strong, and it shows. The Sony-made custom camera interface here brings a “Superior Auto” system that calls upon the many modes available outside it – this means that if sensors on the device notice it’s dark where you’re about to take a photo, the system’s night compensation switches on. There are also customizations to your user interface here in the camera app that allow you to make the experience your own.

Battery

This machine works with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor, meaning you’ll be seeing some optimization of the system with regard to battery life specifically. Because of this, you’ll be rolling with at least a full day of up-time just so long as you’re not a heavy user. If you’re thinking about testing this device’s ability to keep its display on while you’re downloading files and streaming video at the same time, you can expect something more like a few hours of battery life.

Bringing down the brightness on this device’s extremely bright display will do wonders for conserving battery life, while blasting the light all night will knock it out.

Wrap-up

The Sony XPERIA ZL takes what the Sony XPERIA Z was good at – and remains good at – and puts it in a slightly more hand-friendly form factor. If you’d like your handset to have a massive amount of glass, you’ll want the Z. If instead you want a slightly less pretty machine that’s better for an accident here or there, go ZL.

Both the Sony XPERIA Z and the Sony XPERIA ZL are available in the United States today, though you’ll not find them attached to any one unique carrier. This unit works with AT&T and T-Mobile microSIM cards: you’ll also not find any Verizon 4G LTE attaching itself to this set. Consider that, but consider this too: here Sony puts forth its greatest effort to date. If you’ve enjoyed Sony smartphones in the past, you’ll certainly have an impressive time here.

Hardware

The Nokia Lumia 928 works with a body and a set of innards that make it a very close relative of the Nokia Lumia 920, a device that’s being sold by AT&T right this minute. The 928 works with a 4.5-inch AMOLED display with 1280 x 768 resolution, carrying with it Corning Gorilla Glass 2 for scratch and break protection, ClearBlack technology so your blacks are as black as can be, and PureMotion HD+.

Those buzz words do actually mean something when it comes down to it – you’ll have brights that are bright enough to see in direct sunlight, darks that blend in with the bezel, and with a pixel density of 334 PPI, you’ll have quite a bit of sharpness as well. Of course compared to the HTC One and the Samsung GALAXY S 4, you’ll have a bit less sharp of a picture, but other than that you’re up there with the top guns – thus far this year, that is.

ABOVE: Just about as direct as the sunlight gets, straight on and up. BELOW: In a bit more shade.

This machine works with NFC, Qi-standard Wireless Charging, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor. This is the same processor found in the Nokia Lumia 920 and will be more than enough to power the highest-requirement Windows Phone 8 apps on the market today.

Also inside you’ll have 1GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and SkyDrive cloud storage of 7GB – given to you right out of the box. The back-facing camera is similar to that of the 920, bringing an 8.7 megapixel PureView sensor with a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens. This all means you’re going to be able to take photos in rather low lighting situations and will have some nice looking pics no matter what you’re photographing.

Software

You’ll be getting Nokia’s friendly collection of apps like HERE City Lens, HERE Maps, and Nokia Music along with Microsoft-added apps like Office and OneNote. One thing Windows Phone 8 can still hold over Apple’s head is Office as a native app, and here Nokia makes it clear that they’re willing to stick with that party. This device also has several photo “lenses” that add on to the abilities of the camera.

Each of these lenses is an app that can be downloaded for Windows Phone 8 devices, some of them specifically tuned for Nokia Lumia models. The Lumia 928 comes with Cinemagraph, Smart Shoot, Panorama, and Bing vision. With Bing vision, the user will be able to take photos of objects and receive information about them – this app also works with text translation on-the-spot.

The biggest difference between this device and its competitors is its exclusive access to Nokia apps and hardware – particularly its camera technology. Nokia makes several high-powered location-based apps for allowing you to get around your city – or a city you’ve never been to before. The camera technology you’ll be able to experience in the section immediately following this one.

Camera

Below you’ll find a collection of photo examples captured with the Nokia Lumia 928. Some of these photos were captured in optimal cloudless-day sunlight situations while others were photographed in the dark. This machine does, without a doubt, still reign in the darkest conditions without a flash. Have a peek at our Nokia Lumia 920 vs iPhone 5 camera battle to see how they fare in similar conditions.

Battery

The battery life on this device is well balanced enough to provide at least 8 hours of uptime for an average user. If you’re a power-user, you’ll want to consider the positive and negative elements in a battle between this and a smartphone with a replaceable battery: Verizon also carries the Nokia Lumia 822. The 822 doesn’t quite have the camera power of the 928, but the ability to carry more than one battery replacement in your pocket can be a big matter for some users.

Wrap-up

The Verizon Nokia Lumia 928 will cost you $99 USD with a 2-year contract after a $50 mail-in rebate – that’s less than half the cost of some of the higher-end competitors on the carrier today (like the Samsung GALAXY S 4 and the Galaxy Note II), and essentially equal to that of the Samsung Galaxy S III. It’s also equal to the price of the Windows Phone 8X from HTC, a device that was released several months ago that we reviewed as well. If you’re going for tactile feeling alone, you might want the HTC device – otherwise I’d stick by the Nokia hardware for basically everything else.

The Nokia Lumia 928 is easily Verizon’s finest Windows Phone 8 device, and with its advanced camera abilities, it may well be the nicest Windows Phone 8 device in the USA as well. Until another Windows Phone 8 device comes along with a metal body, on the other hand, the Nokia Lumia 925 will continue to roll with that title worldwide.

Hardware

The Q10 may be outwardly very different from the first BlackBerry 10 device, the all-touch Z10, but internally it’s pretty much the same device. The 1.5GHz dualcore Snapdragon S4 Plus processor paired with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, are all identical, along with the microSD card slot, 8-megapixel rear camera, and 2-megapixel front camera. The Q10 also has WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC, along with a microHDMI port (which will need an adapter, not included, to plug into a regular HDMI input) alongside a microUSB port.

The key difference is obvious, however. Where the Z10 has a 4.2-inch 1280 x 768 display, the Q10 shrinks that down to 3.1-inches and 720 x 720 resolution; it also uses an AMOLED panel, rather than the LCD of the Z10. Using a smaller screen leaves room for the Q10′s four row keyboard – more on which in the next section – that spans the entire width of the phone.

Overall, it’s a broad but stubby device, at 2.62-inches across filing your palm more than the 2.58-inch Z10, but shorter at 4.7-inches. Accommodating a physical keyboard does make for a thicker phone, however, at 0.4-inches, and a slightly heavier one, at 4.9oz. The weight is nicely spread, however, meaning it doesn’t feel top-heavy when you’re typing, and it’s easy to shift your fingers between the QWERTY and the touchscreen.

BlackBerry’s traditional row of buttons in-between keyboard and display are missing on the Q10, which means the only other physical controls are the power/lock key on the top edge, and the volume controls on the right edge, flanking a voice-command button. The 3.5mm headphone socket is also on the top, while a reasonably sized speaker is on the bottom edge, meaning it won’t be blocked no matter whether the Q10 is placed face-up or face-down on the table.

We criticized the BlackBerry Z10 for its uninspiring aesthetic, which felt almost like the company had been so caught up in developing the OS, it had forgotten it needed to design hardware too. The Q10 uses the same dense black plastic, sturdy but lacking in the premium feel of the metal iPhone 5 or HTC One, but jazzes things up with a carbon fiber effect to the rear. Opinions on how successful that is were mixed; some thought it enlivened the Q10 up in a much-needed way, while others argued it makes the phone look relatively cheap. Still, the soft-touch finish is easily gripped.

QWERTY Keyboard

Keyboards have been BlackBerry’s bread & butter for years, and have arguably kept the company afloat despite rival platforms steadily eclipsing BlackBerry 7. As you might expect, BlackBerry doesn’t mess with the formula too much on the Q10, the only real difference being the regimented layout that lacks the bow of previous models.

Curved or not, it’s a great keyboard to type on. One-handed, you can just cradle the Q10 with your middle and ring fingers and punch at it with your thumb; again, the excellent weight balance left us with no concerns the phone would tip out of our hand as we did so. Spare two hands and it’s even better, the Bold-style beveling to the key caps neatly cupping your thumbs and helping keep accuracy high. Altogether it’s a sturdy little thing, and we quickly got into the habit of punching replies and tweets on it.

The question is, of course, whether it’s better than the on-screen keyboard of the Z10. BlackBerry 10 does some interesting things with auto-prediction, notably floating the suggested words over the likely next letter and allowing you to select them with a simply flick of your fingertip, and it’s a system we found worked very well. Practically speaking, after getting accustomed to the Z10′s touch system, we were able to hit the same rate of text-entry as we could on the Q10, which suggests that, for the mainstream at least, having the flexibility of a bigger display may be more beneficial.

Software and Usability

BlackBerry 10 is a considerable improvement on the versions that came before it, combining elements of Android, Windows Phone, and iOS with the Canadian company’s own twists. We covered it comprehensively back in our Z10 review, which we’d recommend reading first. At its core are a new series of gestures which are used to navigate without a dedicated Home button, among other things. So, a swipe up from the bottom of the screen takes you back to the homescreen, while pulling your finger partway up – what BlackBerry calls the “Peek” gesture – pulls in first a column of notification icons, and then hops into the unified inbox.

It works well on the touch-exclusive Z10, but the layout of the Q10 can leave the gesture system feeling touch & go at times. The most common is the swipe-up with your thumb, but the proximity of the bottom of the touchscreen with the top keyboard row leaves little room to start your finger off in the right place. All too often we ended up tapping options or scrolling through lists rather than “Peeking”, with the Q10 assuming we were swiping the display rather than gesturing.

The solution seems to be actually starting your gesture from the keyboard itself, though we then had a few inadvertent text entry moments with that workaround. What we’re still not 100-percent convinced by is the usefulness of “Peek”; just as with the Z10, we found getting a glimpse of new notifications – i.e. that they exist, not any sort of detail as to what they are – simply wasn’t something that made a half-Peek worthwhile to us. As soon as the red LED light above the display started flashing, we swiped all the way across to the inbox instead.

Out of the box, the Q10 runs BlackBerry 10.1, a dot-one update on what the Z10 is using. The changes are minor, though side-by-side the Q10 feels a little more immediate than the occasionally laggardly all-touch phone. Biggest difference – and the one which perhaps takes best advantage of the hardware ‘board – is universal search actions, which allows you to trigger tasks like new messages, reminders, tweets, and more by typing straight into the search box.

It works particularly well on the Q10, because the universal search pops up as soon as you start hitting the keys. So, begin tying “Text XYZ” and at the top of the list there’ll be two options from your address book to send an SMS to. If you have more than one contact with the same name, or more than one number for the same contact, you can tap the expand button and see the full list of potential recipients.

The flip-side of all that usability is the relatively limited amount of screen real-estate for apps. At 3.2-inches and 720 x 720 resolution, the Q10 has a small display compared to what we’re used to from modern smartphones. The browser, for instance, supports everything you’d expect to show full webpages, but they’re crammed into a small window; BlackBerry 10 then makes the space even more confined with its persistent address/search bar running along the bottom. Whereas the page title only shows when you swipe down from the top edge, the bar for switching tabs and entering URLs is fixed, unnecessarily taking up space.

Camera

With the same camera hardware as the Z10, it comes as little surprise that, for the most part, the Q10 puts in an identical photography showing. That’s unfortunately not among the best devices we’ve tested in recent months: colors are somewhat drab in all but the best outdoor lighting, but zoom in or step into a lower-light situation and the noise starts to make itself known.

Similarly, video recording at up to 1080p is supported, but you’ll want to be filming it during daylight hours if you don’t want noise and artifacts.

BlackBerry 10.1 adds an HDR camera mode, which fashions images with better dynamic range out of two shots taken in rapid succession. If you’ve a sufficiently steady hand, it works, spitting out images where detail in darker and brighter areas is more clearly visible.

However, we found the HDR mode to be more susceptible to shake than similar settings on rival phones, and even a little movement could ruin a frame with ghosting. There’s also the ability to shoot stills in 1:1 aspect ratio, which certainly fits the Q10′s own display, but look a little strange everywhere else.

Phone and Battery

Many smartphones seldom get asked to make more than the odd voice call, but BlackBerry knows its audience demands solid voice quality and enough volume to serve impromptu speakerphone use. We had no problems with dropped calls, testing on Vodafone’s 3G network, and the positioning of the speaker – on the bottom edge – meant that speakerphone calls came through loud and clear.

Battery life is also impressive. The Q10 uses a removable 2,100 mAh pack that’s plenty large enough given the relatively compact screen. BlackBerry has even taken advantage included some darker color schemes for BlackBerry 10 apps, to take advantage of the fact that AMOLED uses less power for dimmer parts of the display.

The upshot is a phone which will last the full day without pausing for breath. BlackBerry quotes up to 13.5hrs of 3G talk time or up to 14.8 days of 3G standby (or up to 60hrs of solid music playback); in practice, with push email turned on, and regular use of the browser, camera, multimedia playback, and other apps, we made it to the evening with juice to spare.

Wrap-Up

Choices are slim if you’re in the market for a smartphone with a physical keyboard. The rise of all-touch, the flexibility of a big display, and the growing accuracy of on-screen keyboards means that the usability arguments for taking up half your fascia with a QWERTY layout are slimmer than ever. That’s not to say the audience is nonexistent, but it’s certainly smaller than it once was, and physical buttons no longer mean the most productive device.

BlackBerry is a company still very much in transition, and trying to find its feet in the process. For existing users, the Q10 is an obvious upgrade: it’s the best QWERTY BlackBerry to-date, BlackBerry 10 is a solid step up from what came before it (even if there are still plenty of rough edges), and the tactile key-feel they covet is there in spades. For that group, only the combination of BlackBerry software and a hardware ‘board will do.

Problem is, that group is also a shrinking one, and what were previously the inescapable advantages of a QWERTY device – like unsurpassed typing accuracy – are no longer so clean-cut. Typing on the BlackBerry keyboard is great, but then so is typing on the Z10′s clever software keyboard, and indeed most other modern smartphones. That leaves the Q10 feeling a lot like a sop to keep the old-school users happy, while the rest of the market goes in a different direction. If you’re wedded to keys then the Q10 is the BlackBerry – and potentially the smartphone, period – for you, but for the everyone else it’s more like proof that the days of physical keyboards are behind us.

Hardware

This smartphone is a rather interesting amalgamation of plastic and glass. It feels thin and smooth to the touch – the back is a single sheet of hard plastic without pattern while the front has a single pane of reinforced glass. The front has three capacitive buttons, not quite jumping in on the trend Google has been pushing with on-screen buttons quite yet.

The display up front of this device is a 5-inch 1080p panel all but hidden by the black bezel that surrounds it. While the display is on you can certainly tell where it begins and ends, but whatever OPPO has done to equalize the quality of black in the bezel surrounding the display while off and the screen itself is working. While on, this display kicks in 441 PPI, equaling that of the Sony XPERIA Z and the Samsung GALAXY S 4 and narrowly missing the current density winner: the HTC One (468 PPI).

The back of this smartphone is solidly attached to its front – there’s no removable or replaceable battery here. This device is certainly not built to be winning any repairability contests due to its one-piece presentation, but you will feel as though OPPO created a solid package when you’re working with it.

The touchscreen on this device works just as well as any other top-tier device and the viewing angles are generally OK. With IPS LCD technology backing up the OPPO Find 5, you’ll certainly be able to see what you’re doing outside, but don’t jump in to direct sunlight too often or expect a family of four to gather around from all angles to see the same image – it’s good, but it’s not perfect.

This device works with NFC both for reading and writing – as most embedded NFC sensors do. What’s impressive about the OPPO Find 5 for NFC is its built-in NFC writing software. Pre-sets and a set of two NFC tags in the box make for an entertaining out-of-box experience to be sure.

The audio experience on this device is great for a back-facing speaker setup. The HTC One takes the rest of the smartphone world to lunch with its Boomsound speakers on their own, but with both of them facing the user, straight out from around the display of the smartphone, they make the rest of the smartphone world sound like a mistake was made. Unfortunately OPPO’s main onboard speaker is, indeed, back-facing.

Software

OPPO creates an ever-so-slightly interesting software experience here on top of Android, bringing in a sort of candy-coated collection of app icons that remind one of the first plays Samsung had at Android back with the first Galaxy and TouchWiz 1.0. It’s not the same iOS-esque game here, on the other hand, with the rest of the changes keeping well in the Android world with screen transitions and lockscreen elements only otherwise seen in user-customized 3rd party homescreen replacement apps.

Below you’ll see our hands-on demonstration of the OPPO Find 5′s software build – take note of the speed at which apps load and/or don’t load – this isn’t an experience that’s as optimized for Android as the Nexus 4 is, but general everyday use is perfectly decent.

According to chats we’ve had with users already owning this device – and users like you bringing on the comments – we’re to understand that carriers working with this device have had an easy time upgrading software, working with the device for software fixes, and offering good service in general. Generally that’s not an issue with a big-brand smartphone (not always, but generally), but with a still-relatively-small group like OPPO, it’s encouraging to hear and read.

Below you’ll also find some benchmark results from the OPPO Find 5 with its most up-to-date software. Again, this device isn’t going to win any beastly smartphone battles, but it gets the job done. This device isn’t going to be the best on the market if you’re looking for a top-tier gaming experience, but for media consumption and capture and everyday non-game app activities, you’ll be par for the course.

Camera

The camera on the OPPO Find 5 can create some excellent photos and video but actually capturing them seemed to be above-average difficult. This machine works with an Exmor RS sensor with 13 megapixels of power on its back, this allowing for some rather excellent shots if you’re willing to take the time to capture them. The examples below should show you a wide variety of examples from our time with the device – good and bad.

Have a peek at some other reviews done by me, Chris Burns, to check on your humble reviewer’s ability to take quality shots if you’re suspicious of the images appearing here. If you’re the kind of person who rests their camera on still surfaces when you’re taking photos, you’ll get good photos. It’s as simple as that.

Also have a peek at some video here to see what we’ve captured in a regular test-quality situation. We’ve made similar runs at this arena in the past with devices of all kinds – compare at will!

Battery

You’ll want to download some battery optimization software if you’re planning on getting a full day’s use out of this machine. Unlike some of the big-name devices we’ve worked with towing the same processor here from Qualcomm, this device can really knock a battery out easily. Though the same is true for any device that’s got a display as bright and as sharp as this in keeping the brightness on auto, apps of all kinds seem to drain the OPPO Find 5 a bit quicker than they should.

Owning the OPPO Find 5

Reviewing this device was bittersweet, if only because I knew we’d not be seeing a lot of readers here that’d actually be able to use this device in the end. It’s a smartphone being sold in China with no plans for overseas release. That said, it’s refreshing to see such a company doing such a top-notch job when the only other devices with such a solid package on the market today have been made by one of five companies.

Right this minute you’ll be able to find the OPPO Find 5 for between $499.99 and $600 USD unlocked and carrier free. Make sure you know your SIM card will work before you pick one up and let us know how you like it!

Wrap-up

The OPPO Find 5 is not a Samsung Galaxy device, nor is it an iPhone. It’s not a Motorola hardcore delivery, nor is it an LG powerhouse, or a Google Nexus device for that matter. It’s not the HTC One and it’s certainly not a Sony device. Instead you’ve got a unique approach from OPPO in a package that’s certainly going to stay strong in owners’ pockets for extended periods.

And the end result of OPPO’s efforts are a bright spot for the company – this device, packaging to final smartphone build, make the case for this brands’ future. Keep an eye out for future OPPO releases and count them in as a brand to be reckoned with in the next few years across the pond – hopefully beyond China, too.

Hardware

Up front of the LG Optimus G Pro is a 1080 x 1920 pixel display across 5.5-inches of IPS LCD. This equals 400 PPI resolution and the same amount of pixels the HTC One and the Samsung GALAXY S 4 have spread over a slightly larger area. The display reaches out to the sides of the device with a bezel that’s extremely narrow, this giving the phone the illusion of having a near-edge-to-edge screen.

The front of the device is covered by a single piece of reinforced glass from top to bottom with a bent-in flat edge that, with flat sides and rounded back, give the whole package a unique feel. While the design comments in our LG Optimus G Review suggested LG’s hardware to be a bit more slippery than the average phone, the Pro’s shape and size allow for a bit better grip.

The front panel is interrupted only by a single plastic bit up top to make way for the earpiece for phone calls and a physical button on the lower front surrounded by multi-colored LED light. This pulsing spectrum of color is easily one of the most well-implemented bits of finesse ever implemented on a smartphone. This feature alone pushes the hardware design over the edge: from Pretty Good to Unique and Cool.

Along the sides of the device you’ll find two mic holes (one on top, one on bottom), a standard-sized headphone jack with Dolby Digital audio technology for all your headphone music blasting adventures, and a microUSB port below. Also on top you’ll find a tiny black piece of plastic – this is your IR-blaster, aka your key to using this device as a remote control for a variety of electronics around your home, including but not limited to your television (most televisions, not just Smart TVs), stereo system, projector, Blu-ray player, and air conditioner.

On the right you’ve got your power button and on your left you’ve got your volume rocker below a third button. This last button is what LG calls a Quick Button. With this Quick Button you’ll be able to “get quick access” to whatever app you like. If you’re a photo-taking sort of person, set it to your camera. If you’d rather it connect to Google Search / Google Now, that’s an option as well. If you do decide to set it to Camera, the Quick Button also acts as a shutter button inside the camera app – just as it should.

This device feels nice to hold and, unlike some of its competitors, isn’t larger than the average adult’s hand grip. Where the LG Intuition fell a bit flat due to it’s massiveness, the aspect ratio of the LG Optimus G Pro allows it to be even larger yet fit in your hand far more naturally. Here we’ve got a phablet with a size that’s not too wild.

Software

Inside you’ve got LG’s newest approach to Android, complete with their complete utilization of the full processor power under the hood with oddities galore. One example of a simple – yet impressive – use of the power this device’s processor presents is the massive bubble that pops up when you unlock your screen. It and flipping through screens with a door-like drag happen so seamlessly that you’ll scarcely realize how slick it is. Until you use a phone later on with a lesser processor, of course.

LG’s software here keeps with the nice parts of Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, including Google Now, and push forward with features like QSlide apps. While I’m not entirely sure when the ability to have an app appear above the fold and accessible as a window in a desktop operating system app would be, here you’ve got the future right in front of you. This sort of floating app functionality is also seen in the Samsung Galaxy and Note line of smartphones and tablets in a just-as-mystifying implementation.

The notifications pull-down menu is utilized by LG in a variety of creative ways the likes of which no other hardware company has pushed to a smartphone. You’ve got brightness control, notifications, access to full settings, quick settings (toggles), QSlide apps, Music control (when music is playing), and Quick Remote. Each of these is customizable too, of course.

QuickRemote is LG’s current app interface for remote controlling your home hardware. This app allows you to work with the infra-red blaster that sits at the top of the device and allows you to control your TV, Cable box, Audio system, DVD player, Blu-ray player, Air conditioner, and projector. You’ll have to go through a short trial-and-error process to connect this control to each device around your home, but in general, anything that’s controlled by a normal universal remote can be controlled here.

Though you don’t have the Rubberdium Pen you did with the LG Intuition here with the Optimus G Pro, you still have access to apps like Note Pad and Notebook, both of which allow you to draw and take notes on your display with your finger. You also get a simple task manager to keep yourself on-point with notifications of to-do items, Video Wiz to edit your own self-filmed videos, and LG Tag+ to create your own unique NFC tags (not included in the box this time around).

In display settings you’ll find Smart screen, similar to a feature Samsung has been pushing with the last several smartphones it’s released, here detecting your eyes and keeping the device’s display awake so long as you’re looking at it. You can customize your home button LED light colors and alerts from this screen as well.

In Share & Connect in the device’s Networks tab in Settings you’ll find an NFC switch (off and on) aside Direct/Android Beam. With Wi-Fi direct you’ll be able to share files between mobile devices (that also have such connectivity abilities) and with NFC this connection is made extra-easy. You’ll also find File Networking to connect to your local network (if you’re sharing files via your PC, for example), and with SmartShare Beam you’ll be sharing files back and forth between LG devices specifically.

Then there’s Miracast – this being the first time we’ve seen the system named specifically since Google implemented this connectivity in Android Jelly Bean earlier this year. With Miracast you’ll have a new industry standard for wireless connectivity of devices, in this case allowing you to mirror your Optimus G Pro’s display to your high-definition television at high speed.

Have a peek at a demonstration of LG’s “World’s First Wireless Ultra HD Transmission Technology” filmed earlier this year at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona. You’re seeing this hands-on with the LG Optimus G, this letting us know that the ability isn’t just there in the less-powerful of the LG hero devices, it’s ready to go for 4K televisions as well! Now we just need a 4K television to test it on with LG’s final implementation of the connection between on device and the other.

You’ll find the LG Optimus G Pro out-performing most devices on the market today regardless of the slightly larger display size it works with. Above you’ll find a gallery of benchmark results run on the device, many of which we’ve run for similar devices in the past. As you’ll see, this device’s biggest competitors are the HTC One and Samsung GALAXY S 4, the whole bunch running the same Qualcomm processor under the hood – the battle continues!

Camera

While we’ve done a slightly more extensive exploration of the abilities of this device’s camera earlier this year in our LG Optimus G Pro Photo Tour: Barcelona, you’ll also find a new set of examples below. This device uses a 13 megapixel camera on its back, a 2.1 megapixel camera on its front, and a set of odd abilities you’ll have a good ol’ time working with. NOTE: we’ll be including further examples of the Dual Recording feature in the near future. For now: courage!

Battery

With a 3,140 mAh battery it’s not easy to knock the power out of this device in one go. That said, if any display was going to do it, it’d be this beast’s. As you can see in the example here, you can either keep the device running actions for hours on end and kill it in less than 8 hours, or you can let it sit idle for many days. This appears to be the case with most devices running Qualcomm processors in this newest generation – we’re expecting this trend to continue.

Wrap-up

The LG Optimus G Pro is a rather fine piece of machinery. It’s offers you an alternative to the HTC One and/or Samsung GALAXY S 4 here up on the top tier with its similar display (larger, though again, with the same amount of pixels), identical processor, and surprisingly similar set of features. It also offers you a unique hardware build and a camera that’ll go very nearly toe-to-toe with the leaders.

You’ll find the LG Optimus G Pro costing the same or less than the competing top-tier smartphones out with AT&T right this minute and/or in the near future, and its feature set makes it a solid package in the battle against the other titans of this mobile industry. Here in this massive smartphone, LG has created an amalgamation of elements that’ll satisfy legacy LG lovers and newcomers to the size, all the same.

Hardware

This device features a setup that, at the start of 2012, would have seemed like quite the beast. You’ve got a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display at 1280 x 720 pixel resolution resting in a chassis largely made of hard plastic. This device does appear to have a brushed metal back, but don’t be fooled – it’s not quite that hardcore.

Inside you’ve got a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro dual-core processor clocked in at 1.5GHz and 1GB of RAM. So you’ve got an SoC that’s basically as powerful as the first wave of dual-core smartphones from the beginning of last year with half the RAM that any of those devices – like the Galaxy S III or DROID RAZR family – had under their hood.

You do have an 8 megapixel camera on the back of this device with a single LED flash bulb as well as a few fun features in the software attached to it. This device has a 2-megapixel camera up front that you’ll be able to use for video chat as well. This device has 16GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot to add an additional 32GB if you have the need.

Software

Easily the most excellent feature of this device is its set of motion controls. You’ll be able to wave over the display of the Perception to change songs, answer calls, browse through your photo gallery – basically anything you’d normally do with a swipe across the screen with your finger. These controls can also be found – ever-so-slightly different though they may be – in the Samsung GALAXY S 4. Here you’ll find them for a few dollars less, of course.

This device comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box. That’s bad news for those of you looking to work with Google Now. Verizon has made it clear in the original announcement of this device that Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, but haven’t given a timeframe for such an update.

You’ll get a set of odd apps like Document Viewer for your PDFs and Word files, Net Media for controlling your local network media, and Smart Voice. Pantech’s implementation of this command-ready voice app may appear to be similar to systems like Sherpa and Google’s own voice recognition for search, but we’ve found it to be surprisingly finicky and unhelpful. We’re expecting some upgrades to this system before it can be considered ready for any big battle with the top guns.

You’ll find benchmark results for this device to in some cases be beating previous generations of devices and in others failing miserably. While this device appears to win over a device like the HTC One X in Quadrant with overall score, a significant amount of this comes from memory and I/O while basic CPU power lacks in a large way. This device certainly shouldn’t be picked up if you’re looking to best your buddies at the latest shooting games, that’s for sure.

Camera

The photo software being implemented on this device is oddly enticing – while it’s not up to par with HTC’s current offering in the photography user interface department, it does do the trick. Hidden features like quad-photos and the ability to use voice commands (“cheese!”) to take photos are well received. Have a peek at some examples and see what you make of them.

Above you’ll find an HDR photo example from the Pantech Perception while below you’ll find a photo taken in the same position without HDR activated.

Here you’ll also find a back-facing video demo recorded with the Perception. We’re going from inside to outside and back in and down into a low-lit area with this one. Note the speed at which the camera reacts.

Battery Life

The battery issues with 4G LTE appear to be a thing of the past here in 2013, this holding true for the Pantech Perception. With Qualcomm’s handling of the situation with its modem making the task of transferring data not quite so painful as it was back when Verizon first brought the network to the public, we’ve seen all-day battery life without an issue. The biggest drain on your battery here will be your display, so if you’re aiming for an 8-hour session, you’ll be best off turning the brightness down somewhat.

Wrap-up

The Pantech Perception is a fine addition to Pantech’s archive of relatively unique devices, and makes one wish they’d continue to push forth in the USA for a more on-time release. This device could have been a really great addition to Verizon’s ranks if it’d been brought to the market right around a year ago. Unfortunately, since it’s being shown here in the Spring of 2013, this release falls flat in the face of its much more robust competitors.

Hardware and Design

This is an all-new phone, but don’t be surprised if nobody realizes it. The GALAXY S 4 ticks all the must-have boxes for a recent Android handset, but Samsung’s decision to stick to the familial design language we’ve seen on the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II means that it’s only really when you have them together that the differences become clear.

The display is obviously larger – more on that in the next section – but the dimensions of the GALAXY S 4 itself are little changed. In fact, although at 136.6 mm long it’s identical in length to the Galaxy S III, judicious slimming of the bezels have left the newer phone narrower, at 69.8 mm versus 70.6mm, and thinner, at 7.9 mm versus 8.6 mm. That’s impressive stuff, whether you like the design or not. At 130g it’s a basically unnoticeable 3g lighter, too.

Side by side, and how Samsung has achieved that becomes obvious. At the top, the earpiece has been squashed up right next to the chromed plastic trim, flanked by the proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, and front-facing camera. The screen butts up closer to the sides of the phone, too, and extends further down into the chin, leaving the physical “home” button and touch-sensitive, backlit “back” and “menu” keys somewhat cramped. The angle of curve of the corners has reduced, losing a little of the “pebble” silhouette the old phone has. You still get the side-mounted power key and volume rocker, as well as a microUSB port and 3.5mm headphone socket.

Interestingly, although it’s officially thinner, the more squared-off sides of the GALAXY S 4 can leave it feeling thicker in the hand. The more pronounced taper of the Galaxy S III has the effect of making it feel like a slimmer device. Samsung has given the S 4′s edges a slight knurling, which makes it a little easier to grip, though the plastics are still glossy and slippery. That makes slipping the GALAXY S 4 into a pocket or bag an easy thing, but does also mean it can be easy to drop.

It’s also miles away from the premium feel of the HTC One or the iPhone 5. Samsung’s decision to go with plastic rather than metal (or even matte-finish polycarbonate, as we’ve seen Nokia use to good effect in its Lumia range) was one of our key complaints about the Galaxy S III, and keeping the lightweight casing has seemingly proved inescapable since the company wanted to announce a thinner phone. White and black versions of the GALAXY S 4 will be offered, both with a glossy finish, and they simply lack the high-end crispness that HTC and Apple deliver.

That’s not to say the Samsung is flimsy. The phone is creak-free, and the removable battery door – though wafer-thin – flexes just enough to reassure you that it’ll stand up to a trip in your pocket, rather than that it will snap as soon as you squeeze it. Samsung has used Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3.0 to protect the screen, the latest iteration and rated as three-times more scratch-resistant than v2.0.

It’s inside that things get really impressive, however. Samsung has boosted the memory to 2GB, and will offer 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB versions, all with microSD slots happy with up to 64GB cards. There’s WiFi a/b/g/n/ac (2.4/5GHz) complete with WiFi Direct, DLNA, hotspot, and Miracast support; Bluetooth 4.0; NFC; GPS/GLONASS; USB On-The-Go for external memory and peripherals; MHL-HDMI 2.0 for hooking up a TV or projector (with the right adapter); and an infrared port to turn the GALAXY S 4 into a universal remote. Sensors include an accelerometer, gyroscope, and digital compass, but also a moisture-measuring hygrometer, a thermometer, and a pressure-tracking barometer.

Not all GALAXY S 4 units are created equal, mind, and the big difference comes in connectivity and processor type. Samsung will in fact make multiple versions of the phone, to suit different networks. In the US, Samsung will offer a model for each of the big networks, all powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 (APQ8064T), a quadcore processor using four 1.9GHz Krait 300 cores, and accompanied by Adreno 320 graphics.

The same chipset will be at the heart of the international LTE GALAXY S 4, but for the non-LTE version, and the KT and SK Telecom LTE models for South Korea only, Samsung has saved its new eight-core chipset. Named the Exynos 5 Octa, this combines four ARM Cortex A15 cores (running at 1.6GHz on the non-LTE model and 1.8GHz on the South Korean version) with four Cortex A7 cores (running at 1.2GHz), and is the first example of ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture. Of the eight cores, only four are ever active simultaneously: either the Cortex A15 for when more processing power is needed, or the Cortex A7 for greater power efficiency. It also gets an IT SGX544MP3 graphics chip.

How well that system works will have to wait until we can get our hands on the octacore-powered phone, though for the US it’s perhaps all academic since none of the carriers will be offering a version with the Exynos 5 Octa inside.

Display

Samsung’s Super AMOLED technology makes a reappearance on the GALAXY S 4, this time a 4.99-inch panel running at 1080p Full HD resolution, versus the 4.8-inch 720p panel of its predecessor. Controversy continues to rage over whether a near-5-inch display makes for a manageable phone, though the Android segment seems wedded to the “bigger is better” ethos for at least the time being.

The screen itself is undeniably a beauty. AMOLED is known for its bright, vivid colors and excellent viewing angles, and the GALAXY S 4 has both in spades. That, combined with the 1920 x 1080 resolution, means that – though purists may shudder at the mention of PenTile on the spec sheet – the phone is a joy to look at. As ever, AMOLED tends toward the over-saturated, and side by side with the HTC One, the slightly smaller phone arguably looks a little more natural.

Nonetheless, it’s a fantastic screen for multimedia, with video looking great while text is crisp even at tiny fonts. Web browsing also does well, with even full-site webpages easily navigable on the GALAXY S 4′s capacious display.

Software and Performance

The GALAXY S 4 admirably comes with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean – the latest version – out of the box, at a time when rival firms are still launching new devices with older iterations. However, Samsung simply can’t let Android escape without modifying it, and so you end up with the TouchWiz “Nature UX” and a long, long list of tweaks and new features.

Some are familiar from before: S Voice, for instance, Samsung’s take on Siri, as well as S Health for fitness monitoring. S Health can keep records of how many steps you’ve taken using the phone’s pedometer, as well as log the weather conditions around you using the various sensors; it will also work with a selection of new fitness-tracking accessories, too, though Samsung did not provide any for our review. ChatON, the voice/video/chat app is also preloaded, along with Samsung’s Hub.

The old Galaxy S III used its front-facing camera to make sure the screen didn’t go to sleep when you were reading but not tapping it; on the GALAXY S 4, that has been upgraded to what Samsung calls Smart Scroll and Smart Pause. The former tracks how you tilt the phone when you’re looking directly at the display, scrolling through ebooks or webpages automatically, while the latter pauses video playback when you turn away from the phone, and resumes it when you look back.

The screen itself has become smarter, too, with Air Gesture and Air View introduced. Just as the Galaxy Note II can track the nib of its S Pen stylus when it’s hovering over – but not touching – the display, now the GALAXY S 4 can recognize a fingertip close to its screen. Hover your finger over a Flipboard story, say, or a calendar entry, and a preview window will eventually pop up. It works, but it’s a little on the sluggish side for our liking: sometimes it proved quicker to actually tap in and then hit the back button, rather than wait for Air View to react. Not all apps support the feature, either: if you want Air View in your inbox, for instance, you have to use Samsung’s email app, not the Gmail app we prefer. One plus is that the GALAXY S 4 can be used even when you’re wearing gloves.

Air Gesture, meanwhile, builds on the Galaxy S III’s screenshot function – which screen-grabbed when you swiped the side of your palm across the display – by tracking hand movements above the phone. Using them, you can navigate through photo galleries and slideshows, through webpages, music playlists, and answer or dismiss calls. We still like the screenshot shortcut, which is often easier to trigger than holding down multiple buttons, but the rest can feel gimmicky.

Thankfully, you can selectively disable those you don’t want to use from an extended shortcut panel in the drop-down notifications menu. In fact, granularity of control is one of the big advantages of the GALAXY S 4: yes, there are plenty of add-ons and features that Samsung has thrown at its flagship, but it also recognizes that some people simply aren’t going to want to use them, and doesn’t make it difficult to turn them off.

Samsung has been bundling universal remote functionality with its Galaxy Tab tablets for some time now, using Peel’s Smart Remote software, but the GALAXY S 4 is the first of the company’s flagship phones to see the company’s home-grown technology. A small IR sensor on the top edge works with the new WatchON app, turning your handset into a touchscreen remote. Setup is straightforward – pick your TV, PVR, or cable box brand, and which cable, satellite, or other media provider you subscribe to – and you can start controlling channel selection, playback of recordings, and read through an EPG while you watch the big-screen.

So far, so like HTC’s Watch app on the One. However, where the HTC software only reminds you of shows if you’ve previously favorited them, the GALAXY S 4 can actively learn from your viewing habits and prompt you with new shows the algorithm believes you might be interested in. By hitting the Like or Dislike buttons, you teach WatchON your preferences, though it takes a little time before the suggestions felt like they were truly relevant. Being able to simply tap view (or, indeed, record) and have the phone automatically switch to the right channel is useful, however.

Happily, whether you’re running Samsung’s apps or third-party software, we’ve got no complaints as to how fast they run. In Quadrant, the GALAXY S 4 scored 12,593 overall – just slightly ahead of the HTC One – while in Linpack for Android it also bested HTC’s phone, managing 749.63 MFLOPS compared to the One’s 694.102. In Qualcomm’s own Vellamo test, it scored 1,783 in the HTML5 category and 814 in the Metal category: worse, and better, respectively than the One. HTC grabbed the lead in AnTuTu, however, with the GALAXY S 4 scoring 17,320, nearly 7,000 points behind the One.

In practice, it’s a smooth running, swift phone. No lag when hopping between apps or loading webpages, and no slow-down even when performing graphically-intensive tasks. Of course, our real interest is in how the big.LITTLE-powered variants do, since those models debut ARM’s new heterogeneous architecture.

Camera

That Samsung would step up to a 13-megapixel camera from the 8-megapixels of the old phone came as no great surprise. That certainly looks the part on paper, in a spec-driven world where bigger is presumed to be better; however, in the meantime we’ve also seen rival phones, such as HTC’s One, concern themselves with more than just megapixel counts. That raises the question: is the best way to improve your photos to throw more pixels at them?

As you might expect, that all depends on shooting conditions. The surfeit of pixels show their worth in outdoor shots where there’s plenty of light. That given, you get bright, saturated colors, impressive brightness, and grain only when you blow things up to near-maximum resolution. We did notice that the GALAXY S 4 prefers subjects to be at a distance, however: some close-up shots (that we wouldn’t quite consider to be in macro territory) show the phone struggling to lock focus exactly onto the subject, leaving things a little fuzzy.

As for actual macro images, they’re reasonable, though the GALAXY S 4′s tendency to over-saturate bright colors can leave things looking like you have HDR mode permanently switched on. In the flower close-ups in the gallery, for instance, the detail of the petals is lost in a botch of bright red, while the paler grasses in the background look grainy and insipid.

When things start to get darker – indoor images, for instance, or in the evening – however, is when we started wishing for bigger pixels rather than just more of them. Low-light images see grain make itself known, the GALAXY S 4 overcompensating with its sharpening correction, and the absence of optical image stabilization (OIS) can often lead to blur as the phone tries to grab more light per frame.

In short, it’s an acceptable phone camera, but it’s not the huge step up from what the Galaxy S III could deliver that, on paper, the megapixel increase might suggest. For low-light shots, too, we’d prefer Nokia’s Lumia 920, the OIS of which does an excellent job of smoothing out blur during longer exposures, or HTC’s One, which uses larger pixels (albeit fewer of them: 4-megapixels versus Samsung’s 13-megapixels) and OIS to maximize how much light it can capture. There’s a noticeably narrower field of view on the GALAXY S 4 compared to the One, too, with detail all around the periphery cropped out.

What you do get with Samsung’s camera is a number of different shooting effects to choose between. Dual Shot, for instance, combines images from the main camera and the 2-megapixel front-facing camera into a single frame: basically slotting your own face into the image. You can move the inset around the frame, and give it different outlines such as a postage stamp or a bubble, and while it can feel gimmicky at times, it does mean that your holiday photos prove you really were there at the time, not just whoever is in front of the camera.

There’s also Sound & Shot, which attaches a short audio clip to each still image – Samsung says it’s to capture the mood when you took the photo, though we prefer HTC’s combination of sound, images, and video with the Zoe system – along with Drama Shot, which combines a sequence of burst-photos into a single collage. You can create short gif images without needing to reach for a third-party app, or trigger a photo by calling out to the phone, just as we saw Samsung implement on the Galaxy Camera.

As for video, the GALAXY S 4 can capture at up to 1080p Full HD resolution both front and back. The camera app usefully adds a pause button along with stop, meaning you can halt and resume recording and still end up with a single file; with some careful timing, it means you may not need to post-process the footage before you upload it to YouTube. We’re also left impressed by the fact that the GALAXY S 4 can use Dual Shot during Full HD video recording, combining footage from both cameras.

Above: full resolution photos with GALAXY S 4′s back-facing camera in both standard and Dual Shot modes. Below: HDR photos with GALAXY S 4′s back-facing camera.

The same strengths and weaknesses of the new Samsung’s camera at stills are carried over to its video performance. Give it plenty of natural light and you end up with great colors and little noise, though the absence of OIS means clips can be shaky, especially if you’re panning. The cropping is also the same as for stills. Get into darker situations, however, and the grain seeps back in, with the closely-packed pixels struggling to make out what’s in front of them. The effect isn’t as pronounced as for stills, however; overall it’s not unusual for a phone camera, no, but it’s also not the best we’ve seen. Worth a mention is the quality of footage from the front-facing camera, which is particularly good.

Samsung GALAXY S 4 Bottle Photo:

HTC One Bottle Photo:

iPhone 5 Bottle Photo:

Samsung GALAXY S 4 1080p Video:

HTC One 1080p Video:

iPhone 5 1080p Video:

Battery and Phone

Just as the GALAXY S 4 is larger than the phone that came before it, so is the battery. Now at 2,600 mAh, it’s also user-accessible meaning that you can swap in a replacement should you run low during the day. There’s also optional wireless charging, if you use the Qi-compatible replacement back cover Samsung offers (but which we did not have to review).

Our lingering impression is that picking up a spare battery may well be a very good idea. Loaded up for typical use – with push email active; some use of maps, multimedia, and the camera; a few calls; and some messaging – the GALAXY S 4 ran for around 13-14 hours before needing a recharge. Longevity was particularly affected by what apps it was running, however. With instant-messenger LINE active, for instance, we saw runtimes drastically cut, even when the phone was in Airplane mode with no cellular data connection active. In contrast, LINE on the HTC One had minimal affect on power consumption.

Even if you’re draconian with your apps, that deliciously huge, bright display takes its toll on how long the GALAXY S 4 can run for. In fact it proved responsible for, on average, roughly 40-percent of the battery drain. Samsung does make some attempts at prolonging power, such as Smart Mode which remembers which locations you use WiFi and selectively switches it on and off when you get near, but even using WiFi we had mixed results. Unfortunately Samsung was unable to provide an LTE variant of the GALAXY S 4 for review, so battery testing while on 4G will have to wait.

As for calls, the GALAXY S 4 held its own. We experienced no drops, and the earpiece is loud at maximum volume. Interestingly, callers said they preferred the audio when we turned off Samsung’s adaptive DSP, which they told us made voices sound robotic and overly-processed. The main speaker can be cranked up suitably high, but it lacks the rich bottom end of HTC’s BoomSound system.

Samsung S View Cover

Samsung has a number of official accessories for the GALAXY S 4, but arguably the most interesting is the S View Cover. Like the flip cases the company has previously offered for the Galaxy S III and Note II, it flaps over to protect the display but adds minimal bulk, fixed to a replacement battery cover rather than fitting over the phone.

The difference, however, is the clear plastic window near the top of the cover, through which you can see a portion of the GALAXY S 4′s display. This takes advantage of one of the advantages of AMOLED compared to LCD: namely, that you can selectively power up a part of the display, but not the rest, and so consume less juice overall.

Here, Samsung uses that to put status information on the display, viewed through the window. You get the Android notification bar, with all of the usual icons including signal status and battery, as well as caller ID – and the controls to answer or reject calls – when someone rings. A cut-out above, matching with the earpiece, allows you to take the call without opening the cover. When you’re not taking calls, there’s room for a big clock and date display, as well as now-playing information for the music app.

It feels high-quality, and the concept works well. By only using a section of the AMOLED, rather than turning it all on every time you want to check for new messages, it helps cut down on the screen’s thirst for battery, and we quickly became used to pulling the phone out of our pocket just enough to glance at the status panel. At $59.99 it’s not the cheapest case, however, though Samsung does also offer a traditional Flip Cover – without the cut-out – for $20 less.

Wrap-Up

That the GALAXY S 4 will be a best-seller is pretty much a given at this stage. A combination of cutting-edge hardware, blanket advertising, and no small amount of headline-grabbing sparring with Apple has left the Galaxy series as the de-facto Android option for many, and that mindshare and marketing positions the new flagship to pick up the reins as soon as it hits stores.

That’s not to say that Samsung’s improvements aren’t impressive in places in their own right. The new Full HD AMOLED screen is a beauty, and there’s no shortage of power or storage for running the latest Android apps or, indeed, those likely to arrive in the coming months. As we’ve found before, some of Samsung’s software tweaks we used, and others we could happily leave; the exact mixture of which each user will come to rely on, though, will vary, and Samsung seems content to throw them all into the pot and let the individual decide. Video recording from both cameras is great too.

It’s probably the similarities in design that make the GALAXY S 4 feel evolutionary rather than revolutionary, though we’re left not entirely convinced that all of those developments are necessarily the best they could be. A 13-megapixel camera sounds great in theory, but it introduces compromises in low-light situations that HTC’s more imaginative system on the One doesn’t suffer from; Samsung’s big, bright screen may be beautiful, but it also takes its toll on the battery.

Samsung was once the challenger, spurred into action by Apple and the best-selling iPhone. Now, at the top of the charts in Android, it too has driven other manufacturers to take more risks and raise their game. The end result is a device like the HTC One, which in some ways feels more suited to how smartphone owners are actually using their phones. The GALAXY S 4 is a safe, capable, and solid option, and though Samsung’s flagship is perhaps no longer necessarily the best Android device on the market, it’s still a tremendously polished phone with plenty to satisfy the crowds eagerly awaiting it.

Hardware

Cheap doesn’t always mean cheerful, though Nokia has some impressive form in the segment: its track record in squeezing the best margins out of its production lines has resulted in surprising gems like the Lumia 620. For the Lumia 520, you get a Snapdragon S4 dualcore running at 1GHz and 512MB of RAM, just like the 720, as well as 8GB of onboard storage and a microSD card slot to add to it.

Connectivity omits LTE – something we can forgive given the price – and tops out at dualband HSDPA (up to 21.1Mbps down, 5.76Mbps up, network depending); there’s also WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. No NFC, though, which means no tap-to-pair with wireless speakers, and there’s unsurprisingly no wireless charging option either. Nokia tells us it expects people to step up to the Lumia 720 if that’s something they’re keen on.

Nokia’s design lineage takes another mild deviation for the Lumia 520, with the interchangeable casing being a simple snap-on affair without the bevels of the 720 or the dual-colors of the 620. It feels plasticky and somewhat hollow to the tap, too, while the broader screen bezels mean that, despite having a mere 4-inch display (running at WVGA), the phone is only very slightly narrower than the 4.3-inch 720.

That’s not the only screen-related compromise. Nokia’s Clear Black technology hasn’t filtered down to this level yet, and so the Lumia 520 makes do with a regular LCD panel instead. The result is weaker viewing angles and less impressive outdoor visibility, though Windows Phone’s bold colors do their best to keep the UI clean. Best, though, is the extra-sensitive touchscreen, which means you can use the 520 while wearing gloves.

Software

Windows Phone 8 on the Lumia 520 differs little from what we saw on the Lumia 720, with identical performance courtesy of the same internal components. It remains a great OS for the first-time smartphone user, cleanly laid out, but with the Live Tiles – which can show upcoming calendar appointments, gallery previews, and those contacts with new updates on social media – allowing for enough flexibility for power-users missing traditional widgets.

The Nokia software suite is broadly the same, too, with a couple of changes to accommodate the 520′s hardware. Since there’s no digital compass – only A-GPS and Glonass – you don’t get the LiveSight augmented reality City Lens functionality baked into HERE Maps, though there’s still turn-by-turn navigation (with offline mapping support) for the UK and Ireland. Nokia Transit is also included.

At this price point, though, the biggest sell may well be Nokia Music. The free streaming playlists – complete with offline support for a limited number of playlists, unless you sign up to the subscription Music+ service – have real appeal for buyers on a budget. It makes even more sense when you consider that, in the UK, the Lumia 520 is being offered free on a £7.99 a month agreement, less than a Spotify premium subscription.

Camera

At 5-megapixels, the Lumia 520′s camera is unsurprisingly humble. There’s an f/2.4 lens but none of the Carl Zeiss optics that we know from more expensive Nokia phones, and cost cutting has meant the LED flash is omitted too. The 520 is also the only model in the company’s new line-up not to get a front-facing camera, which means no Skype video calls.

Just as we found with the Lumia 620′s 5-megapixel shooter, quality is mixed. Given sufficient natural light, the Lumia 520 does a reasonable job, though there’s plenty of noise and blur to be found when you view shots at their full 2592 x 1936 resolution. Low-light performance suffers, though, with noise and colors underwhelming.

As for video, that tops out at 720p HD, but the results aren’t too hot. Moving objects aren’t jerky but they do encounter some blur, while the audio quality is somewhat tinny.

A minor frustration was how the camera shortcut button works. As on all Windows Phones, holding down the dedicated key on the side of the Lumia 520 loads up the camera app – bypassing the lockscreen – but the budget Nokia proved a little slower to be ready for a shot than its Lumia 720 sibling. We also had some issues with the physical alignment of the button when clipping the battery cover back on.

Phone and Battery

Nokia rates the Lumia 520′s removable 1,430 mAh battery as good for up to 9.6hrs of 3G talk time or 360hrs of standby; your calls will be clear and strong, too, with no issues in audio quality that we encountered.

In typical use, with a mixture of push-email, some Nokia Music playback, internet browsing, Nokia Maps, and photography, the Lumia 520 comfortably made it through a full day and into a second before we needed to reach for the charger.

Wrap-Up

Things are getting tight in Nokia’s Windows Phone line-up, with increasingly small differentiators between different models for different price points. Although that makes for potential confusion in the consumer marketplace, Nokia tells us it pays dividends for Lumia’s enterprise adoption: one of the goals of the 520, for instance, was to make a device for those on the factory floor that runs the same OS as management staff use on their Lumia 820 and 920 phones, but cheap and resilient enough to survive the inevitable drops and scrapes of working life.

Does that mean the Lumia 520 isn’t intended for the rest of us? Some of the compromises – the absence of a front-facing camera, notably, and the mediocre hand-feel – do leave us leaning toward the Lumia 620. It may be slightly more expensive, but it looks and feels better, is more flexible, and while the screen is slightly smaller, it offers the same resolution along with the quality improvements of Clear Black.

If low-cost is your guiding star, though, the Lumia 520 is impressive for the price, and the value-add of Nokia’s software and services isn’t to be sniffed at either.

Hardware

Nokia’s familial design language is clear in the Lumia 720, and it’s one of the more pleasing handsets to look at and hold in the company’s range. Narrower sides but wider top and bottom bezels make for a phone that’s slimmer but longer than the Lumia 820 it most closely resembles, though the 720 shaves 0.9 mm off the depth (taking it down to 9 mm).

There’s a compromise involved in that, though, which is that while wireless charging is an option, it’s not baked into the Lumia 720 natively. Instead, you have to slot the phone into a secondary skin, which makes contact with a row of pin-connectors running along the lower section of the rear. Then, it’s compatible with any Qi-compliant wireless charger, including Nokia’s own accessories; unfortunately, Nokia didn’t have the adapter shell available for us to test.

Bare, it’s a sturdy unibody with a smooth, matte finish; the red of our review unit is particularly fetching, but Nokia will also offer the 720 in white, cyan, yellow, and black. A Micro SIM-tray on the upper edge means Nokia can keep the back cover fixed – which also means no removable battery – while on the right side there’s the usual volume rocker, power/lock key, and camera shortcut. A microUSB port is on the bottom edge, and finally another pop-out tray on the left for a microSD card slot (to add to the 8GB of internal storage).

Nokia has been pushing two screen technologies of late, Clear Black for better contrast and outdoor usability, and increased sensitivity for the touchscreen meaning it will work even when you’re wearing gloves. Both are present on the Lumia 720′s 4.3-inch panel, a bright and colorful screen let down only by its mediocre resolution. At WVGA, rather than 720p, you miss out on the smoothness we’ve seen on other, more expensive phones. Admittedly, the effect is diluted somewhat by the smaller size overall, but we’d still loved to have seen an HD screen.

Inside, Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon S4 chip holds court, paired with 512MB of memory. Nokia may have omitted wireless charging, but you still get quadband 21.1Mbps HSDPA, quadband GSM/EDGE, Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi b/g/n, and NFC. Above the display there’s a 1.3-megapixel camera with a wide-angle f/2.4 lens, while a 6.7-megapixel camera with f/1.9 Carl Zeiss optics is on the back, next to an LED flash. The latter will record 720p HD video, though not Full HD.

Software and Performance

Windows Phone 8 hasn’t deviated from what we last saw on a new Nokia, and so it’s all becoming familiar territory for both the firm and its users. The OS is undeniably approachable for first-time smartphone buyers, and while it doesn’t have widgets in the traditional sense, the Live Tiles system – where each of the resizable blocks can cycle through recent updates, media previews, upcoming events, new messages, and other information – can, with a little investment in setup time, be surprisingly rewarding. If you want to fill the homescreen with a grid of contact shortcuts, you can, or alternatively you can replicate an iOS-style layout with simple app buttons.

On top of that, Nokia throws in its own value-add, the growing suite of exclusive apps and services which the Finnish firm hopes will coax you away not only from Android or iPhone, but from other Windows Phone OEMs like HTC. Most notable are HERE Maps, HERE Drive, and Nokia Music, though there are a few tweaks along the way.

HERE Maps, for instance, now gets LiveSight and HERE Transit baked in, integrating the previously standalone City Lens and Nokia Transit technology within the one core app. LiveSight allows you to hold the Lumia 720 up and look “through” it at points of interest overlaid on top of a real-world view from the camera. It’s useful, particularly being able to zoom past buildings and see what’s behind them, if you’re in a new area, and the Nokia’s processor has no issues keeping up as you physically spin around to pan the camera.

HERE Transit, meanwhile, shifts the incredibly useful public transportation guidance into the core HERE Maps app, where it belonged all along. Nokia says it now has timetable data for more than 670 cities in 50 countries worldwide, with the ability to pin specific routes to the Windows Phone homescreen (and see, on a Live Tile, the next upcoming journey time).

What you don’t get is HERE Drive+, with global offline navigation. Instead, those in the UK will get UK and Ireland maps with offline support, but have to pay extra if they want navigation data for elsewhere in the world.

Nokia Music, meanwhile, continues to offer a compelling alternative for those shy of Spotify’s monthly subscription fee. Sign-up free, it offers 100 Mix Radio playlists that Nokia updates weekly, picking from a catalog of 22m tracks, the ability to create your own custom playlists triggered from an original “seed” track, and support for a limited number of offline playlists. The Nokia Music+ subscription service – an in-app upgrade – unlocks unlimited offline playback, as well as higher-quality audio on WiFi connections, and unlimited track-skips.

Last year we criticized Nokia’s Lumia 610 for coming to market with 256MB of RAM when the latest apps were calling for double that. The Lumia 720 makes a similar mistake – less serious initially, but likely to be no less frustrating over the course of a two-year agreement – with its 512MB looking short-sighted when apps demanding at least 1GB are starting to arrive in the Windows Phone Store.

Camera

Nokia’s 6.7-megapixel camera for the Lumia 720 uses a custom sensor and the company’s favorite Carl Zeiss optics, though falls short of PureView branding. Nonetheless, it’s a capable shooter, particularly in the sort of low-light settings we’ve praised PureView devices for previously.

So, you don’t get optical image stabilization, but you do get a camera that doesn’t lose its nerve when it comes to scenes with mixed bright and dark areas. There, the Lumia 720 leans toward maintaining detail in the low-light patches – though that can leave brighter scenes over-exposed – with results that belie the mid-range positioning of the phone. The LED flash is satisfactory, but we found we could often leave it switched off and rely on the camera’s inherent light-grabbing skills.

On the flip side, both photos and video (recorded at 720p maximum on both front and back cameras) have a tendency to introduce glare and lens-flare when you’re in brighter environments. Otherwise, video from the Lumia 720 looks solid, and the continuous auto-focus does a reasonable job at keeping your subject clear.

Our interest in front-facing cameras usually begins and ends with the odd Skype video call, but Nokia has made a specific play for those particularly keen to take self-portraits. As well as being equipped with a wide-angle lens, to fit more people in-shot, the Lumia 720 supports the new, wretchedly-named Glam Me app, which automatically enhances your selfies. Brightness, skin smoothness, blemishes and more are all ironed out, tweaked, and generally finessed; alternatively, you can apply one of several filters, with Instagram-like textures and color tones.

Phone and Battery Life

Nokia’s legacy for decent call quality continues with the Lumia 720, though the relevance of voice calls alone is perhaps questionable these days. Instead, we can’t help but feel that omitting LTE support was a missed opportunity.

The Lumia 720′s battery may be non-removable, but at 2,000 mAh it’s oversized for a 4.3-inch phone. That pays obvious dividends for runtimes: Nokia quotes up to 13.4hrs of talk time or up to 520hrs of standby (both on 3G), or alternatively 79hrs of music playback (locally-stored, not streaming).

In practice, with regular use – push email turned on, social networking use including Facebook and Twitter, some photography, music streaming, and HERE Maps – we easily made it through two days without having to reach for the microUSB charger. That’s almost enough for us to forgive the fact that wireless charging (or the kit needed to use it) isn’t bundled.

Wrap-Up

In some ways, the Lumia 720 is everything we’ve asked for from Nokia. It’s slickly designed and has superlative battery life, the camera out-performs rivals in the same price bracket, and the screen – though lower resolution than we like – is a nice compromise of size, outdoor usability, and general clarity.

Letting the show down are the absence of LTE and the potentially limiting 512MB of RAM. You could well say that the Lumia 720′s target audience won’t miss 4G, but there’s a growing cadre of people wanting higher-end features without a massive display, and they already know they want LTE. As 4G spreads, more and more people are going to expect it to on their phone. As for the RAM, that’s a more obvious drawback: games like Temple Run are quietly omitted from the Store, since they demand twice the memory the Nokia has.

It’s a frustrating flaw in what could’ve been a fantastic device, though the strengths in camera and battery life still make it a solid choice in the midrange.

This brand new device was released on Verizon Wireless earlier this week and we’ve been putting it through the paces. It certainly isn’t a Galaxy S III or iPhone 5, but LG and Verizon are aiming for a more budget friendly crowd. Or someone that is fairly new to smartphones. You’ll be working with a decent mid-sized run of the mill 4.3-inch smartphone with some decent specs, but it’s the price point of free that is important here. Lets take a look.

Hardware

The LG Lucid 2 certainly doesn’t win any design awards, nor does it come with durable aluminum materials like the HTC One, however it does feel nice in the hand. It’s sized right, lightweight, yet still fairly durable. All things a first-time smartphone buyer might want. So what’s under the hood and how does it stack up? Here’s how!

The Lucid 2 comes with an average 4.3-inch qHD 960 x 540 resolution IPS display. It doesn’t look bad, but could certainly be better with most mid-range phones lately being at least 720p HD. Screen resolution aside this has all the makings to be a pretty stellar smartphone. Under the hood is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 1.2 GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. LG’s added 8GB of internal storage along with a micro SD slot for expanding storage, and we get a pair of decent cameras. On the rear is 5 megapixels, and VGA up front should do okay for the average Skype call or Google+ Hangout.

As you can see from the gallery, it isn’t the thinnest smartphone but then again we did have the wireless charging cover on back which added about 4mm to the thickness. One important aspect to the size is the fact that we still get an impressive 2,460 mAh battery in such a small device. Add that to a smaller screen than most that isn’t HD, and only a dual-core processor and this thing lasts longer than most. In fact we’ve been able to go nearly 30 hours on a single charge with moderate use.

Sadly as far as hardware is concerned the device certainly doesn’t impress. It’s lightweight which is nice, but it also feels extremely cheap. The terrible plastics are not a favorite of ours, and they are even cheaper than most we’ve seen in the mobile space as of late. The bezels around the screen aren’t too big, and the capacitive touch Jelly Bean buttons were nice and responsive. We’d like the backlit keys to stay bright longer, as guessing got old very fast. In closing the hardware certainly isn’t the best around, but for being absolutely free we really can’t argue. Or knock too many points for it being cheap plastic, a lower resolution display, and only a 5 megapixel camera. Check it out in detail below:

Software

As you saw above, we are clearly working with Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean but it has been covered with LG’s take on an Android skin. It’s not our favorite, but then it isn’t as intrusive as something like Sense UI. The animations are smooth, neat, and extremely fast – so we can’t really knock it. LG’s made a few tweaks we’ve seen lately and nothing here is really new. They have a few theme options to change the look and feel with ease, and even offer what they call a “starter mode” where the phone will get dumb-down for a first-time smartphone user.

Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean is extremely responsive with the dual-core processor, and LG’s software doesn’t seem to slow down performance. We enjoyed using things like Google Now voice search with Jelly Bean, and the expandable notifications are nice. Sadly LG’s pulldown bar is a mess. The WiFi button you see in the screenshots only wastes valuable pulldown bar space and we can’t get rid of it. We don’t need to see a massive box with our WiFi name Okay LG. The quick toggles in the notification bar were customizable, so that was good. And the screen brightness quick option is a nice touch too.

We had a little more bloatware than we’d like but that’s because Verizon has their own, and recently they’ve been adding Amazon’s suite too. Add those to the extra and not all that needed LG apps and we have a full 3 pages of apps out of the box. More than any first time buyer would need, to say the least.

Performance was swift thanks to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and project butter, and the animations were extremely quick making the entire device just feel fast and fluid. LG’s main issue lately has been with somewhat buggy software, and the lack of updates. As long as this continues to get a few updates in the future to Key Lime Pie and beyond we’ll be happy.

Benchmarks

As usual we had to run a few benchmarks just to see how the phone and that dual-core processor handled some daily tasks. As we mentioned above the entire device feels fast and flies during average tasks, so take these as you will. It holds its own quite well thanks to the Snapdragon S4 under the hood and 1GB of RAM. So we’ll take it.

Camera & Phone

The Lucid 2 comes with an average 5 megapixel camera but it was up to the job for those usual Facebook or Google+ photos. Video recording is only 720p, but that was to be expected. Thankfully the shutter speed and camera interface is much better than the original Lucid, and you’ll be snapping Facebook-worthy pictures in seconds. Here’s a few indoors, as well as outdoors for good measure. Good enough right? Hey the phone is free!

As far as a “Phone” is concerned, the Lucid 2 does great. The actual call quality is great thanks to Verizon, and the speakerphone was louder than many devices we’ve used in the past. Sadly 4G LTE seemed to be a little choppy in an otherwise stable locations, but we’ll check with Verizon and get back to you on that. LTE dropped often and would default to 3G, then our data speeds for YouTube and browsing the web suffered. For most this shouldn’t be an issue however.

Battery Life

As we stated above, the LG Lucid 2 happily comes with a larger than average battery given the size of the smartphone. LG paired a quality 2,460 mAh battery under the hood of this mid-range phone and it lasts far longer than many. We managed nearly 30 hours of battery on a single charge with minimal usage, and with heavy gaming and some web-browsing over WiFi it still lasted from morning til night. We didn’t need to plug it in overnight either, that’s the biggie. You won’t be crying if you forget to charge your phone during the wee hours of the night.

LG’s software tweaks really made showing the battery life a task, as the image above shows the battery drain at 21 hours, and that went all the way down to 10% after about 25 hours. Usually stock Android has a great battery stat page, but LG decided to make it a bit complicated. That aside because it doesn’t matter, battery life is stellar on the LG Lucid 2. Certainly the best for a budget phone, considering the RAZR M only has a 2,000 mAh battery and nearly the same specs.

Accessories

With the LG Lucid 2 being free with a new 2-year contract, Verizon has a few accessories they’ll want you to buy while you are in the store. One that is a pretty decent move considering you’re walking out not paying a cent is the wireless charger options. Using what LG calls the “world’s smallest” wireless charger to drop it and go for only $39.99. This charger is made of the same extremely cheap plastic materials, but has a nice durable set of feet so it won’t slide around. Simple drop your Lucid 2 on it smack-dab in the middle and it will instantly start charging. It has a nice notification LED too.

Then LG’s also included in Verizon stores a wireless charging dock and spare battery charger. The dock pictured above sadly doesn’t have audio out or anything of that nature, but will put your Lucid 2 in a nice landscape mode while you sleep. It also doubles as a charger and conveniently comes with a spare battery that will also charge up all night. So basically LG has battery life completely covered with the Lucid 2.

Wrap-Up

LG has done a rather fine job here in terms of what you get with the Lucid 2 for the price. The fact that they are offering a fairly decent mid-range phone (screen aside) completely free with a new 2-year contract is the selling point here. You get a powerful, capable, and up to date Android Jelly Bean smartphone all absolutely free. Then from there you can enjoy some wireless charging and spend that money on apps from the Play Store instead.

So in closing is the Lucid a device we’d recommend to someone who is considering the iPhone 5, Galaxy S III (or S4) or any other high end device? Nope! Nor does the device deserve any such sort of recommendation. What we will say is for a teenager or a first time smartphone buyer the Lucid 2 for free is a pretty good option, and something worth taking a look at in a store near you. Enjoy the rest of the photos below.

Hardware

HTC may put Facebook at the core of the First, but the hardware does remind us of another phone: the HTC One S. At 4.96 x 2.56 x 0.35 inches and 4.37 ounces it’s a little shorter, but slightly thicker and heavier, than the 2012 midrange handset, sacrificing some sleekness by virtue of its cheaper soft-touch plastic body rather than the One S’ more premium-feel metal. HTC will offer four color options: white, black, red, and pale blue.

The front is dominated by a 4.3-inch, 720p resolution Super LCD display. We’ve already praised HTC for compromising on the size/usability argument with the 4.7-inch One, which we prefer to 5-inch devices, and the 4.3-inch form-factor of the First makes for another nicely scaled phone. The curved edges of the matte-finish unibody casing nestle into the hand well, and while it may not be Full HD, the 341ppi of the display means it’s more pixel-dense than an iPhone 5.

It’s also bright and clear, with decent viewing angles. Underneath, there are three touch-sensitive keys – back, home, and menu – though no dedicated Facebook key, unlike HTC’s earlier Salsa and ChaCha handsets; in fact, the only physical controls are a volume rocker on the left edge and a power button on the top, along with the 3.5mm headphones jack. The microSIM tray and microUSB port are on the right edge, and there’s a small – and fairly weedy – speaker on the bottom.

The back (which has pleasing proportions that remind us of the original iPhone) has a 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash, while a 1.6-megapixel front-facing camera is included for your Facebook selfies. Both use backside-illuminated sensors and, in the case of the front camera, an ultrawide lens for including more people in-frame. However, there’s none of the UltraPixel cleverness that HTC has included on the HTC One.

Inside is where the $100 sticker price of the First begins to properly show. The processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 8930AA dualcore running at 1.4GHz, paired with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage; like other HTC handsets in recent months, there’s no microSD card slot to add to that, and nor do you get a removable battery. Instead, the 2,000 mAh Li-Poly pack is fixed.

Connectivity includes quad band HSPA+/GSM/EDGE and dualband LTE – AT&T has already confirmed it will be offering the First, complete with 4G support – as well as WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0. There’s none of the 802.11ac WiFi support of the HTC One, but the First does get NFC, dual-microphones, GPS/GLONASS and a digital compass.

The most noticeable thing about the First is, perhaps ironically, just how inconspicuous it is. The barely-ornamented chassis – which includes relegating HTC’s logo, along with those of Facebook and AT&T, to discrete silk-screens at the bottom half of the back of the phone, with no branding on the front whatsoever – basically serves as a discrete frame for Facebook. It reminds us a little of HTC’s origins as a white-label designer, pumping out handsets for carriers to rebrand, and while the First is a sturdy little thing, it’s hardly memorable.

Software and Performance

We’ve reviewed Facebook Home separately, since the new launcher will be available not only on specific “experience” devices like the First, but also as a free download for certain existing Android handsets from the Play market. In short, it’s a replacement to the everyday user experience of an Android phone, as tightly integrated with Facebook services – and as exclusionary of others – as you’d expect.

Underneath, though, is pure Android 4.1, with none of the Sense customizations that have been the default for HTC over the past few years. In fact, you have to look back to the original Nexus One to find the last pure-Android HTC. The irony is, of course, that as of Sense 5 on the HTC One, we’ve actually come back around to liking the company’s customizations. There’s also still no guarantee that, as per a Nexus-series device, you’ll get more timely OS updates versus a Sense phone. One other hiccup was how the menu button was handled: some apps simply don’t seem to recognize it.

As for speed, we were pleasantly surprised with how smooth Facebook Home is on the First’s more humble specifications. Facebook told us that it has worked hard to make sure things like the physics engine behind the animations, and the way the launcher renders, are in keeping with the processing potential of the Snapdragon 400 chipset, and that has certainly paid off for a silky user-experience.

Of course, not everything happens in Home, and so we put the First through the usual benchmarking trials to see how it held up. In Quadrant, it scored 6,346, putting it comfortably ahead of last year’s One X, while a SunSpider browser test score of 1,567.8ms (lower is better) brings the First surprisingly close to where the One scored, with only around 400ms between them.

AnTuTu v3 saw the First manage 11,156, with the internal storage hitting 48.1MB/s reads and 20.7MB/s writes, while in Qualcomm’s own Vellamo tool it scored 2,185 in the HTML5 tests and 587 in the Metal tests. That puts it ahead of the Galaxy S III (on Android 4.0.4, at least) in HTML5 performance, but behind the One X for its Metal store.

Camera

With 5-megapixels to play with, HTC is aiming decidedly at the mid-range with the First’s camera. Unfortunately, while the megapixel count may be similar to that of the HTC One, the pixel technology isn’t, and so the Facebook phone suffers from mediocre low-light performance, among other shortcomings.

As with all phone cameras, give the First ample natural light and it can produce some reasonable stills. Unfortunately, as soon as you step away from those ideal conditions, things get shaky. We saw more noise from the First’s camera than we’d like to, with muted colors and trouble focusing at times, Video suffers in much the same way, with the resolution being less of an issue than the noise and lackluster colors.

Whether most users will care about all that is questionable. Just as the First – and Facebook Home itself – is designed for consuming Facebook media, perhaps its camera will only ever be expected to create basic snapshots for sharing on the social site. Nonetheless, having seen what UltraPixel can do for low-light settings, such as the parties, concerts, and other dimly-lit venues of fun that are commonly documented on Facebook, it’s a shame that those are the type of images that will fare the worst on the First.

Battery

The First will last for up to 14.3hrs of talk time or up to 18.2 days of standby, AT&T says, though that’s likely to be heavily dependent on how socially active you are, and whether it’s over LTE or not. In practice, with the combination of the mid-range specifications and Facebook’s own software refinement, we saw some impressive longevity out of the First. With mixed use, we saw the gage drop by only around 20-percent over the course of more than 14hrs, for instance.

What you don’t have manual control over is how much often Facebook Home refreshes. Facebook has adjusted the default behavior depending on whether you’re connected to WiFi or cellular data, but there’s no manual override, and as such you’re at the mercy of what Facebook and HTC believe to be the most sensible settings. You do get three tiers of data use/image quality settings – high, medium, and low – though no more granular control than that.

Wrap-Up

You could argue that the HTC First is in a category on its own, the first and so-far only dedicated Facebook Home device. That’s certainly how HTC and AT&T would like you to see it. However, there are plenty of ways to do social aggregation – HTC’s own BlinkFeed for instance, on the One, pulls in Facebook updates among other things – and viewed in the grander scheme of things, the First simply doesn’t feel like a $100 device. We’d certainly argue strongly in favor of spending the extra $100 upfront and going for the more refined build quality, better camera, and generally more impressive hardware and software experience of the HTC One, for instance.

We also noticed that, for all the First is meant to be a great social phone, we quickly grew frustrated by its social immersion. Part of that is because we’re not fully committed to any one single service, and Facebook Home does its level best to bury others, like Twitter and Google+, beneath the surface.

More critically, there’s not enough control over what gets included in Cover Feed and what doesn’t. The First is a window into your entire Facebook experience, whereas most of the time we wanted a more pared-back glimpse into the subset of people we’re particularly interested in. That could be addressed with support for Facebook’s existing Groups, and we’d not be surprised if it’s high on the company’s to-do list, but right now it’s a hit & miss affair as to whether you’ll turn on your phone and be faced with something you actually care about, from a friend you’re actually close to. Ironically, Facebook Home is perhaps the best argument for pruning your friends list that we’ve seen in some time.

If the HTC First was a $99.99 device on prepay, we’d be a lot more comfortable recommending it. With a two-year agreement involved, and the relatively small step up to a device like the HTC One, which we rate so strongly, it’s not just Facebook Home’s beta-style performance that gives us pause for thought. The First is not a bad handset, but it’s a generally nondescript one, and Facebook Home is not the “killer launcher” that would make it a must-buy.

Design, Performance, and Usability

We’ve already comprehensively covered the core proposition of the HTC One in our original review. Suffice to say, the appeal of the matte-finish metal handset hasn’t waned since then. Build quality keeps it at the top of the pile of Android devices in recent memory, for a start, and having weighed the One against the Galaxy S 4 at the Samsung phone’s launch, it’s clear that HTC has the edge in design and quality. One mild concern is the tendency of the white polycarbonate inset strip running the edge of the phone to pick up color smudges when we kept it in our jeans pocket, though these usually rubbed off.

Some of the details stand out after a longer period with the phone. BoomSound has a ridiculous name, but we can’t argue with the audio performance: we’ve found ourselves showing off more video, as well as reaching for the One in preference to other devices when it comes to consuming multimedia from services like Netflix, simply because the front-facing stereo speakers are simply that good. The power from the speakers is also incredibly useful when using the One as a navigation device in the car, while the screen they flank is no slouch either, with a combination of 1080p Full HD resolution and a color balance that’s refreshingly level rather than skewed to over-saturation.

HTC One walkthrough:

Sense 5 and the BlinkFeed homescreen – which pulls together news, Facebook, Twitter, calendar, and tips from the phone – continues to draw our attention, even with the gloss of newness taken off it. With its Flipboard-style feed of headlines and images, BlinkFeed makes for a great distraction, though we can’t help but wish HTC would hurry up and add offline caching of articles, the ability to add your own RSS feeds, and Google+/Google Now integration. The latter would arguably make the biggest difference; we like the low-noise way the One slots your upcoming appointments into the first page of BlinkFeed tiles each day, and it would make a perfect fit for Google Now suggestions.

Overall, Sense 5 combined with Android 4.1 performs well, and with the exception of Photosphere we’ve not really missed anything from the very latest version of Jelly Bean. AT&T’s version of the One includes a customized browser, but despite our initial concerns, performance actually improved over the stock phone. In SunSpider, the test of JavaScript performance, the European One scored 1,118.9ms versus the 1,035.1ms of the AT&T version (in SunSpider, faster is better). Overall, we had no issues with the One’s quadcore 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 processor pulling its weight running apps, and even AT&T’s preloaded software – which includes DriveMode, Family Map, Locker, Navigator, Ready2Go, Messages, myAT&T, Smart Wi-Fi, YPmobile, and Device Help – are neatly clustered into a folder rather than scattershot across the app launcher.

It’s not all perfect, though. A lingering frustration is the black menu bar that often appears in third-party apps, where HTC has followed Android guidelines and dropped a dedicated menu key, but apps aren’t yet putting the three-dot softkey where it should be, tucked out of the way in the corner. That means you lose a stripe of your 4.7-inch screen to a single control (the functionality of which varies widely) but, more annoyingly, the on-screen keyboard shifts up to accommodate it.

That has at times played havoc with our typing, our thumbs not extending sufficiently to avoid the menu key and thus interrupting text entry. Admittedly, it’s not HTC’s fault, but it’s an ongoing annoyance that apps not adhering to the latest Android UI guidelines continue to hit the Play store.

Camera and Multimedia

HTC’s UltraPixel strategy has proved divisive, with the company chasing more light instead of more megapixels. We’ve covered how the One uses its 4-megapixels extensively in our review, but we also gave the smartphone its chance to shine out in the wild, taking it to the New York Auto Show last month.

Your average tradeshow is tough going on a camera, whether it’s a DSLR, a point-and-shoot, or on a smartphone. The lighting ranges from ridiculously bright, meaning you get masses of reflections and glare, to moodily dark, making details difficult to pick out and the threat of noise a constant. In-between, there’s all manner of colored lights that can confuse a camera’s sensor.

The NY Auto Show was no different, but the HTC One held its own for the most part. All of the photos and video from our coverage of the new Chevrolet Camaro Z28 and the Corvette Stingray was taken using the One, for example, with us also using the Zoe “highlight” feature that creates summary videos based on 3.6s snippets of video and burst-stills.

For the photos, despite the mixed lighting conditions, the quality was surprisingly high. Blur is noticeably absent, the One being able to stick to faster shutter-speeds and lower ISOs thanks to its greater appetite for light, and photos which combine well-lit areas alongside much darker ones are impressively balanced. The phone is fast, too: back-to-back shots are roughly as swift as you can repeatedly tap the on-screen button.

Video, meanwhile, looks great at 1080p Full HD resolution, with the same impressive low-light and mixed-lighting performance as for stills. However, the noisy show floor proved a challenge for the One’s stereo microphones at times, however: you can certainly make out speech compared to background noise, but it lacks the pinpoint clarity you’d get with a directional microphone or a dedicated clip-on mic.

Nonetheless, for immediacy and convenience, the One certainly held its own. At full resolution and in perfect lighting, HTC’s choice of big pixels rather than lots of them struggles somewhat, but in more everyday situations the convenience of being able to take low-light situations in your stride wins out.

The downside with the One – and, specifically, with Zoe photography, which simultaneously grabs 20 stills and 3.6s of Full HD video – remains how multimedia is managed, particularly off the phone. We’ve already highlighted how poorly that plays with auto-upload services, such as those offered by Dropbox, Google+, and Facebook, which basically fill your cloud storage with dozens of nearly-identical shots. The AT&T version is no different in that respect, and HTC desperately needs to step up and address offloading media with its HTC Sync Manager app.

While it’s at it, we wouldn’t argue with more themes and flexibility for the Zoe highlights system: the One’s automatically curated showreels, which come complete with transitions, filters, and background music. We’re still impressed by how neatly the One knits these together, but the option for longer clips (currently it’s 30 seconds only) and the ability to use your own music would make the feature considerably more useful. We’ve found people are much more willing to watch our photos and video when they’re stitched into a highlight reel, and so a greater number of presets (out of the box there are six to choose between) would make it all the more engaging.

HTC Sense, Zoe, and Highlights demo:

One advantage those looking to AT&T for their One will have is capacity. The carrier has the US exclusive on the 64GB version, other networks making do with the 32GB model, and given the amount of data Zoe photography creates, and that there’s no microSD storage option, that makes a big difference. It’s not a cheap way to boost capacity, though: AT&T is asking $199.99 for the 32GB One, or $100 more to double the memory.

Phone, LTE, and Battery

HTC’s BoomSound speaker technology means the One has no problems pushing out in-call audio, and happily performance on AT&T’s network matched up with that. We had no problems keeping a signal, even though HTC squeezes the One’s antennas into the tiny polycarbonate notches in the unibody case, and hardly a dropped call, even in areas where coverage was patchy.

We tested LTE performance in multiple locations where AT&T currently offers service, including New York City, Denver, Wichita, and San Francisco. Speeds ranged from as much as 39Mbps downloads and nearly 19Mbps uploads, location depending, though averaged out at 15.95Mbps down and 7.06Mbps up. In contrast, we saw peeks of 37Mbps down and nearly 11Mbps up on an iPhone 5 using Verizon’s LTE network.

LTE has a reputation for being power hungry, and while the One’s 2,300 mAh battery isn’t small, the fact that it can’t be removed – unlike, say, the battery in Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 – has left some wary of the quadcore smartphone. In practice, we’ve found the One has sufficient legs to last through the day, particularly if its power management systems are turned on. These put data to sleep after periods of extended inactivity, waking them only occasionally to check for new messages and other updates, as well as reducing screen brightness and enabling other frugal systems.

Over the course of a sixteen hour day, then, with a mixture of cellular and WiFi connectivity, we saw roughly 30-percent of the battery left. More patchy use of WiFi saw LTE take a greater toll, with 20-percent left after just over twelve hours. However, even when we forgot to plug the charger in overnight, the One proved frugal, only dropping a few percentage points thanks to the data throttling.

Wrap-Up

Nothing about AT&T’s version of the HTC One has changed our positive impression of the smartphone. In fact, native LTE support for the US has only improved our takeaway opinion: the One is beautifully constructed, slickly designed, fast, has thoughtful software tweaks – a few third-party app UI glitches aside – and a great, flexible camera.

The road ahead for HTC isn’t going to be an easy one. Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 is the specter on the near horizon, and for however much it may offer an evolutionary step up from its Galaxy S III predecessor, it comes with the might of the South Korean company’s prodigious marketing machine (and its equally massive budget). In contrast, the One sees HTC take a far greater risk than it has in recent years – in investment in construction, camera strategy, and software – and, for the most part, that pays off in the quality of the overall device.

The Samsung Galaxy S 4 is, if last year’s model is anything to go by, likely to be the default choice for Android buyers in 2013. However, the HTC One is arguably the more thoughtful choice. In AT&T form, it’s our favorite Android handset of the moment.

Hardware & Design

The first thing you’ll notice with the Torque is its rugged look. It has a textured hard plastic Dura-Grip casing that protects it from drops, and every port is covered with a flap to keep water and dust out. The battery cover can come off, however, and it’s held on with a rather large screw that only requires a quarter turn to “unlock” it, so to speak. The cover is made out of a slightly-flexible rubber material to make it easy to pop off. Underneath the rear plate is a 2500mAh battery that powers the show, and it’s a slightly larger battery than we initially expected, but seeing how the Torque is meant for the adventurer, it’s critical to have a phone that can last all day.

The Torque comes with a 4-inch IPS display with a 800×480 resolution. Of course, that’s not really all that impressive, and those looking primarily for a top-quality display will want to look elsewhere, but otherwise it gets the job done, and most people who would need a rugged phone most likely won’t even care about the display’s quality in the first place. The screen is covered with a pre-installed screen protector as well, but it makes the screen look slightly blurry. We’re not sure what kind of screen protector is on the phone, but we could definitely tell that it made text and small icons a little blotchy.

As for the internals, the Torque comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz accompanied with 1GB of RAM. Sadly, it only has a measly 1GB of storage, but the phone has a microSD card slot that accepts up to 32GB of additional storage. The Torque sports a 5MP camera on the back, with a 1.3MP front-facing camera — more about that later.

As for ports and buttons, the Torque doesn’t rely on touch-based soft buttons. The phone consists of all physical buttons, including the three navigation buttons on the front. On the right side, there’s a dedicated camera button that acts as a shutter button, but it won’t open up the camera app itself. On the right side, there’s a volume rocker and a big yellow button for push-to-talk communication. On the top is the power button and a toggle button for turning the push-to-talk speaker on and off. Also on the top is the headphone jack in the middle. Then, on the bottom you have the microUSB port and the microphone.

The Torque also sports front-facing speakers, which is quite a rarity nowadays, and we were surprised to see that on a phone like this. The device houses the speakers at the bottom right below the navigation buttons, and I found it to be quite nice not having to cup my hand from the rear in order to get the sound to direct to the front, so having front-facing speakers is a small, but huge feature on this phone. As for the earpiece, it’s actually built into the glass display, and it relies on vibrations to deliver sound to your ear. It’s a weird concept, but Kyocera claims it makes voice calling quality better, especially in loud environments, like at a concert.

As for how rugged the Torque is, Kyocera claims it to be a pretty robust beast. The device meets Military Standard 810G, which applies to protection from dust, shock, vibration, temperature, rain, low pressure, solar radiation, and immersion in water for up to 30 minutes in up to 1 meter of water. I ended up dropping it a couple of times on my kitchen’s tile floor at different angles and it didn’t scratch it one bit, and it made more of a “thud” sound rather than a high-pitched cracking noise that you would get with most other smartphones. I even brought it in the shower with me and it was fine the whole time. However, Kyocera notes that the phone is inoperable while the screen is wet. We’re not sure if the phone disables itself somehow to avoid damage, but the phone stays on — you just can’t use it. In the end, you probably don’t need to worry too much about damaging the phone, which is something that most other smartphone owners can’t say about their precious toys.

Software

The Torque runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and the interface looks to be mostly stock, although there are a few pre-installed apps that may get in your way. Other than that, though, it looks like Kyocera mostly left the user interface alone, which is a huge plus for those wanting a true Android experience. However, those wanting the latest operating system will be disappointed for now, but Kyocera plans to upgrade the device to Jelly Bean within the next few months.

However, there are still a couple of Kyocera-exclusive features within the software, including a modified lock screen, that allows you to swipe the unlock circle in any direction to unlock the phone, and there’s also a camera icon that does the same thing. The icons at the bottom of the home screen are also just slightly changed up, with an ID app to the far right that allows you change the theme of the user interface.

Camera

The camera on the Torque isn’t the best, to put it simply. Even with adequate lighting, photos turned out to be really noisy, and white balance wasn’t working too well in most situations. Low-light capabilities weren’t too bad, though, but there was still a lot of noise in the photos, of course. I noticed that the camera would only focus the frame after I pressed the shutter button, meaning that as I was lining up my shot, the frame would remain blurry until I took the picture. At that point, the camera would quickly focus the frame and snap the photo. It only appeared to be doing that specifically with macro and other close-up shots, though.

Video quality was subpar as well. Automatic exposure and white balancing were average, but it would take a few seconds to refocus if I moved the camera around. As with the photos, ISO and noise were apparent, and while the camera is capable of shooting in HD, the quality isn’t too great, and it mostly looks like a standard-definition video that was blown up to HD standards, which as you know, doesn’t have good results. Overall, if you’re going hiking and are planning to do some sightseeing, you may want to bring a dedicated camera to take photos of that beautiful sunset over the canyon.

Performance & Battery Life

We ran the Torque through our go-to benchmarking apps, Quadrant and AnTuTu, and the results were a bit better than we expected. In AnTuTu, the Torque scored a 10,500, which is right on par with the Samsung Galaxy Note and the Galaxy S II, while just lagging behind a bit from the ASUS Transformer Prime. In Quadrant, the Torque scored just under a 4,200, which puts it on par with the Transformer Prime and almost up to snuff with the HTC One X, which is quite impressive.

As for battery life, knowing that the Torque had a 2500mAh battery, I was expecting to go longer than usual with this phone, and that’s exactly what happened. Streaming Netflix TV shows and movies non-stop on the Torque ended up lasting eight hours before the battery even reached 25%, and with normal use, it was easily lasting a couple of days without a problem. Of course, the large battery mixed with the low power requirements of the internal components makes the Torque one of the few smartphones on the market that can last a long time on a single charge.

Wrap-Up

In the end, while the Torque probably won’t win any awards in the looks department, it certainly gets props for being an extremely rugged smartphone. There’s definitely some things that could be better if it wants to compete with the flagship devices currently on the market, so you’ll definitely have to make some sacrifices in the performance department if you’re wanting something rugged. Although, we’d almost just rather get a better phone, slap on an OtterBox case, and call it a day.

Design

Stunning. The HTC One makes a compelling argument for being the best-made Android phone we can recall, a design that both looks and feels premium (though photos don’t tend to do it justice, making it look flat and overly simplistic). Last year’s One X was a solid device, with its polycarbonate plastic casing, but the One is leagues ahead. HTC went back to basics – CNC-intensive manufacturing processes; clever rethinking of how to finesse the most out of minimal antennas – with its industrial design, and the end result is a phone that’s creak-free and somehow timeless in the same way that Apple’s MacBook Pro design has gracefully evolved.

On the front, HTC’s favorite micro-drilling process has spread from the earpiece to the slip of metal under the display, while the company continues to insist that Google’s on-screen buttons are a waste of valuable display space, and so includes touch-sensitive keys. We’re down to just two of them, however – Back and Home – flanking an HTC logo that doesn’t do anything if you tap it. We can’t help but wish the logo was the home button, since we kept stabbing at it out of habit.

A thin band of white polycarbonate runs the chamfered edge of the One, enclosing the power key (which doubles as an IR blaster) and headphone socket on the top edge, and the microUSB port on the bottom. A volume rocker is on the side, flush with the casing. On the back, the gently bowed metal has been carefully shot through with narrow strips of plastic which allow the antennas to do their magic; there’s a neat stylistic flourish with the upper band dipping to encircle the camera lens, but we could do without the Beats Audio logo which looks a little garish in comparison to the discretely metallic HTC branding.

All that metal and sturdiness comes with a compromise, and that’s the battery. HTC has opted for a non-removable Li-Poly pack, a healthy 2,300 mAh, which is fixed inside. Exactly how many people ever actually swap out their batteries is unclear, but it could prove an early deal-breaker for some. Similarly, there’s no microSD card slot, HTC unable to accommodate it in the 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3 mm, 143g frame.

Hardware and Performance

HTC has thrown the works at the One, and pretty much all but wireless charging has stuck. So, you get a fast processor – Qualcomm’s 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 quadcore, to be exact – and 2GB of memory, along with a 4.7-inch Full HD display (more on which later). Connectivity includes LTE, HSPA/WCDMA, and GSM/EDGE, along with WiFi a/b/g/n/ac, MHL-HDMI with the right adapter, Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX audio support, NFC, and Miracast wireless display, while there’s also a digital compass, GPS, GLONASS, gyroscope, accelerometer, and proximity/ambient light sensors.

Without a microSD card slot, internal storage becomes all the more important. HTC has sensibly bypassed the 16GB point and instead opted for 32GB and 64GB versions, though the latter will be only available in certain, limited locations. Our 32GB review unit had 25.49GB free out of the box. There’s a free 25GB chunk of Dropbox storage, too, though we’d still rather see expandable local memory if given the option.

It’s particularly topical since the One does so well with multimedia. For once, the Beats Audio doesn’t feel like a cynical marketing mention: the One really does exceed what other phones can do, both when it comes to recording and playing back sound. For the former, it’s down to two dual-membrane microphones, which HTC calls Sense Voice: in short, one half of each microphone handles high signal-to-noise ratio sound, such as regular speech, up to around the 75dB point, while above that there’s a high sound pressure level membrane that can cope with the more boisterous sounds you’d encounter at a concert or club.

Sample recording from a concert

Together they’re designed to handle every audio situation the phone might find itself in, whether that’s doing speakerphone duty in a quiet office, recording your kids on the swings at the park, or in the front row of a gig. Best of all, it actually works: the stereo pick-up is excellent in normal conditions, but as soon as things get loud and you’d expect a regular phone to get overwhelmed, the One just bulldozes ahead. We kept trying to identify the point where the membranes hand over, but in fact it’s more of a seamless blend; you simply can’t tell what the One is doing, which is really as it should be.

On the flip side are the speakers, which HTC is equally proud of. The One brings them up-front, flanking the display, and gives them significantly larger chambers to resonate in. Look beyond the awkward BoomSound branding and the result is impressive: loud but without distortion, and with bass that belies the fact you’re listening to a phone. The speakers get their own Beats Audio branded amplifier, too, with a second powering the headphone socket. Interestingly, HTC isn’t bundling any Beats Audio headphones in the box this time around, only a regular wired hands-free kit, though the One worked well with every aftermarket set we tried.

We can’t complain about the One’s overall performance, the Snapdragon 600 putting in a convincing show both in everyday use and in benchmarks. In Quadrant, the HTC scored 12,127, a huge step up from the 7,400 of the One X+, while in AnTuTu it managed 24,283, up from the 16,245 of the One X+. In Qualcomm’s Vellamo test, it scored 2,398 in the HTML5 category and 779 in the Metal category. In SunSpider, the browser test of JavaScript performance, the One scored 1118.9ms (faster is better. Overall, then, it’s clear that the One can handle anything you could throw at it today, and is likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future.

Display

Point-three of an inch shouldn’t make a difference, but it does. HTC’s decision to go with a 4.7-inch screen, against the 5-inch panel of the DROID DNA and Butterfly J, is a welcome one: you still get the rich, creamy Full HD resolution, but that slightly condensed 1080p adds up to both 468ppi pixel density and a handset that’s easier to hold.

HTC has stuck with LCD rather than looking to AMOLED, and the result is a panel that’s beautifully balanced. Accurate colors, rich blacks, and viewing angles that are so broad as to look pasted on. It could arguably do with being a little brighter at its maximum setting – we’ve been spoiled with recent high-nit panels from LG and others, which do better at battling sunlight – but it’s a great all-rounder nonetheless.

Software

HTC Sense

HTC Sense has had a long and at-times tortured journey. What started as HTC’s attempt to tame the wild-west of raw Android back in the v1.5 days gradually became heavier, slower, and arguably less necessary as Google tightened up its own software. What were once HTC-exclusive features gradually became baked into Android-proper, and – despite a few little-developed additions, like OnLive gaming and HTC Watch – HTC seemed more interested in simply visually differentiating its phones than actually delivering a legitimately more usable UI.

That doesn’t fly in 2013, when pure Android has an increasing number of fans, and rivals like Samsung have gone tweak and enhancement crazy with their own software modifications. Happily HTC has taken a clean-slate approach with Sense 5.0 on the One, and much of its new strategy works.

For a start, the swollen icons and cartoony feel has been pared back dramatically, keeping little more than wire-frame outlines of HTC’s weather icons (some things, like zombies, refuse to die). Instead, you get some welcome use of Google’s Roboto font – in its condensed form, which makes it look both familiar and distinctive – and a crisper, more simplistic layout with flatter icons and a black/white/blue color scheme that’s reminiscent of Windows Phone in places.

The familiar homescreen is still present, though now limited to four panes of icons or widgets – HTC says its research indicates the vast majority of users settle on a screen or two of icons, and then never bother changing them – while the app launcher comes with several apps already organized away into folders, part of HTC’s encouragement to keep the layout (either 3×4 or 4×5) tidy. Our units direct from HTC have little in the way of bloatware preinstalled, and we know the company is working with carriers to try to minimize how many “added extras” get thrown in, with the goal being to have them at least corralled into a folder from the start.

Interestingly, you can treat the app launcher as a homescreen; jump from it into an app and then hit the Home key, and you’ll go straight back to the launcher rather than the traditional desktop. However, HTC has another part of its homescreen that it hopes will become your default.

HTC BlinkFeed

BlinkFeed is HTC’s latest try at pulling together social, something it started several years back in FriendFeed. However, the new system is far more comprehensive, featuring not only Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Flickr content, but news from multiple online sources. Outwardly similar in appearance and functionality to newsreading-app Flipboard, BlinkFeed sits to a side-swipe of the desktop and fills the screen with page after page of mixed content from news and social.

In its first generation, you can only choose from HTC’s selection of news sources – future iterations will support general RSS feeds being added, HTC tells us – but it’s a pretty comprehensive selection from the outset, and tailored depending on your location. Those in the US will see sources like USA Today and the WSJ, while those in the UK will get the BBC and the Guardian, for instance. Subscriptions can be added on a category basis – technology, for instance, or sport – or from a specific provider. If you’re on a WiFi connection then the list is updated automatically every couple of hours by default, whereas out of the box it’s manual-only refreshes on a cellular data connection. A quick pull down on the BlinkFeed list triggers a check for new articles (as well as showing the options menu for managing subscriptions).

We’re generally wary of news reader apps, especially those preloaded by manufacturers, since they’re usually subpar compared to third-party options like Flipboard. BlinkFeed, though, is surprisingly capable. HTC describes its purpose as serving up “snackable” content, the sort of glanceable tidbit that might catch your attention when you instinctively reach for your phone in a moment of distraction, and in that respect it operates as a gateway rather than trying to be the be-all and end-all of news consumption.

Tap an article – small icons and text at the bottom of each thumbnail show whether its come from a news site or been shared from Twitter, Facebook, or another social source, along with who shared it – and it opens in the regular browser. Tweets open in the official Twitter app, Facebook links in the Facebook app; not some HTC version the company has cooked up. In the future, you’ll be able to choose alternative apps – so, for instance, you could use your third-party Twitter software of choice rather than the microblogging company’s own app – but that’s not supported at launch. If the flow of news gets too much for you, you can shut it off and use BlinkFeed solely as a social feed, or vice-versa. Other apps will also periodically inject their content into BlinkFeed too, so for instance the gallery might remind you of an old photo taken if you revisit a location, or HTC might slide in a pane with tips about an under-utilized feature. Sadly, despite its cards arguably making the most sense for inclusion, there’s currently no Google Now integration.

Despite our skepticism, we quickly grew to like BlinkFeed. Part of that’s down to speed: there’s very little lag in scrolling through the list – HTC has wisely kept the animations to a minimum, with just a small amount of tile-tilt when you flick through each page – and stories open up quickly. HTC’s content partner does a fair amount of server-side processing to keep data transfer time and overall traffic to a minimum: the One gets the headline and an image (news sources with photos get priority over text-only stories) and then only accesses a specially formatted article when you actually tap on it. There’s also a push to show the full article rather than just an excerpt, as sometimes find on Flipboard, though you can always open up the page on the original site, or share it via any of the usual Android methods. It’s perfect for the casual grazing smartphone addicts do in every moment of downtime.

BlinkFeed is obviously a first-generation product, but HTC has ambitious plans for its development. Our advice has always been to buy a device for what it does today, not what it might be updated to do tomorrow, though HTC has at least made changes to Sense in v.5 to address a key complaint: that software updates are frustratingly infrequent. Typically, that’s because a new firmware version demands considerable interaction between manufacturer and the carriers, and often only comes when Google pushes out a new version of Android.

To address that, HTC has divorced the update process for its own apps from the underlying OS. Rather than being forced to wait for a significant firmware change before it can tweak, patch, and generally improve BlinkFeed and other homegrown software, HTC will be able to update them piecemeal. So, when BlinkFeed finally gets third-party app support, or RSS subscription support, HTC will be able to deliver that functionality in the same manner as an app downloaded from the Google Play store can.

We’ve heard promises of more timely upgrades before, so the proof of HTC’s ambitious new system will be in the delivery. However, if it can do it, it will go a long way to drawing some of the venom many feel about OEM skins like Sense. That’s not to say HTC has turned over a new leaf entirely: the One launches running Android 4.1.2, rather than 4.2, with the company promising an update soon.

HTC Get Started

Once upon a time, HTC offered a web-based counterpart to Sense on its phones, with mobile content access, backup, find-my-phone security, and remote locking. That was quietly retired in early 2012, however, with HTC promising bright new things in its place. Those bright new things have taken until now, and the HTC One, to arrive.

HTC Get Started is, the company tells us, in part a reaction to the growing number of online sales of phones: now, buyers will be able to jump straight into their new phone experience, even while they’re waiting for the One to be physically delivered. In short, it’s a simple way to set up a new device. After choosing your model (and carrier variant), you can personalize the applications, sounds, bookmarks, wallpapers, lock screen options, and even the feeds in BlinkFeed, all via a web interface on the desktop.

You can start from a blank slate, or pick from seven presets – family, games, music, photos, social, sports, or travel – which each populate the One with a set of feeds, apps, bookmarks, sounds, and other settings. So, if you opt for the games preset, you get Temple Run and Angry Birds Space automatically installed, along with gaming and sports content for BlinkFeed, and some of the popular gaming news and reviews sites bookmarked in the browser. Every choice is previewed on a mock-up of the One shown alongside.

If you’d rather craft your own setup, you can step through each content stage, picking ringtones, notifications, and alarms – or uploading your own audio to snip a sound from it – then choosing from either preloaded bookmarks or add your own, as well as from HTC’s wallpapers or one of your own images uploaded specially. All of the apps you choose come direct from the Google Play store, which means they update just as if you loaded them manually on the phone itself.

It’s the accounts section of Get Started that’s the most useful, however. Rather than punch in your email and Dropbox credentials during the on-device setup wizard – something which can be frustrating, pecking in passwords on a soft keyboard – you can register them in the browser interface. The whole thing is then finished off with either the creation of an HTC account or, alternatively, by logging in with your Facebook or Weibo username and password. When you start up the phone, you can punch those credentials in, and the One gets automagically set up just as you arranged it online.

Given how much time we spend setting up new devices, we’re unsurprisingly fans of HTC Get Started. You don’t have to be a phone reviewer to appreciate its simplicity, however; one of the most frustrating issues new smartphone owners can face is not being quite sure what to actually do with their powerful new gadget, and so HTC’s smorgasbord of curated apps is a great launching point. Unfortunately there’s no way, at present, to synchronize Sense in the other direction – you can’t back-up your exact phone layout to Get Started, edit it online, and then later restore that to the device – but HTC does at least offer a backup system that preserves most of the layout and settings of your handset.

TV

HTC’s clever integration of an IR blaster into the One’s power button gets a purpose right out of the box, with the company’s simply-named TV app. Built on Peel technology – which powers the universal remote system included on some Galaxy Tab tablets, for instance – the app basically replaces your usual home entertainment remotes and throws in a channel guide too.

First-time setup involves telling the app where you live and what content providers you have – cable, satellite, free-to-air digital, etc. – then selecting your TV model and any other A/V kit you might have. HTC has a long list of manufacturers to choose from, and we were up and running with our TVs simply by choosing the brand; testing basically involves firing off a power signal, and making sure the TV turns on as expected. Multiple devices can be set up and switched between, and if you’ve something not on the list then you can teach the TV app how to use it: the IR blaster also works as a remote reader, and so by pointing the controller for your mystery device at the One, you can step through all of the key controls. That way, we were able to set up an Apple TV, a preset for which was missing from HTC’s list.

When you open TV, you find a screen of currently-playing shows based on the channels you receive. Each gets a preview and a bar running along the bottom showing how far through the show is; tapping it automatically changes the channel, or you can open up an information page with an episode summary, a list of actors, and other details. It’s there you can also favorite shows: from that point, those you’ve favorited will show up higher in the “now playing” list, as well as have reminders of new episodes pushed into your BlinkFeed. A side-swipe from the main screen shows what’s coming up next, as well as allowing you to dig into the future schedule or break your planning down channel-by-channel. It’s also possible to permanently hide channels you’re not interested in.

Exit the TV app and a shortcut automatically appears in the notification bar, complete with quick access to the power, to the full remote page, and details of what you’re currently watching. Set the phone down with TV running and, if it goes to sleep, it’ll wake up automatically when you pick it up. You can pull the app up even if the phone is PIN-locked, too, though for security users won’t be able to jump from the TV app to other content on your phone if you’ve left it on the coffee table. It’s worth noting that the app only knows what’s on if you’ve been using it exclusively; if you switch between the One and your regular remote, there’s no way for the phone to figure out what channel is currently playing.

The other aspect of TV is streaming content, though here HTC’s provision is slightly less developed. You can stream video directly from the phone to a TV – it’s incredibly straightforward, too, as long as it supports DLNA or Miracast, and is basically a matter of choosing the screen of choice and then watching the content show up – or from third-party services like Netflix and Hulu Plus. Eventually, HTC aims to have the TV app control the native streaming apps on smart TVs, but for now it works best if you have HTC’s own MediaLink HD box plugged into your set via HDMI.

As with BlinkFeed, HTC has more in store for the TV app. Right now, it’s responsive but not predictive: it’ll remind you of an upcoming show if you’ve favorited it before, but it won’t make suggestions based on what it thinks you might like. That’s in the pipeline, though, and HTC will be able to iterate more regularly thanks to its streamlined update system. Meanwhile, HTC is pitching an API for the IR blaster around A/V app developers, hoping for broader adoption there, too. For the moment, it’s a handy system if you’re laden with remotes or often lose them, though it’s perhaps too early to be a must-have feature.

Kid Mode

Handing your offspring your phone – especially if it’s logged into an app or multimedia store, complete with a credit card registered – can be a recipe for disaster. To fix that, HTC equips the One with Kid Mode, powered by Zoodles, which offers a captive selection of games, age-appropriate multimedia, storybooks, and more, all with a child-friendly interface.

There’s support for time limits on how long games and the web are accessible, as well as ad-blocking and site whitelisting for controlling what kids will come across online. Each child has their own “Playground” user-account, with management from a centralized dashboard. It’s worth noting that Zoodles is already available for Android devices in general, in addition to Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Camera

The One’s camera is probably HTC’s biggest risk with its new flagship, a concerted decision to step off the megapixel bandwagon and instead reconsider smartphone photography from the perspective of how owners really use their phones. So, the One has a “mere” 4-megapixel camera – less than a third of the 13-megapixels Sony has equipped the Xperia Z with, for instance, or LG on the Optimus G Pro – but it’s a specially designed sensor exclusively for HTC’s use.

The key is light. HTC’s research suggests most users take photos indoors or in subpar lighting conditions, rather than outdoors where most phone cameras do their best work. Although ramping up the megapixels increases detail, it also makes each pixel smaller – assuming you want to keep a pocket-friendly phone unlike, say, Nokia with the capable but bloated sensor of the 808 PureView – and that means each gets less light and so the final image gets more noise and other glitches.

HTC’s approach is to use huge pixels – capable of grabbing over 300x the light of some rival cameras – so that, even though the final image may not be as large as from an 8- or 13-megapixel device, its overall quality is higher. More light means faster shutter speeds are possible, which helps cut down on phone shake; HTC also adds in two-axis optical image stabilization to assist with that. The resulting data is fed straight into the latest version of HTC’s ImageChip processing, which finesses things based on the RAW data rather than, as other phones tend to, on the converted JPEG.

Sample shots

The difference is quite literally night and day when it comes to low-light images. Scenes that, on a Galaxy S III or an iPhone 5 are so murky as to be all but useless, come out with significant amounts of detail on the One. The One has an LED flash – which will automatically choose between five degrees of brightness, depending on the distance between the phone and the subject – but you can comfortably leave it off more often than not. As well as greater detail, the One can do less post-processing to remove blur, since the bigger pixels allow for faster shutter speeds.

In more ideal conditions, the One’s shots suffer if you blow them up and compare them side-by-side with higher-megapixel images. The 4-megapixel sensor simply lacks the resolution to compete on that level. Nonetheless, at more typical levels of crop, we’re left impressed by the standard of stills from the One. Colors are accurate and there’s admirably little noise, HTC’s favored 28mm f/2.0 lens making its presence known once more.

Up front, meanwhile, there’s a 2.1-megapixel camera which also has an f/2.0 lens, and HTC has borrowed the One X+’s wide-angle optics so that you can fit more people in-frame at any one time. It’ll shoot 1080p Full HD video, too (though not Zoe shots; more on which in a moment), plus HDR stills, and there’s a useful timer which means you can tap the screen and still have time to post before the frame is captured.

As for video, the One can capture 1080p footage at 30fps, or 720p footage at 60fps; there’s support for HDR video, as well as simultaneously capturing a full-resolution still image while you’re recording video. The results for video are as impressive as those for still images, with excellent colors, balance, and brightness levels, and minimal judder or noise. The low-light performance isn’t quite as convincing as for still shots, though the One handles scenes with mixed high- and low-brightness well: in footage of a show, for instance, with bright lights on-stage and darkness elsewhere, both areas were cleanly visible.

HTC Zoe

If HTC has its way, though, we’ll not be taking just photos or video, but a hybrid of the two. Called Zoe, it’s HTC’s vision of the future of mobile photography: a 0.6s pre-capture of video, from before you hit the on-screen button, then three seconds of video along with twenty stills. There’s no quality compromise involved – stills are at full resolution, and video is at 1080p complete with audio.

Each cluster of content can then be used in interesting ways. At the most basic, it brings the gallery alive: as you look at albums and thumbnails, the 3.6s video clips cycle through as if you’re looking at a magical Harry Potter newspaper. However, open up a Zoe and you can scroll through the clip with a timeline bar, picking out individual frames to keep. HTC has baked in some editing features too, so you can pick out faces from different frames and combine them into one, ensuring everyone has their eyes open and are smiling, or remove objects from the picture. The One can identify faces, too, and allow per-face tweaks like eye-whitening, anime-style enlarging, and skin smoothing.

Each event – a group of recent Zoe clusters, either automatically created by the One or manually merged or split off – gets a thirty second “highlight reel” that the phone produces itself. That sits at the top of the event view, and is basically an automatically curated overview of the themed content. There are six themes to choose from – ranging from “Eifel” with its quirky Parisian style, to the more hipster “Vega” with fast chops and cool color tones – and you can switch between them at will, the reel changing on-the-fly. Hit the remix button, meanwhile, and you instantly get another edit, the speed at which it’s created a testament to HTC’s processing power.

The technology behind the highlight reel is surprisingly complex, too. The cuts aren’t solely random; instead, the One is analyzing each clip and photo for the most interesting parts, such as those which include action, or faces, or even how often you’ve looked at specific photos in the gallery. What you can’t do is manually tweak the reels – only have the phone cook up a new remix itself – or use your own music; HTC tells us the latter is likely to come in a future update, as well as more themes to choose from, but for now you’re limited to the six preloaded.

We’ll admit, it seemed like a gimmick at first. Yet after a short while – and the fact that shooting a Zoe basically has no downside compared to a photo; there’s no processing lag after it finishes, for instance, you simple tap the button and watch the little red highlight slide across the icon – we found ourselves sticking in Zoe mode altogether. Being able to step back through the array of stills, even to before the point we actually took the photo, and pick out the best frame was useful for portrait and action shots, while the highlight reel is the perfect length for Facebook sharing (without boring friends and family with minute after minute of the same mundane thing).

That sharing can be done directly to YouTube, Facebook, or something similar, with the reel exported as an MP4. However, there’s also Zoe Share, HTC’s own social system. A free online gallery, it allows you to choose a reel and an accompanying ten photos or Zoes to upload to a special gallery, with the One automatically pinging you a link in the notification bar which can then be shared via email, Twitter, Facebook, or somewhere else.

Zoe Share isn’t ideal, however. For a start there’s a time limit on how long HTC will host the collections – currently three months – after which they get deleted. Individual stills can be downloaded from Zoe Share, but not individual Zoe clips nor the thirty second highlight reel. Links are entirely public, too; you can’t have a private Zoe Share, with a password in case someone forwards the URL, for instance. There’s also no way to change the video resolution – it defaults to 1080p – which can mean slow uploads unless you’re lucky enough to have a decent connection.

Again, HTC tells us it’s working on a more comprehensive export system – perhaps integrated into the HTC Sync Manager app, which is used to synchronize audio and other content from your PC or Mac to the phone and back, as well as doing file browsing duties – but there’s no timescale for when it might arrive. Meanwhile, if you use an auto-upload service, whether Dropbox (as is prompted during the initial One setup) or something like Google+, every one of the twenty Zoe frames gets automatically uploaded, and there’s no way (aside from manually deleting the shots) to have it only upload one or two of them. Storage – whether on-device or cloud – could quickly become an issue, with each cluster of Zoe content coming in at around 32MB (the 30s video along is 4MB).

That said, we still think it’s a great feature. Zoe injects the fun back into being a mobile shutterbug, producing multimedia that others would actually want to look at. In fact, the biggest drawback of the One isn’t its photo quality, or its overall usability, but trying to educate potential buyers as to what makes the camera special. HTC does itself few favors by turning the full force of its branding machine on the One’s camera system, with confusing results. Instead of megapixels you get UltraPixels; the video/snapshot clusters are called Zoe; but there are also Zoe Highlights, the longer videos that pull in content from multiple Zoes for the ad-hoc, curated 30 second clip complete with music and filters. It’s enough to confuse even the professionals, and that doesn’t bode well for how easy a sale it might be.

Phone and Battery

Given the quality of the HTC One’s music playback performance, we had high hopes for in-call audio. Interestingly, though, the phone was pretty average: the earpiece has a somewhat hollow sound to it, with callers certainly audible but not quite as clear as on some other devices. We had no complaints about microphone performance, though, with the One’s noise cancellation doing a capable job, and the speakerphone was suitably loud.

HTC quotes up to 18hrs 3G talktime (27hrs 2G) from the One, or 500hrs 3G standby (479hrs 2G); that’s based on our European-spec review units, since US-spec versions aren’t available yet. Given the size of the display (and the amount we’ve been playing with the One, particularly the camera) it comes as little surprise that it falls in line with other recent smartphones in terms of real-world longevity.

With all of the usual accounts doing their work in the background – push email, Facebook and/or Google+ multimedia uploads, periodic checking of social networks, etc. – and with regular use, we took the phone down from 88-percent to around 20-percent in the space of just over 7.5hrs. That’s predominantly on WiFi, though with some AT&T HSPA+ use. From a full charge to flat, then, with heavy use you could expect in excess of nine hours of runtime.

Unsurprisingly, once you notch back on some of the background activity, things start to improve significantly, and in fact HTC offers a Power Saver option – readily accessed from the notifications pull-down – which optionally throttles the CPU, lowers screen brightness, turns off vibration alerts, and shuts off off data when the phone is locked. Unfortunately there’s no way to prioritize certain apps to maintain their connection with Power Saver is turned on, which means you won’t get the benefits of push-email and similar. Instead, the One wakes the radio periodically to check what’s new, with no user control over how frequently that happens.

Display and camera are the biggest battery hogs, really. The impact of the screen isn’t much of a shock, since it’s a common culprit, but camera users might be surprised by how much in the way of resources significant use of Zoe photography can cause. After all, the One is constantly buffering video and photos whenever Zoe mode is active in the camera app.

There are two ways of looking at the One’s battery showing – and bear in mind we’ll be running ongoing battery testing over the coming days, including on LTE networks. You could be disappointed, frustrated by the fact that big screens and lots of data use take their toll on a battery, even if it’s a reasonably sized 2,300 mAh pack; you could also decry HTC’s decision to chase solid form over replaceable battery flexibility. Or, you might accept the regular recharging as a fact of life with any modern smartphone; we’re yet to find one – barring perhaps the DROID RAZR MAXX and Galaxy Note II, each of which have simply huge batteries and the oversized form-factors to accommodate them – which doesn’t demand such compromises.

Wrap-up

It doesn’t take genius to realize that the One is HTC’s best phone in a long time. The build quality and crisp, minimalistic design is a step above any other Android phone, and comfortably sits alongside the iPhone 5 for premium feel in the hand. The display is beautiful, the UltraPixel camera technology and Zoe system both ambitious but capable of hugely engaging results, and the performance superlative. Meanwhile, HTC Sense has finally rediscovered its roots, and evolved with BlinkFeed into a legitimately useful and compelling interface – one which didn’t instantly leave us pining for unmodified Android.

Nor is the One perfect, however. The battery life is merely average, and while the UltraPixel system pays dividends in low-light performance, it’s not the solution to every photographic need that HTC might have billed it as. HTC may not be the first to eschew removable storage and a replaceable battery, but we still don’t like it when they’re omitted.

Nonetheless, there’s a sense that HTC’s challenge isn’t in the device – after all, it had good phones in 2012 – but in the market. Samsung’s risen star in the Android ecosystem has left little room for rivals, and HTC simply lacks the marketing heft to build the same brand-recognition that “Galaxy” has achieved. That’s notwithstanding the fact that HTC’s phone looks better, is built better, takes generally better photos, and has arguably better software than the Galaxy S III; we’ll have to wait and see how it holds up to the new Galaxy, but Samsung will need to pull out all the stops if it hopes to even get close to rivalling the One for its perfect quality feel.

Just as it took becoming the underdog to force Nokia to adopt an innovative “challenger” attitude, so its taken a rough year to provoke HTC into raising its game. The end result is a phone that’s beautiful, solid, and cleverly, thoughtfully equipped – one which makes bold challenges to our expectations of hardware specifications and software. Now, HTC has to find a way to educate consumers as to why they should care about it.

Chris Davies contributed to this review

Hardware

For once, there’s a feeling that Sony isn’t keeping its best technology for the Japanese market. The Xperia Z is one of a rare breed of water resistant phones available outside of Japan, and even more unusually it’s free of many of the compromises “rugged” phones generally entail. Since Sony doesn’t make any claims about extra bump protection, the Xperia Z can be slim and reasonably light: 139 x 71 x 7.9 mm, in fact, and 146g, though the squared-off edges leave it feeling quite slabbish in the hand.

The broad, flat feel is partly forced by a 5-inch display, with Sony using an LCD TFT panel running at 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution. That’s still a rarity in the mobile market, though it will be less of one as time goes on. Sony’s panel isn’t quite up to the same eye-tingling magic as HTC has used on the DROID DNA (which means it’ll also be outshone by the HTC One when that arrives, as the One’s slightly smaller 4.7-inch screen bested, to our eyes, that of its DROID DNA predecessor) and we can’t help but wish that the Mobile Bravia Engine 2 was enabled across all aspects of the phone.

That new engine works to sharpen and generally tweak photos and videos viewed on the Xperia Z, and is applied to any multimedia content including YouTube videos. The results are visible – blacks get a little inkier, colors more saturated – but it also serves to show up how washed out the menus could look at times, particularly when the phone cranked up the backlighting. Sony’s choice of a grey color scheme didn’t help here, either. Meanwhile, viewing angles aren’t the best we’ve seen, with the display losing clarity when you look at it askance.

We’ll be generous and call the Xperia Z’s design “handsome and sober”; others we showed the phone to were less accommodating, and though it was dull. The glass inserts – toughened on the front and back – are interesting, though they did make the phone slippery; meanwhile, the “skeleton frame” of glass-fiber polyamide is akin to metal in strength, Sony insists, but feels a whole lot like regular plastic.

Still, you get that water resistance from it, and that’s a welcome addition. The Xperia Z meets IP55 and IP57 standards, meaning it’ll survive a dunk in up to 1m of water, being squirted with water jets, and the ingress of dust (which can play havoc with electronics). However, it also means that Sony has been liberal with ports, flaps, and hatches, since the resistance ratings are only met when the body is sealed up. The headphone socket on the top edge has a flap; the microSD and microUSB ports on the side each get their own flaps; and the microSIM slot has a flap too. If any of them are open, you lose your water and dust-resistance, which means if you’re listening to music with wired headphones and accidentally drop the Xperia Z in a puddle, there’s a fair chance it’ll stop working.

The other noticeable design element is the power button, which Sony has over-engineered seemingly solely for the purpose of proving it can. A shiny aluminum disc protruding from the right edge of the handset, it’s certainly tactile, though we can’t say we felt it was entirely necessary. In fact, we all too often reached for it when using the Xperia Z’s camera – in our defense, it’s a lot like a Sony CyberShot shutter button – powering off the phone in the process.

There’s no shortage of connectivity inside the new Sony. Our UK handset supports hexaband LTE (1/3/5/7/8/20) and triband HSPA, along with quadband GSM/EDGE. Then there’s WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, aGPS/GLONASS, NFC, WiFi Miracast, a microUSB 2.0 port with MHL HDMI support, and a microSD card slot (supporting up to 32GB cards). Onboard storage is 16GB, while the 1.5GHz Qualcomm S4 Pro quadcore processor is paired with 2GB of RAM. On the back there’s a 13-megapixel camera with Sony’s own Exmor RS branding, while a 2-megapixel Exmor R camera is above the display for video calls and vanity shots.

Software

Sony has launched the Xperia Z running Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, not the latest Android 4.2 version, though it’s questionable whether you’ll notice the difference, especially given its been reskinned. The UI is familiar from previous Xperia phones, tasteful but loaded up with more than a few space-hogging apps and plenty of entry points for the company’s services, such as Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited (for music and video purchase and rentals, respectively), and the Sony Select “curated” download store of apps and games, which basically works as a shortcut to titles in the regular Google Play market.

If you’ve a Sony smart TV then you can use the Media Remote app to control it from the Xperia Z, and there’s social aggregation for Facebook and Twitter with the Socialife app. It works, though anyone with more than a passing interest in their social media will quickly ignore it in favor of the full Facebook and Twitter apps.

The Xperia Z wasn’t without its glitches. There’s shortcut access to the camera from the lock screen, for instance, but we found it would often bounce us back to the lock page when we tried to change mode or settings. The only way around it was to unlock the phone as normal and navigate into the camera manually.

As for performance, the Xperia Z scored in line with the LG Nexus 4 and DROID DNA by HTC, no great surprise given the core hardware is the same across the three devices, in all but SunSpider, the test of browser performance. There, it put in a particularly poor showing, taking more than 50-percent longer than its similarly-specified rivals. In practical terms, though, it handled full webpages, games, and multitasking with aplomb, with only the occasional pause during app loading to slow things down. It’s worth noting that, while you can still use the touchscreen even when the Xperia Z is submerged, a steady flow of water plays havoc with the display. Something to consider if you’re hoping to use the phone while in the shower.

Camera

While HTC opted for the bigger pixels strategy with the One, Sony has followed a more traditional path with a 13-megapixel sensor for the Xperia Z. Here, it’s an Exmore RS chip, the first time the new sensor has appeared on a phone, and bringing with it such niceties as real-time HDR for both photos and full HD video.

It also comes with software that should be familiar to anyone who has used a Sony camera in recent years. There are a huge amount of settings, features, and modes to choose from on the Xperia Z, but we found that for once the “Superior Auto” mode didn’t make a mess of sifting through them. That’s partly because it’s reasonably transparent – you see exactly what scene mode its selected based on the subject, whether that be sports, portrait, or any of the total of 36 settings – but also because it gets access to the HDR and advanced noise reduction tools.

Of course, you can select between all of these manually, though the Xperia Z’s interface can be a little confusing at times. There’s a settings menu, where you can choose things like resolution (up to 12-megapixel 4:3 images, or 9-megapixel 16:9 images), and a mode bar that spreads across the top of the display and offers manual scene selection, video mode, HDR, panorama, and other more high-level options. Both still and video recording buttons are on-screen simultaneously (though you can only shoot a 1-megapixel still while recording video), but there’s no way to change the video resolution unless you manually jump into camcorder mode.

Nonetheless, the important thing is image quality, and the Xperia Z does well. There’s plenty of detail and not too much noise, particularly when outside, and low-light performance is impressive. Colors are a little on the muted side, even in HDR mode, which on other phones we’ve tested can lean uncomfortably toward the “clown” setting. Sony, though, takes a more balanced approach, though we wish we could selectively adjust the HDR effect for those times when punchier colors are the goal.

As for video, regular clips share the same slightly muted colors but good balance as stills, getting more rounded and balanced when in HDR video mode. Again, this isn’t a shortcut to lurid footage – in fact, sometimes we struggled to tell the difference between HDR and non-HDR clips. Rather than boost colors, as HDR Is arguably best known for, the Xperia Z tends to use the system to broaden its contrast, with darker areas proving clearer.

Sony Xperia Z Full HD video sample:

Xperia Z HDR video vs. non-HDR video demo:

Phone and Battery

Gobfuls of mobile band support mean the Xperia Z can get online across a broad range of networks, and there’s HSPA+ support if you don’t have a local LTE carrier. In-call performance was solid, though not the best we’ve tested of late, and we wouldn’t argue with some more audio volume; we don’t know if that’s down to the speaker waterproofing, but whatever the reason it means you spend the first half of most calls shuffling the Sony against your ear to try to line it up best.

With a big, Full HD screen, you’d expect battery life to be shaky, and sure enough the Xperia Z demonstrates – at times – a voracious hunger for power. Sony quotes up to 11hrs or talk time or 550hrs of standby, but it’s worth noting that neither of those conditions have the display turned on. Power up the 5-incher, and the Xperia Z can go from full to flat before you’ve reached mid-afternoon.

Sony is particularly proud of its Battery STAMINA mode, which promises up to four times the runtime by shutting off background data use when the screen is turned off. Instead of having your email, Facebook and Twitter updates, and other apps updating continuously, they only get to sip from the data connection when the Xperia Z is active. A whitelist of permitted apps, meanwhile, doles out background data support piecemeal, so that you can have, say, your email still checking but nothing else.

We noticed some improvement, but it’s questionable whether the target audience for the Xperia Z – power users lured in by the display and processing horsepower – will really benefit from Battery STAMINA. It’s only effective when the display is off, after all, and those who want to actually use their phone aren’t unlikely to leave it sufficiently idle for it to make its mark. True, if you treat the Xperia Z with kid gloves and use it more sparingly, you can eke out a full day from a single charge, but that seems somewhat counter-intuitive for a flagship device.

Wrap-Up

There are two ways of looking at the Xperia Z. In the context of Sony’s track-record of smartphones, this is certainly the best to-date. It has the best display Sony has used, a solid camera, useful waterproofing (even if it does force annoying flaps on you), and sleek – albeit conservative – styling. It’s not cheap and plasticky in the hand like the Xperia Arc was, nor slathered in plastic chrome trim. If you’re a Sony devotee then the Xperia Z is the phone you’ve been waiting for.

On the other hand, in context with the rest of the smartphone market, the Xperia X finds things tougher going. The design and build, while sturdy, lack the classic evolutionary styling of the iPhone 5, or the pristine, tactile elegance of the HTC One. It bests the Samsung Galaxy S III on display and construction, but Samsung has a new Galaxy waiting in the wings, and is almost certain to redress the screen balance.

It’s the battery that gives us the biggest pause for thought. The Xperia Z simply expires too quickly, and the power saving tools Sony has provided only really work at their best by discouraging you from using the phone at all. Given the waterproofing (and dimensions) means the battery is non-removable, that’s quite a compromise to be made.

Despite how quickly it runs out of steam, we like the Xperia Z. It’s about time Sony waded into the smartphone market in earnest, and with some refinement its 2013 range shows great promise. What it doesn’t have is an obvious winner: the Sony Xperia Z is a solid phone and a capable alternative to the knee-jerk iPhone/Galaxy options, but it lacks the completeness that would push it ahead of the pack.

Hardware

It’s XpressCovers all over again; only better. Nokia has played with interchangeable covers for its Windows Phone range before, but the Lumia 620 has the most eye-catching system yet. Multiple color options out of the gate – Nokia expects the Lumia 620 to be popular with teenage users, first-time smartphone adopters, and geeks needing a second device, so is covering its bases with hue and finish – make for a readily customized handset that recalls S40 devices of old.

That’s not to say the covers are old-tech. Our positive impressions start with the quality: the Lumia 620 may be offered on £150 ($235) pre-pay plans, but it doesn’t feel a cheap phone. More than that, though, Nokia has come up with distinctive designs, thanks to its “Dual Shot” construction process, which pairs two layers of translucent and/or opaque plastic, with either matte or gloss finish. There’s a punchy, shiny green with a yellow inner, or a spunky two-tone magenta, for those wanting a stand-out device, while the white and the matte cyan are more discrete. Nokia will also offer a black shell for no-nonsense sorts.

Stripping off and reattaching covers is a matter of pushing the camera lens on the back and levering out the core of the phone. Cleverly, the headset jack is built into the shell – it docks with a cut-out in the phone – increasing structural rigidity as well as making for easy replacement should the connector break. There’s no need to restart the Lumia 620 when you switch covers, meaning you’re up and running again in seconds, and Nokia expects the shells to be under £20 ($31) meaning they’re not extortionate. Our only mild complaint is the overall thickness: accommodating removable husks and the double-layer construction of the cases themselves means the Lumia ends up reasonably chubby: short and squat with its 115.4 x 61.1 x 11 mm dimensions.

A fancy suit wouldn’t be much to call home about if the rest of the Lumia 620 didn’t hold up, but happily Nokia has learned from its spec mistakes with the Lumia 610. Inside there’s a 1GHz Snapdragon S4 Plus processor paired with 512MB of RAM and 8GB of storage; owners also get a microSD card slot for expanding that by up to 64GBz. Connectivity includes quadband HSPA+ (850/900/1900/2100) and quadband GSM/EDGE, meaning that – though Nokia has no US launch plans it can tell us about right now – the phone will actually work on both AT&T and T-Mobile 3G networks.

Then there’s WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0, though Nokia also finds room in the budget for NFC, which can be used to instantly pair the Lumia 620 with a wireless speaker, for instance. There’s also a front-facing camera, something the Lumia 610 lacked, albeit running at a conservative VGA resolution. A 5-megapixel camera with LED flash is on the back.

With a slowly growing movement of smartphone users rebelling against the ever-increasing size of handset displays, it comes as little surprise that the Lumia 620′s 3.8-inch display got some interest. Helping keep the overall bulk of the phone down, it’s 800 x 480 WVGA resolution doesn’t get close to the 720p or above of more expensive handsets, but that’s not to say it’s a bad panel. In fact, Nokia wheels out its ClearBlack LCD technology again to good effect, with excellent outdoor-visibilty and decent color reproduction.

Software

You know what you get with Windows Phone 8 on a recent Nokia: a clean UI that lends itself well to the first-time audience likely lured in by the Lumia 620′s affordable price; a shortage of some of the must-have apps (though the situation is, gradually, improving); and a bevy of Nokia’s own software enhancements to sweeten the overall deal. So, you get the usual Metro interface with Live Tiles, solid Office 2013 and Xbox integration, and the convenience of hooks into SkyDrive, with the bonus of Nokia Music, the various camera add-ons, and augmented-reality.

Nokia Music is a useful addition, particularly if you’re not of a mind to create your own playlists (Spotify is now on Windows Phone, which ticks a big box many would-be users were hung up on), and you can’t argue with the price (since Nokia bundles free access). Audio quality from the Lumia 620′s headphone output was solid, while the speaker belies the compactness of the phone, making up for some loss of finesse at higher volumes with sheer strength of sound.

As for overall performance, bar a couple of glitches when the Lumia 620 froze momentarily, the 1GHz dualcore processor served Nokia well. You’d have to be looking particularly closely to see the difference in app-loading speed and other factors between the cheap Nokia and, say, its top-of-the-range Lumia 920 sibling. In SunSpider, the browser test of Javascript performance, the Lumia 620 managed a speed of 1,453.4ms (lower is better).

Camera

5-megapixels may not pit the Lumia 620 against any of the higher-end smartphones we’ve seen in the past few months, but it’s good for a budget device, and the Nokia uses its pixels well. Given good light, preferably outdoors, and the stills are great for the price: sharp and with accurate colors. Close-ups are also crisp, and even in lower-light situations the Lumia 620 avoided the murk and noise that generally affects cheaper phones.

As for video, that maintains the accuracy of color and overall balance, though it’s best to keep as steady a hand as you can since the optical image stabilization of the Lumia 920 isn’t present here. Audio capture is also good.

Nokia throws some extra camera apps into its Windows Phone range, the most interesting of which are Cinemagraph and Smart Shoot. Cinemagraph is an easy way of creating a mash-up of photo and video, grabbing a brief clip and then allowing you to mask out all but specific areas you still want to have moving. They can then be shared to the usual social networks, though they’re stored on Nokia’s server and farmed out as links. However, save one to your computer and you’ll find it’s a .gif that can be used on Tumblr or other sites.

As for Smart Shoot, that uses the facial recognition technology Nokia acquired when it bought Scalado, and basically fires of a clutch of stills in rapid succession and then allows you to piece together the perfect group shot using faces snipped from different frames. It’s the same system as we’ve seen on BlackBerry 10, and works reasonably well, though you do need to be facing the camera head-on – and with nothing obscuring your face – if Smart Shoot is to correctly identify you.

Phone and Battery

We have high expectations of Nokia devices when it comes to phone and battery life, a leftover of Symbian phones’ particular strengths in those categories. Happily, the Lumia 620 holds up in that respect too, despite the different OS: we comfortably managed a day and half of use – with push email, a mixture of streaming and cached audio from Nokia Music, photography, web browsing, some GPS use, a few calls, and some messaging – before having to go near the microUSB charger. Phone calls, meanwhile, were crisp, as well as loud through the speakerphone, and we had no problem clinging to a signal.

Wrap-Up

Reset your expectations of a smartphone. Stop thinking of it as an either/or decision Android or iOS; put yourself in the mindset of the everyman. We’ve praised Windows Phone before for its suitability to a new smartphone user, and the Lumia 620 fits that category well. The hardware is cheap but distinctive and easily customized; the software is fit for purpose – email, browsing, camera, and multimedia are served well, and while there are still missing apps, it’s questionable whether the target audience will notice their absence – and the price can’t be argued with.

Still, we can’t help but think that the Lumia 620 is wasted on newbies. More than a few of the tech professionals we’ve spoken to in recent weeks – people who have their pick of the top-tier smartphones, and who probably have most of the must-haves sitting on their desk – have professed a degree of affection for the new baby Nokia. Yes, the diminutive size and carefree covers help, but it’s really more the singularity of purpose that draws you in.

The Lumia 620 does its job, for the right price, with minimal compromise. There are no obvious omissions, like the missing front camera of its predecessor, and services like Nokia Music and Cinemagram give it a degree of out-of-the-box completeness that’s arguably missing from other devices. For the price we’d recommend it over a cheap Android handset, especially if you’re a new smartphone user, but there’s plenty more than low-cost appeal in the Lumia 620′s favor.

Hardware and Design

Familiar and bland. The Z10 is a reasonably nondescript slab of black plastic and glass; as close to the sketched-in graphic of a “generic touchscreen phone” as you could imagine. BlackBerry was always keen to stress that the A and B versions of the Dev Alpha developer device were far from production-status, but bar a little aesthetic smoothing – the ridge around the display is gone, and the upper and lower front bezels are refined – this is the same identikit block as we’ve been seeing for months.

It’s not a bad design, per se, just an uninspired one. The plastic back cover – which tugs off with a fingernail’s snatch at the bottom edge, to reveal a long, thin battery compartment, micro SIM slot and microSD slot – has been given a soft-touch, dimpled finish reminiscent of a golf ball; it feels neither cheap nor premium, being merely easy to grip and reluctant to slide around tabletops. MicroUSB and micro HDMI ports sit snugly along the left edge (BlackBerry includes a USB cable and charger in the box, along with a wired stereo headset which plugs in on the top edge of the phone, but not a micro HDMI cable); on the right there are volume buttons flanking a center key that triggers voice control.

The power/lock button is on the top edge, next to a second microphone, the first being a small notch under the 4.2-inch, 1280 x 768 resolution LCD touchscreen. It’s a bright panel with accurate colours, and the size and resolution balance do a fine job for smooth text. A front-facing 2-megapixel camera is above the display, along with proximity and ambient light sensors, while an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash is on the back. Shiny BlackBerry branding front and back complete the picture; you don’t get a home button or any other fascia controls, with BlackBerry 10 dismissing them in favor of on-screen gestures.

Inside, it’s business pretty much as usual for a modern smartphone, with BlackBerry ticking most of the important boxes. The Z10 gets a 1.5GHz dualcore Qualcomm MSM8960 processor with a healthy 2GB of memory and 16GB of storage space (plus that microSD slot, of course, which is hot-swappable with up to 32GB cards), together with GPS, an accelerometer, digital compass, and a gyroscope.

Connectivity includes quadband LTE, quadband UMTS/HSPA+, and quadband GSM/EDGE, in addition to WiFi a/b/g/n. There’s also Bluetooth 4.0, as well as the ability to share the 4G connection with an integrated mobile hotspot feature.

Should BlackBerry have hurried the Q10, the Z10′s QWERTY-blessed cousin, out to the market first? There’s a good argument for that, BlackBerry being best-known for its physical keyboards, and while we had limited time with a non-final device at the BlackBerry 10 launch, our battering of the buttons nonetheless suggested that none of the RIM QWERTY goodness has been inadvertently thrown out with the name. An all-touch phone is perhaps better suited to the state of the smartphone market today, however; the iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S III, the current best-sellers, are both dominated by their touch interface, and while the BlackBerry faithful is crying out for physical keyboards, the company needs a broad audience if it wants to turn about its fortunes. Still, the combination of touch and QWERTY with the new OS leaves us eager to spend more time with the Q10 when it’s fully baked.

BlackBerry 10

BlackBerry describes BlackBerry 10 as its platform for the next decade. It’s also the OS it really could’ve done with for the past five years, as its portfolio of phones grew to look progressively more archaic in comparison to the iPhone’s simplicity and Android’s growing refinement. Getting it right out of the gate was perhaps the best decision BlackBerry could make, and while it came in for criticism in missing its 2012 launch goals, it at least avoids the stigma of being broken on day one.

So what’s new? Well, just about everything, at least to BlackBerry users. Whether you generously call it an homage, or think it’s plain copying, BlackBerry 10 cherry-picks several interface elements from other platforms we’ve seen over the past few years. So, there’s a task switcher with preview panes showing still-running apps, just like we had on MeeGo, and various gestures to navigate through without physical keys, as in webOS and MeeGo again.

Gestures and Multitasking

The gestures – which are walked through in a quick tutorial upon first boot – are straightforward. Swiping up, from the bottom edge of the display, takes you back to the task switcher; it also unlocks the phone, if the display isn’t active. Swiping down, from the top of the display, pulls out a contextual menu, the contents of which depend on what view you’re in. At the homescreen, for instance, there are toggles for Bluetooth, WiFi, screen rotation, and notifications, as well as shortcuts for the settings and the alarm; above it, there’s a status bar with battery, clock, WiFi, and network signal strength.

Swiping to the right on the homescreen, from the task switcher, takes you to the app launcher, a 4×4 grid of icons. As on other platforms, you can drag one icon onto another and create a folder, as well as long-press and hit the trash icon to uninstall apps. A row of squares under the grid show how far through the launcher you are, and you can tap them to jump back, while at the bottom there are fixed icons for phone, search, and camera. Searches go through contacts, messages, calendar, web history, and apps by default – though you can narrow things down with filters – and third-party apps can hook into the search system so that their results are included too.

Up to eight apps can be kept “live” on the task switcher at any one time; BlackBerry 10 will automatically close the oldest, or you can manually shut them down by hitting the “X” icon. The theory is that, even when minimized in the task switcher, the app is still active: BlackBerry calls this an “Active Frame” which basically means the app is free to feed certain information to you, such as calendar reminders and the current weather, though you don’t necessarily get a tiny thumbnail of the full functionality of the software. Of course, even if an app isn’t running – either full-screen or in Active Frame form – you still get its notifications in the Hub.

BlackBerry Hub and “Peek”

Swipe to the left of the task switcher and you find the unified inbox, now called BlackBerry Hub. It’s a catch-all for every notification – email, alerts, BBM and text messages, Facebook and Twitter messages, and calls – though you can pull out a menu by swiping to the left again and pick one specific category. Swipe down a little on the list, and you’ll see your next few calendar entries.

However, BlackBerry 10 doesn’t expect you to necessarily do all that swiping to get to new alerts. Instead there’s “peek”, a way to catch a glimpse of notifications from wherever you are in the system. Drag your finger partway up from the bottom of the display, and it zooms out slightly to show a row of notification icons; keep swiping, pulling the screen over to the right, and you expose the Hub. You then have the choice of pulling all the way to fully bring up the inbox, or let go and spring back to what you were doing before.

Peek is one of those features that, initially, makes perfect sense: stop leaping from app to app when a notification comes in, and instead – with a half-swipe of your finger – grab a glimpse of what’s new. After a short while of actually using the Z10, however – especially if you’ve come to BlackBerry 10 from iOS or Android – it makes less sense. On the other platforms, when you get a new email, or Twitter notification, or text message, a banner at the top of the display notifies you and gives you a preview of the content; you can then tap it to open it fully, or ignore it.

With BlackBerry 10, though, the notification system is stretched out into several, arguably unnecessary stages. First the blinking red light, though no on-screen notification, even if you’re using the phone at the time; then the half-swipe to “peek” at the list of notification icons, which tell you whether you have a new email, or message, or something else. That’s all they say, though – if you want to actually see what the content is, you need to keep swiping to expose the unified inbox preview.

It’s all very smooth, but it feels unnecessarily protracted. Not once in using the Z10 did we peek at the notification icons and then think “I’ll leave it at that”: every time we swiped into the inbox to see exactly what sort of content was new. BlackBerry argues that existing notification systems are distracting, forcing you to pay attention to new alerts as they come in, but we found that its alternative – a blinking red light and nothing else – had more of a Pavlovian response to make us check the inbox than iOS and Android’s snippets ever did.

Once you’re there, triaging messages can get a little confusing. Pressing and holding on an item in the list pulls in a context menu from the right side, sliding in with a neat animation; unfortunately, while it arguably then makes sense to let you swipe the menu in by sliding a finger right to left across the message, in fact that will just take you back to the task switcher. We also got stung a couple of times by some icon jumping: usually in the hub, there’s a context menu button (which allows you to jump to the top or bottom of the list, to search, compose, multi-select, refresh, or leap into the settings) in the bottom right hand corner, but that switches places with the delete button when you pull out the message-specific menu. More than once we almost deleted a message by stabbing to where the context menu key had been, but instead inadvertently hitting delete.

Keyboard

Actually replying to messages is a solid experience, even without the traditional BlackBerry physical keyboard to rely upon. The new on-screen keyboard is another point of pride for the company, though given it had waxed similarly lyrical about the much-maligned Storm series, many were wary. Happily, a clever auto-prediction and correction system steps in to save the day.

A sensible layout kicks things off, with a well-spaced four row layout that finds room for a broad spacebar. A swipe down from the upper edge of the ‘board switches to the number/symbol view, with a toggle button to flick between two pages of options. The period doubles – with a long press – as a voice dictation trigger, which requires an internet connection for server-side processing (just as with Google and Apple’s systems) and turned out to be reasonably accurate as long as there wasn’t too much background noise.

Start typing, however, and BlackBerry 10 begins suggesting the word it believes you’re aiming for. That’s nothing new, but BlackBerry has opted to float its suggestions over the next letter you’d be reaching for, whereupon rather than tap it you can swipe up to insert the full word. Since there are usually multiple word-complete options, at any one time you can have a cluster of words floating over the ‘board. Get it wrong and a swipe right to left deletes the whole word; a double-tap of the space bar punches in a period.

At first, it’s disconcerting. We’re accustomed to glancing above the top QWERTY row, as on other platforms, for suggestions, and so the constantly shifting UI of BlackBerry 10′s system takes some getting used to. After a period of use, however – which also gives the custom dictionary time to pick up some of your common words, as well as figure out what you’re more likely to be typing – we grew more familiar with it, and soon were punching out emails with alacrity. It’s helped by the fact that the keyboard doesn’t wait for you to begin the next word before it starts predicting: type “Hello, how” and “you” is already hovering there, among other options.

Browser

The browser doesn’t need to be sexy and innovative, it just needs to be fast and stable, and happily BlackBerry 10′s example seems to tick those boxes. WebKit based, with HTML5 and – switched off by default – Flash support, it did a solid job showing webpages, and will even prompt when there’s Flash content rather than force you to dig into the settings and enable it permanently. We did have some mixed results when dealing with mobile and full websites: BlackBerry 10 would opt to show us the mobile version of some sites, then the full versions of others, with no real indication of what that decision was based upon.

Searching is via Bing by default, though you can switch that to Google or Yahoo if you’d prefer, and there are auto-suggestions as you type in the URL/search bar at the bottom of the screen. A contextual menu gives options to share – BBM, Email, Facebook, NFC, and BBM Group are all offered, among others – as well as to switch to a pared-back “Reader” view with ads and other content stripped out. Both bookmarks and the option to pin a webpage shortcut to the homescreen are offered.

As for speed, it’s nippy but not the best browser we’ve seen. In SunSpider, the test of Javascript performance, the Z10 scored 1,847.0ms (lower is better); that’s slower than the Galaxy S III managed, back on its original firmware, and close to twice the time it took the iPhone 5 to complete.

BBM

BlackBerry Messenger has become a point of addiction for both BlackBerry’s enterprise and consumer users, and so it comes as no surprise that in BlackBerry 10 it’s had a makeover of sorts. In addition to the voice chat over WiFi feature added back in BBM 7, there’s now video chat, though all participants need to have a BlackBerry 10 device to use it.

Tap the green icon in the upper right hand corner of any IM window, and you get a choice of voice or video chat. The latter puts a small preview thumbnail of the view from your own camera in the bottom left corner, and has buttons for mute and to switch between the front and back cameras. There’s also a screen sharing key, which basically shows whoever you’re chatting with whatever is on your phone’s screen at the time.

BlackBerry positions it as ideal for presentations, but it’s also useful for sharing photo galleries or travel directions using BlackBerry Maps. It’s worth noting that, over cellular connections at least, the screen sharing resolution is lower than the Z10′s default, and things look a little fuzzy.

BlackBerry Maps

With BlackBerry cutting a deal with TomTom to power its live traffic data, you’d be forgiven for expecting standalone-PND-quality navigation from BlackBerry 10. Unfortunately, the Z10 falls not only well short of that, but pales in comparison to Google Maps and Apple Maps.

It’s not so much in the range of features offered – indeed BlackBerry Maps ticks most of the significant boxes, like 2D and 3D views, vector-based graphics for swifter, more data-efficient loading, and voice prompted turn-by-turn navigation – but in how they all actually work. In short: badly.

There’s no offline mode, even when you’ve begun navigating, so if you stumble out of data service (or go abroad and don’t have roaming turned on) you’re out of luck. BlackBerry credits TCS, the company behind Verizon’s VZ Navigator, for developing BlackBerry Maps especially for OS 10, while TomTom supplies the mapping data, points of interest, and traffic information; unfortunately, much of the time the app throws up the wrong location or confused POIs in response to searches. Meanwhile, even though there’s live traffic data, the navigation function doesn’t appear to call on it to figure out a better route.

Voice Control

Hold down the middle button on the side, and – after agreeing to BlackBerry doing some server-side processing – the Z10′s voice control system kicks in. There’s a similar array of features to what Apple’s Siri and Google’s voice control features offer: you can call a contact, or send them a message (by email, BBM, text, or Facebook), schedule an appointment or compose a note reminder to yourself. Log into Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and you can change your status there, and you can also search your device for apps or content, or the internet (using Bing) all by voice.

In practice, it works reasonably well, though it falls short of what Siri is offering. BlackBerry 10′s voice system is more literal: where Siri will figure out that your “husband” or “wife” is a person rather than a name, and clarify who exactly you mean the first time you ask to call or text them, BlackBerry 10 merely goes hunting for a contact called that. Ask for a simple conversion – what a mile is in kilometres, for instance – and BlackBerry 10 asks you if you want to search the internet for the answer; there’s no in-app result.

Of course, the good thing about server-based features like voice control is that BlackBerry can easily update them over time: eventually, your Z10 could figure out that when you ask “What’s on my agenda tomorrow?” you want an excerpt from your calendar, not to search Bing for that phrase. For the moment, though, it’s functional but basic.

BlackBerry World

There’s an app race on, but it’s more than just how many titles you have in your catalog. BlackBerry World – the renamed BlackBerry App World – comes populated not just with 70,000 apps for BlackBerry 10, the company is keen to point out, but with several of the most-popular “must haves” in place. That includes Angry Birds (including the latest Star Wars version), Facebook and Twitter, Skype, Amazon Kindle, FourSquare and WhatsApp, Box, and various enterprise-focused apps.

As we’ve seen with other platforms, though, a huge quantity of apps is little comfort if the title you particularly want or need is missing. Don’t bother looking for Netflix, or an official Tumblr app; there’s no Spotify or Pandora, nor Sonos; go hunting for Instagram and you’re out of luck. BlackBerry has been proactive in engaging – even encouraging with cash payouts – developers to port over their wares, but it faces the same uphill struggle as Windows Phone does: for every one “must have” app that arrives, there’s a dozen mediocre titles that do nothing but bulk out the overall count.

BlackBerry World is also the home to BlackBerry 10′s multimedia offerings, with a music download service powered by 7Digital and a TV/movie download/rental service from Rovi Corp. We had no problems buying an Alicia Keys album and downloading it straight to the Z10, where it was saved as a DRM-free MP3; the Music app shows album art and remembers your most recent tracks, and you can optionally enable track-skip by holding down the volume keys.

Movie and TV show purchases work in much the same way, though there’s no iCloud-style streaming option. Instead, you’ll need to download the whole thing to your phone before you can start watching. BlackBerry promises movie releases on the same day as their DVD counterparts hit stores, though time will tell if that pans out.

Blackberry Balance and Protect

BlackBerry 10 makes a big play for the consumer market, but that’s not to say BlackBerry has forgotten its enterprise roots. In fact, a key part of the company’s message is that today’s smartphones are invariably expected to do double-duty – to satisfy both business requirements and home needs – and that BlackBerry 10 is at the forefront of that balance.

The Z10, therefore, offers the appropriately named BlackBerry Balance, for those who expect their smartphone to be a beast of burden as well as a way to check Facebook in their downtime. In effect, it puts a firewall between your work data and your personal data: the former is accessible by your corporate systems administrator (indeed, your business will have to be running BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 in order to use BlackBerry Balance) and secured with 256-bit AES encryption, while the latter is yours alone.

Since flipping between work and personal could quickly become frustrating, BlackBerry allows for some degree of integration between the two environments. There’s only one task switcher, for instance: work apps get a tiny briefcase icon to show they’re running in the secured environment, and the Hub collates both personal and work messages (albeit locking the latter after a set period of time). Two BlackBerry World stores exist, with corporate administrators able to lock down the work store to certain apps.

Then there’s BlackBerry Safeguard, which for the most part doesn’t require a corporate infrastructure. BlackBerry includes everything from parental safeguards – locking down everything from app purchases, browser use, whether YouTube uploads are allowed, if Facebook or Twitter can be used, to whether incoming calls and texts are permitted generally or only from those contacts already stored to the phone – to comprehensive app permissions, plus the BlackBerry Protect remote management system.

Similar to “Find my iPhone” from Apple, BlackBerry Protect allows lost or stolen devices to be remotely locked or even wiped via a web interface. It’s possible to track the location of the handset, make it play a loud noise (very useful if it’s dropped down behind the couch cushions), and display an on-screen message, for instance advertising a reward for return. The web-based BlackBerry Protect interface will even show what sort of battery life is remaining on the phone. There’s no subscription fee for any of the Protect services, though your Z10 will of course need to have a data connection if you want to locate, lock, or wipe it.

Camera

8-megapixels on the back; 2-megapixels on the front. BlackBerry doesn’t stray too far from the smartphone-norm with its photography provisions, and as you might expect the Z10 puts in a pictorial showing that’s also pretty much par for the course. Up to 1080p Full HD video recording from the main camera, and up to 720p from the front camera, are supported too.

The camera app itself bears some mention, with BlackBerry making some different UI choices than, say, Google or Apple. There’s no actual shutter-release key to be found: instead tapping the display fires off a frame. You can drag the focus point around by swiping your finger across the screen, and use the pinch gesture to control the 5x digital zoom (3x when using the front camera).

A menu offers a choice of digital image stabilization and a burst mode which fires off shots for as long as you hold your finger down, while there are five scene modes: auto, action, whiteboard, night, and beach or snow. Pull down the easily-forgotten context menu with a swipe down from the top of the display, and you can choose whether to save shots to a memory card (if present) or the Z10′s internal storage. There’s also optional geotagging. Somewhat bizarrely, there’s no apparent way to change the resolution the Z10 captures images at: you’re stuck at the maximum resolution of each camera.

Video recording is similarly triggered by tapping anywhere on the screen to start and then stop; you can turn the LED light on during recording, but there’s no way to capture a still photo while shooting video, unlike on many recent Android phones. YouTube is one of the sharing options in the gallery, and once you’ve signed into your account, you can upload footage filmed on the Z10 directly to the internet. Unlike for stills, video recording offers a choice of quality settings, albeit only two: 1080p and 720p for the main camera.

With a single quality setting for stills, then, you’d be excused for expecting great things from the Z10′s camera. Unfortunately it’s a mixed bag, and while daylight shots are fair – albeit with a tendency to wash out in lighter parts of the frame – when light gets scarce things rapidly go downhill. Photos quickly acquire the sort of gloom that even Edgar Allan Poe might describe “a bit much”; blur is minimal, but you get lashings of noise and colors that skew toward the sepia.

BlackBerry is making a big deal out of its TimeShift feature in the Z10′s camera, though to be fair it’s based on licensed processing magic from Nokia-acquired Scalado. Origins aside, it’s a clever system: in TimeShift mode, the Z10 fires off multiple frames in rapid succession, then identifies any faces in the frame and allows you to cycle through the different expressions captured, piecing together a final image with the best of the bunch.

Take a photo and, after TimeShift has done its burst business, each identified face is framed by a colored square. Tapping that brings up a loupe which, by dragging a knob around the periphery, cycles through each of the different options. Closed eyes, skewed smiles, or blurred expressions can be cut out, and since each face can be processed independently, you end up with a single, master shot with everybody looking their best.

TimeShift isn’t the only image editing tool baked into BlackBerry 10. There are Instagram-style filters available in the Pictures app, and the same face-recognition system that spots people in TimeShift also flags up subjects for optional red-eye reduction. Crops, automatic color/brightness/contrast adjustment, and facial tone smoothing are also on offer.

As for video, like most front-facing cameras the 720p footage underwhelms, but the main camera produces reasonable clips. At 1080p, they’re decent if fed with enough light, but as brightness decreases so does video quality, and the LED light isn’t sufficiently powerful to give you anything but a Blair Witch effect to up-close subjects.

BlackBerry Z10 1080p video sample:

Video clips can be trimmed, as well as have brightness, contrast, color, and volume tweaked; however, BlackBerry 10 also includes the Story Maker app, a more comprehensive video editing tool. It’s similar to the video apps we’ve seen Samsung bundle on the Galaxy series: you can pick a combination of video clips and still images, combine them with music (either your own tracks, or from BlackBerry 10′s preloaded audio), and then add titles and credits. Themes – such as “chromatic”, “bleach bypass”, and “vintage”; think Instagram for video – can be added, and then the end results uploaded to YouTube.

Story Maker works, certainly, but just as per similar apps on other platforms, we’re still not convinced that video editing on a handset is ever going to take off. Far more useful is the ability to access the Z10 over WiFi. Turn the feature on, and the smartphone shows up on your network as a shared device, and we were able to use both Windows and Mac machines to browse the full file structure, including any microSD card that was loaded.

It makes pulling photos and videos off the Z10 particularly straightforward, though it’s worth noting that on a Mac we were able to access files without having to type in a password at any point (despite BlackBerry 10 prompting you to create one – each and every time you turn on WiFi access, no less – to secure the sharing). You’ll definitely want to turn the feature off when you’re away from your home network, just in case.

Phone and Battery

Tenacious but quiet. The Z10 showed BlackBerry’s usual zeal at clinging to a signal, while downloads over the LTE connection (using an EE SIM) were prompt. There’s no Speedtest app for BlackBerry 10 as yet, and the full website struggled to run in the browser, even with Flash turned on.

More troublesome was the surprisingly low volume from both the Z10′s earpiece and speaker. Call quality was generally solid, but we had to crank up the volume higher than we’d expect if there was background noise to contend with. The same proved true when trying to use the Z10 for an impromptu conference call, something which may give the BlackBerry faithful pause for thought.

The Z10′s long, narrow 1,800 mAh battery is smaller than what we’re used to seeing from modern smartphones, though BlackBerry still predicts up to 11hrs of 3G talk time or up to 408hrs of 3G standby from a full charge (alternatively, up to 60hrs of audio playback or up to 10hrs of video). In our experience, though, those targets are slightly too ambitious.

In typical use, with a single push email account turned on, plus Facebook and Twitter, some app downloads and photography, some browsing and map use, a little mixed media playback, a couple of calls, and some messaging (both SMS and BBM), the Z10 struggled to make it through the day on a single charge. Standby time is good – we left the Z10 off the charger overnight, and the battery gage had hardly moved by the morning – but actually make use of the phone and the juice starts flowing fast.

Unfortunately, unlike Android’s useful battery report page, which shows exactly how your power was consumed, BlackBerry 10 makes do with merely the small icon in the status bar and a percentage of power remaining in the settings. At least the Z10′s battery can be switched out; if we were BlackBerry, we’d consider bundling a second in the box, just to pre-empt business users’ complaints.

Price and Value

Rumor had it that BlackBerry would price the Z10 to move, following Nokia’s strategy at pitching the new phone well under the smartphone norm of $200-on-contract in recognition of its “plucky challenger” status. Unfortunately that’s not turned out to be the case, and when it arrives in the US this March it’ll be $199.99 with a new, two year agreement. In the UK, where the Z10 hit shelves on January 31 (albeit in black only; the white version isn’t expected until midway through February), you get the handset free on monthly plans of £36 ($57) or above, again presuming a two year contract. Canada comes next, with the Z10 priced at $149 on a three year contract and arriving in-stores on February 5.

That puts it on a par with the 16GB iPhone 5, HTC’s DROID DNA, and Samsung’s Galaxy S III (in the US at least; in the UK, you’ll save £10 a month if you opt for the Galaxy S III), and we’re not entirely convinced that either the Z10 or BlackBerry 10 deliver enough to make it entirely competitive. The value question gets all the more shaky when you consider the two markets BlackBerry is currently strong in: the enterprise and among teenagers.

Among business users, BlackBerry has faced growing competition from enterprise-level functionality in Android and iOS, and Microsoft has made a significant play for that segment in Windows Phone, pushing the seamless integration of mobile Office. Meanwhile, as the bring-your-own-device trend continues, it’s questionable as to how many of BlackBerry’s corporate customers will choose to outfit their workforce with a fleet of new Z10′s, rather than simply open up access to employees’ existing devices.

As for teens, lured to BlackBerry phones by virtue of cheap pre-pay deals and the ubiquity of BBM among their peer group, the Z10′s premium pricing isn’t going to fly. In fact, BlackBerry has already said it plans to keep BlackBerry 7, the old OS, around to cater for the low-end market; that’s sensible, when you consider pre-pay BlackBerry devices are often European carriers’ best-sellers (particularly during the holidays), but it does little to build out BlackBerry 10′s user-base.

Wrap-up

BlackBerry 10 is a huge step forward over the versions that came before it, that much is clear. It’s easier to use, looks better, is more consistent and understandable for new users, and sensibly implements touchscreen gestures rather than a spray of buttons under the display. BlackBerry Hub and its attempts to collate every notification and update may not be to everybody’s taste, but if your social life is spread across your phone, there’s a good argument for pulling everything together in one, easily-monitored place.

Unfortunately – and you just knew there’d be an “unfortunately” – a huge step isn’t enough to make BlackBerry 10 a must-have. Yes, BlackBerry has itself a good OS, but the mobile industry has more than its fair share of “promising but dead” platforms, each with clever ways of addressing smartphone complexity, and yet each failing along the way. As MeeGo and webOS demonstrated, you can have software with touches of genius but it may still end up in the graveyard.

BlackBerry could’ve swung it had the Z10 itself been a blockbuster device, but the sober black slab is relegated to little more than a frame to demonstrate BlackBerry 10. It feels neither cheap nor expensive in the hand, neither fast nor slow in use; its specifications tick the necessary boxes but go no further. That adds up to an absence of “must have” experiences: BlackBerry 10 and the Z10 are nice enough to use, but there’s nothing really to stop you from going back to iOS or Android and their well-stocked app stores.

If you’re a BlackBerry fan, then the Z10 (and, with its promise of a physical keyboard, the upcoming Q10) is undeniably a big step up from whatever you’re currently using. Sadly BlackBerry fans are now in short supply, in the grand scheme of the mobile market, and selling a shrinking group new phones does little to help the Canadian company break out of its doldrums. Thorsten Heins & Co. have done an admirable job dragging BlackBerry out of its bad old habits, but BlackBerry 10 still has a long way to go before it’s anything more than a reasonable alternative to Windows Phone in the smartphone little leagues.

Hardware and Design

For a mid-range handset, HTC has done a decent job with the One SV’s physical design. The back cover – removable, unlike many recent HTC phones – has the same soft-touch finish as we know from the 8X and One S, despite being plastic, while the scratch-proof Corning Gorilla Glass 2 up-front has smoothly curved edges which help the slightly angular sides nestle nicely into the palm of your hand.

Front and center is the One SV’s 4.3-inch display, using an LCD2 panel as per many other models in HTC’s range. It’s a bright panel, with decent viewing angles, but its resolution puts it at a disadvantage: at WVGA 800 x 480, it’s behind the qHD models in the same sort of price bracket, and leagues behind the 720p and 1080p displays other phones use (including HTC’s own DROID DNA, which has an excellent Full HD screen). The result is graininess from the clearly visible pixels, most noticeable when in the browser or viewing photos or video.

There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, alongside the power/standby button, while a microUSB port is on the bottom edge and a volume rocker on the right. We were slightly surprised by how slippery the One SV could be; placed face down, it quickly found a route off the edge of our sofa and onto the floor, though happily resisted the bump. On the plus side, it’s easily dropped into a pocket, and at 128 x 66.9 x 9.2 mm and 122g isn’t unduly bulky. The matte white back cover did pick up dirt and smudges easily, however, while the broad, ridged earpiece spanning most of the top bezel was an instant fluff magnet.

As for what’s inside the casing, the One SV runs Android on a 1.2GHz Qualcomm S4 dual core processor, with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage. There’s triband UMTS/HSPA (up to 42Mbps down and 5.76Mbps up, network permitting) and quad band GSM/EDGE along with the LTE, together with WiFi a/b/g/n (2.4/5GHz), Bluetooth 4.0 (with aptX support), and NFC. A digital compass, GPS, GLONASS, accelerometer, proximity sensor, and light sensor round out the key features.

On the back, a nugget of metal surrounds the 5-megapixel camera and LED flash. As per previous phones, HTC uses a backside-illuminated (BSI) sensor for improved low-light performance, along with an F2.0 aperture, 28mm lens. The front camera runs at 1.6-megapixels, and shoots 720p HD video compared to the 1080p Full HD supported on the back. HTC slots in its dedicated ImageChip for pre-JPEG-conversion processing and swifter back-to-back photography.

While One X+ and 8X owners have to make do with what storage HTC gives them (or what they can muster from the cloud), those picking up a One SV can slot in a microSD card instead. Up to 64GB cards are supported; the removable cover also means you can switch out the 1,800 mAh battery, handy given that LTE can be a power-hog.

Software and Performance

If the display resolution is HTC’s first real goof with the One SV, the version of Android the smartphone runs is definitely the second. Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich is loaded, complete with HTC Sense 4.1, an inexplicable decision given Jelly Bean has been around since mid-2012. It’s Android as we know and, generally speaking, love, though you miss out on Project Butter’s interface-smoothing magic, and that’s a real shame on a handset already running mid-tier hardware.

Sense remains a mixed bag, certainly distinctive but feeling more than a little over-designed, certainly when compared to the crisp, near-minimalist simplicity of pure Android. First-time smartphone owners should find it reasonably user-friendly, however, and HTC preloads a number of applications, including Dropbox (which prompts you to set up an account and auto-sync your photos and videos with the cloud), Evernote, a video editing app, 7digital for music downloads, a flashlight, and others, most of which are familiar from a long line of HTC devices.

Familiarity is good, but we’re not convinced custom manufacturer skins and Android still make sense (excuse the pun), at least for users. HTC’s interface may help it differentiate from other Android OEMs, but it also introduces delays in owners receiving core OS updates. Given the One SV is a step or two behind on that front already, it means Sense is hardly welcome.

The other differentiator is Beats Audio, though the One SV doesn’t get the power-amps of more expensive HTC devices. Instead, it’s more of a custom equalizer, ramping up the sound – particularly the bass frequencies – in a way that suits dance, RnB, and other genres, but conversely mangles classical and jazz. Thankfully it can be turned off in HTC’s reskinned settings page.

The 1.2GHz dualcore S4 processor may not be the fastest chip around any more, but it’s capable enough for everyday use. We ran Quadrant, the Android benchmarking tool, and the One SV scored 4446, putting it just short of the HTC One X (which has a 1.5GHz quadcore).

Camera

Even for the midrange, 5-megapixels is beginning to look conservative, though we’re the first to admit that a good sensor performs beyond the sheer number of pixels it collects. Unfortunately, despite HTC’s choice of BSI chip and lens pairing, the One SV’s camera performance is middle-of-the-road.

It’s not that the camera isn’t fast; it loads quickly (though we’d still like a dedicated camera key on the side, as HTC’s Windows Phones get) and captures frames right when you tap the on-screen control. Simultaneous photo and video capture is supported, with both buttons shown at once, and if you keep your finger pressed on the shutter release, the One SV will keep snapping at 4fps until you’ve taken 60 shots.

No, what lets the One SV down is the fact that the resulting photos and video simply aren’t that great. The stark scenes of snowy London certainly weren’t the easiest of things to capture, but the HTC’s camera struggled unduly with contrast and exposure, shedding detail by the handful as it tried to balance the brighter and darker elements of the frame. Meanwhile, points of brighter color – the red “STOP” sign, for instance – lost their vitality as the One SV opted for a more muted reproduction.

Close-ups proved a little more impressive, with the One SV able to lock onto nearby subjects with accuracy, but again color temperature proved troublesome. Holding the camera still, we watched as the preview flipped between warm and cool settings, making capturing a decent frame a matter of perfect timing in hitting the button.

As for video, there’s some judder in the frame and the same exposure issues as affected stills show themselves in footage, too. Clips can be grainy, and colors flat and muted.

Phone and Battery

The One SV’s sizeable earpiece makes for loud calls, and our callers had no issues hearing us or being heard. Calls are only made over 2G/3G networks, not EE’s 4G LTE network (as per the UK model we were reviewing; in the US, the One SV is a Cricket exclusive), and you lose 4G connectivity for data while on a voice call.

LTE performance unsurprisingly varies depending on where you live; EE’s fledgling network has huge ambitions, but so far is limited to denser-populated patches of major cities. With only one bar showing out in London’s Zone 2, we saw high speeds of around 13Mbps down and up to 17Mbps up, though EE is certainly capable of faster. Still, it’s worth remembering that 4G isn’t the magic bullet for mobile data today, and in fact HSPA+ networks can still outshine it in some locations.

The mid-range specifications translate to only moderate draw on the battery, as long as you don’t make too much use of the LTE connection. HTC rates the One SV as good for up to 8hrs talk time or 12 days of standby, though it’s worth noting that those are 3G figures.

In practice, with push email turned on, automatic photo uploads, some media streaming and local playback, a little web browsing, GPS in Google Maps, and Facebook/Twitter checking, we got a day out of the One SV. Turn on the mobile hotspot, however, which allows you to share the HTC’s 3G/4G connection with WiFi-tethered devices like your laptop, and you’ll see the phone exhausted far quicker.

Pricing and Value

SIM-free, the HTC One SV will set you back £350 in the UK; Cricket will sell it to you, off contract, for $349, and then offer you month-to-month service on a rolling agreement. EE, meanwhile, will give you the One SV free upfront, if you’re willing to spend at least £36 per month over a two-year agreement. That only includes 500MB of data, mind; figure on spending £41 or £46 per month if you want 1GB or 3GB respectively.

Overall, then, it’s a cheap phone with expensive service, at least in the UK. Factor in that EE will sell you a Samsung Galaxy S III on the same monthly contract, albeit with a £49.99 one-time payment for the device, and the One SV starts to look out of place.

Wrap-up

You can certainly see HTC’s strategy: make a neatly styled, midrange device that balances battery life with the usefulness of 4G, and help push LTE connectivity out of the premium tier. Unfortunately, some of the company’s decisions – or, perhaps, the corners cut in order to meet the target price – take their toll on the One SV proposition overall.

We could live with the last-gen processor, and even the WVGA display only really proved glaringly disappointing when viewing media, but the lackluster camera is a serious blip. HTC first debuted its ImageChip technology with research suggesting mobile photography was one of the key factors buyers weighed in picking a new phone; unfortunately, that’s where the One SV falls most short.

Couple that – in the UK at least – with some expensive tariff pricing from EE that puts an altogether more appealing handset within easy reach, and the HTC One SV loses more of its shine. It’s not a bad device, but it demands too many compromises from cutting-edge users tempted by 4G, and can’t compete on price with more affordable HSPA+ phones on other networks.

Hardware

The One VX sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz with 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD card slot). Overall, this is pretty typical of a budget-friendly device, and while we would’ve liked to see at least 16GB of built-in storage, we can’t really complain about the fact that it comes with a microSD card slot, a feature that a lot of other phones are neglecting.

The display of the One VX is a 4.5-inch Super LCD 2 screen with a qHD resolution of 960×540. The combination of the screen size and resolution makes the display less sharp than more premium 720p devices such as the One X+ — the One VX has a pixel density of 245 PPI, compared to 312 PPI on the One X+. Regardless, text showed up fairly crisp, and images and videos were sharp as well. So, while the display may not boast HD status, it’s certainly something that you can write home about.

The overall design of the phone is reminiscent of HTC’s other devices in the One series. It is a One device, after all, but its budget status doesn’t show through with its design. It sports an elegant shape, with rounded edges and a smooth and sturdy band of silver-painted plastic trim that surrounds the outer edge. The AT&T logo above the screen is subtle, and three capacitive buttons (Back, Home, and Recent Apps) line the bottom of the bezel just like HTC’s other One handsets.

On the top, there’s the usual headphone jack and power button, while the volume buttons are situated on the right side, and the microUSB is centered on the bottom, right where we like it. Flipping the phone over will reveal the matte white battery cover with the HTC logo in the center and the Beats Audio logo towards the bottom, right above the speaker. However, while the back cover is removable, allowing you access inside the phone, the 1,800mAh battery is irreplaceable — taking the back cover off only gives you access to the SIM card slot and the microSD card slot.

There’s definitely not a lot to complain about as far as the design goes. It certainly doesn’t look like a budget-minded device, and its build quality feels really solid. Smaller hands might have a bit of trouble holding the device — as with any 4.5-inch-and-higher device — but we can’t see that has too much of a hindrance on the overall experience.

Software

The One VX runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with Sense 4.1 running on top (surprise, surprise). Therefore, there’s nothing terribly new, but it still packs all of the lovable personalization options and polished widgets that are typically found with HTC’s custom user experience. Beyond that, it’s a little unfortunate to find the One VX running ICS out of the box, as opposed to Jelly Bean, but we should be seeing an update roll out sooner or later for the device.

Because the VX runs the older ICS software, you won’t be able to enjoy newer features such as Google Now and improved notifications, as well as some of the new performance enhancements, but for those who don’t mind not having the latest software versions, we can assure you that ICS on the One VX runs like a charm, and you’ll still have the same great features that come with HTC’s Sense UI, like custom widgets and social integration of all your contacts, if you’re into to that kind of thing.

Camera

While 5MP certainly isn’t anything special, some people may actually find that the camera suits them well, but a majority of users will probably want to stick to their dedicated cameras. Provided that there’s enough lighting, you’ll be able to get some decent shots. However, if you’re picky enough, you’ll be quick to point out its faults. Brighter areas seem to get washed out a lot, and darker areas don’t seem to get a lot of attention depending on where the light is coming from. HDR mode helps that a little, but it’s only good if you have time to spare, since snapping an HDR photo takes a little bit longer to pull off.

However, even with adequate lighting, there can still be a lot of noise that shows up in photos. It really depends on the circumstances, but I was quick to notice that even in broad daylight, ISO noise was still a problem, and it ruins an otherwise great photo.

Video recording at 1080p was fairly decent, although it had trouble with re-focusing, and the exposure took a little long to adjust when going from light areas to dark areas, and vice versa. It records macro fairly well, though, and doesn’t have too much of a problem with focusing in on small, detailed areas. In the end, the camera works in a pinch, but it’s probably not worthy to replace your main point-and-shoot camera at this point.

As for the camera app itself, it’s the same as HTC’s other offerings, and it’s easily one of my favorite camera interfaces of any device. The photo shutter button and the video shutter button are side-by-side so you don’t have to switch between the two. There’s also quick access to real-time filters and effects that you can apply to both photos and videos. The settings menu is also really intuitive and easy to navigate, and it lets you change settings that would otherwise be cumbersome to change on other handsets.

Benchmarks & Performance

In everyday use, the One VX offered mostly snappy performance. Apps opened quickly, and I was able to page through home screens without hesitation. It’s not as buttery smooth as, say, the One X+ running Jelly Bean, but the difference will be negligible to the layman, and most people wouldn’t notice a difference when using the VX by itself.

The 1.2GHz Snapdragon S4 CPU in the One VX turned in some respectable benchmarking results. For example, it scored a 9,600 in AnTuTu, right on par with the last-generation flagship Galaxy S II from Samsung, and beating the Galaxy Nexus by a good length. In Quadrant, it scored just over a 5,250, edging out the One X, but is way behind when compared to the One X+, which scored over 7,000. Putting the phone through some real-world graphics testing in the form of Asphalt 7 proved to be successful. Low framerates were practically nonexistent — something that I can’t say with many other budget handsets.

Battery

The One VX comes with a 1,800mAh battery, which is a bit less than the 2,000mAh that smartphones are currently moving up to, but thanks to the slower-clocked processor, the lower capacity wasn’t really a problem. In total, I easily went almost two full days before the battery dipped below warning levels, and this was from casual web browsing and surfing Facebook and Twitter, while also checking email on occasion. On the second day, however, I ended up doing quite a bit of gaming and watching TV shows on Netflix. The battery took a larger hit that time around.

One of the more interesting aspects, though, was how big of a hit the WiFi was on the battery. Usually the screen is the biggest culprit in most cases, and rightfully so, but WiFi laid the biggest smackdown on the battery, claiming 32% of resources. Then again, battery life didn’t suffer one bit, and not in a second would we consider this an issue. It took me a good couple of hours of continuous use before I noticed any kind of huge knock on the battery, so that’s definitely saying something.

Wrap-Up

The One VX offers a balanced ratio between price and performance, and while it’s classified as just a budget device for those cash-strapped consumers looking for a good deal, the One VX will provide the experience of a top-tier handset — it looks and feels like a top-of-the-line HTC device, and it performs about as great as you’d expect from a flagship smartphone, with only a few setbacks that few will grumble over. If you’re not willing to shell out money for the One X+ or Galaxy S III, the One VX will surely make you happy for only $50.

Hardware

Despite the Electrify M being the DROID RAZR M’s brother, they look hardly alike. The Electrify M has a plain and dimpled silver backplate, while the RAZR M sports the fancy kevlar lining that the DROID RAZR series is known for. That difference alone separates the two devices on opposite ends of the spectrum as far as looks and design. Other than that, though, all the buttons are in the same place — the power and volume buttons are situated on the right side, while the microUSB port, as well as the SIM and microSD card slots are on the left, accompanied with a large flap door. Essentially, this specific layout of the buttons and ports is something we don’t see everyday, but it’s traditional on Motorola’s latest phones, and it’s nothing that users won’t easily get accustomed to.

As for the hardware that’s inside the Electrify M, it’s slightly better than what we’re used to seeing in this price range. There’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz with 1GB of RAM — basically the same combination that we see in other high-end smartphones on the market, like the HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy S III. Aside from performance-related specs, there’s 8GB of storage, and an 8MP rear camera with a 0.3MP VGA-quality front-facing camera. And, of course, there’s the 4G LTE chip for access to faster speeds if they’re available in your area, which is still only a few select places in the US if you’re a US Cellular customer.

The display is a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED unit with a qHD resolution of 960×540 pixels. The screen is bright and the color saturation is good with decent viewing angles, but its PenTile pixel layout makes small icons and text show up jagged and slightly blurry, rather than sharp and clear. Essentially, it doesn’t stand a chance against HD displays of higher-end phones, but it’s certainly not the worst display we’ve looked at. However, one of the key selling points of the Electrify M is its small size despite it’s large screen. The entire device is just slightly larger than the iPhone 4/4S, which sports only a 3.5-inch screen, compared to the M’s larger 4.3-inch display.

Software

The Electrify M runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box. It’s practically the same user interface as the DROID RAZR M, except US Cellular made some of their own slight changes and added a few exclusive apps to the mix. Other than that, it’s what you would expect from a Motorola UI — you can swipe to the left to reveal quick settings where you can toggle various connectivity options, and then swiping all the way to the right will allow you to add a page to the homescreen.

You can also flip around each of the three circles on the main homescreen to suit your needs. For example, you can easily switch between an analog or digital clock just by swiping it up or down. The same goes for the weather circle and the battery circle, where you can flip them over to reveal weather for different cities and show the settings gear icon, respectively.

One small gripe I had with the software, though, was that putting the phone on silent mode doesn’t silence the camera shutter or the screenshot sound. This may seem trivial, but it was pretty annoying to have to open up the camera app and turn off the shutter sound, even when the entire phone was on silent mode. To make this matter worse, the M has an annoyingly loud shutter sound that’s not pleasing to the ear, and I’m pretty sure it cranks out at full volume no matter what the phone’s master volume is set at. Again, it might seem like a minute problem, but it can get on your nerves pretty quickly.

Camera

The M’s camera has an 8MP sensor — pretty typical of most smartphones nowadays. However, I got extremely mixed results when taking photos. If there was enough lighting coming from the right angles, I was able to get some really good shots, but outdoor pictures were pretty frustrating to deal with. Sometimes, even if I wasn’t pointing the camera at the sky, the sensor would automatically adjust the exposure based on the sky anyway, so everything on the ground appeared really dark. Luckily, you can play around with the exposure manually to try to get correctly-exposed photos.

Low-light environments were also kind of a disaster. There were a lot of noise in the photos and the sensor didn’t do a very good job of adjusting white balance and exposure correctly. Again, you’ll have to resort to manually adjusting some settings in order to get decent low-light photos, which can certainly be a pain in the butt if you’re in a hurry. Video recording actually did a better job at automatically adjusting exposure, even outside. I actually couldn’t find much to complain about as far as video capabilities — it shoots 1080p video well, and I rarely noticed any clipping or focus issues.

Benchmarks, Performance, & Battery

Benchmarks of the Electrify M were rather impressive on one end of the spectrum — it scored almost a 5,000 in Quadrant, beating out the HTC One X by a few points. However, in AnTuTu, it scored just under a 10,500, which is right on par with the Samsung Galaxy Note and the Galaxy S II, which are both last-generation devices. However, that doesn’t mean the Electrify M can’t perform. Thanks to the Snapdragon S4 chip on the inside, navigation was snappy and animations were really smooth. Asphalt 7 played extremely well, and casual games like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds loaded up really quickly.

The Electrify M has a 2,000 mAh battery, which is fairly standard for most smartphones today. There wasn’t anything that stood out as far as battery life, though. It wasn’t draining more quickly than I expected, but it didn’t last longer than I expected either. I ended up almost going 21 hours before the phone started to warn me to plug it in. Normal tasks, like checking email and surfing the web, doesn’t take a lot out of the battery at all — the screen was the biggest culprit if anything, but gaming isn’t the same story. As expected, playing Asphalt 7 for about 20 minutes drained the battery by roughly 10%, so going from a full battery to a completely drained battery would allow for about an hour and a half of non-stop gaming if that’s the case. While that’s hardly enough time for a solid gaming marathon, it’s definitely not a huge surprise.

Wrap-Up

In the end, the Electrify M isn’t too special. We’ve essentially seen this phone before in the DROID RAZR M on Verizon, obviously, but for those wanting to stick with US Cellular, this is the exact alternative. What makes this phone really stick out from the crowd, though, is its compact size and huge screen. Fitting a 4.3-inch display on roughly the same footprint as the iPhone 4/4S is really impressive, and that’s thanks to Motorola’s “virtually borderless” display that’s one of the main selling points of the handset. However, the pricing model is a little odd — $99 after signing a two-year contract, but you have to pay $50 more if US Cellular’s 4G isn’t available in your area, something that isn’t even under your control. $99 isn’t a bad price, but Verizon is selling the equivalent for only $49, which makes it pretty absurd to pay $149 for the Electrify M, let alone $99.

Hardware

With the trend toward bigger and bigger displays, the 4-inch 8S is almost an outlier. At 120.5 x 63 x 10.28 mm it’s broader and thicker than the obvious 4-inch alternative, the iPhone 5, though shorter; the sharp bevel around the edges of the rear panel does help disguise some of the thickness, however. HTC’s polycarbonate plastic is bright and tactile, and the range of colors the 8S is available in is a welcome change from the typical choices of black, white, or silver. The two-tone finish – with the earpiece grille and camera surround matching the capacitive button section – shows admirable attention to detail for the midrange.

Buttons are the Microsoft-mandated usual, with touch-sensitive keys for back, Start, and search under the screen, a power key on the top edge, and finally a volume rocker and camera button on the right edge. The headphone jack sits on the top edge, while the microUSB port is on the bottom; that whole section unclips (with no small amount of difficulty) to reveal a microSD slot and micro SIM slot.

A removable memory card is a useful addition, considering HTC has been fairly humble with the 8S’ specifications overall. You get 4GB of onboard storage and 512MB of RAM paired with Qualcomm’s 1GHz dualcore Snapdragon S4 processor, WiFi b/g/n (though not dual band 5GHz support), and Bluetooth 3.1 (not 4.0). No LTE, but dual band HSPA (900/2100) and quadband GSM/EDGE, plus GPS/GLONASS, an accelerometer, proximity sensor, and ambient light sensor.

HTC opted for WVGA (800 x 480) resolution for the 8S’ Super LCD, and while that seems a shortage of pixels at first glance, the relatively small dimensions of the display mean it’s less of a drawback than you might expect. In fact, the screen is bright and clear, and while not the smoothest when it comes to on-screen graphics, the angular lines of Windows Phone’s Metro-style interface do a good job of working with the limitations of the resolution on offer. It suffers some when you take it outdoors, however, struggling to keep up in direct sunlight.

The biggest compromise is in the camera, however. On the back there’s a 5-megapixel shooter with an LED flash, but it misses out on the finessed lens we’ve seen on some recent HTC Android devices; instead, you get an f/2.8 aperture lens and 720p HD video recording. There’s no front facing camera whatsoever, which means no Skype video calling. Considering HTC has been leading the way with wide-angle front cameras – fitting more people in-frame than rivals can – it’s a sad omission.

Software

We’ve already comprehensively reviewed Windows Phone 8, and despite some rough edges we like Microsoft’s latest platform. It’s distinctive in the handset segment, and straightforward for new smartphone users to get to grips with, though at the same time held back by a shortage of apps. That’s gradually changing, true, but it still makes recommending Windows Phones tricky, since if there’s a specific title someone needs, there’s a fair chance a device running Windows Phone won’t have it.

On top of all this, HTC adds its own customizations, though they’re relatively minimal in comparison to HTC Sense on the company’s Android phones. There’s an HTC hub with weather, stock alerts, and news headlines (you can add more sources from HTC’s list, but there’s no apparent way to add further RSS feeds) and the Photo Enhancer tool we’ve seen before, as well as a Connection Setup app.

The literally titled “Make More Space” tool shows you exactly what’s eating up your storage – split into music and videos, pictures, and documents – and then suggests you use the relevant apps themselves to actually delete any unwanted content. FInally, there’s a Beats Audio option added to the Settings page, though it only allows you to turn the system on or off; no more granular adjustments are possible.

In practice, we found the 8S to be smooth running for the most part. There were the occasional hiccups, particularly when loading or switching between apps, though not to any extent that we’d consider them deal-breakers. The fact that HTC opted for 512MB of RAM means you shouldn’t come across any third-party apps which won’t be compatible, unlike some of Nokia’s cheaper Lumias.

Camera

5-megapixels is pretty underwhelming for a smartphone today, though the midrange is a competitive place and we’re not especially surprise that HTC opted to cut costs here. Still, megapixels aren’t everything, and we’ve seen decent shots produced from humble cameras. Unfortunately, that’s not a claim to fame the 8S can make.

There’s an odd blue tint to white sections in the frame, and grays – such as the overcast sky in our London sample shots – become strangely purple in the hands of the 8S. Meanwhile yellows and greens are muted and dull, while reds are slightly too saturated for the rest of the frame. Close-ups fare better, with text crisp even at short distance, and a reasonable amount of detail on show.

Video, meanwhile, is recorded in 720p at most, and suffers from noticeable blurring. There’s also occasionally an odd flickering to the footage, and smearing during faster pans. Audio quality is fair, but doesn’t hold up to what the 8X can produce.

HTC 8S camera video sample:

Phone and Battery

The 8S doesn’t get any fancy in-call audio processing, at least none that HTC is shouting about, but it still puts in a good showing for calls. Earpiece audio is strong and capable of loud levels, and the speakerphone mode is similarly blunt. On the other end, callers said they could hear us with no problems, even when in areas with fairly loud ambient noise.

HTC equips the 8S with a 1,700 mAh non-removable Li-Poly battery, and it’s sufficient for more than a day of use. We had push email switched on, and use the 8S for a combination of web browsing, messaging, photography, and some Bing Maps use, and it lasted through the day with charge still showing.

Wrap-Up

HTC very nearly nailed the Windows Phone 8 market. The 8S is well designed and a great size: not everybody wants a huge smartphone, and many people who told us they liked the design of the 8X but wanted something scaled more like an iPhone 5 had no such complaints about the smaller model. Where the story starts to fall apart is in specifications, and where HTC has opted to cut corners.

Yes, the camera is poor, but HTC’s big problem is Nokia. In the time since we first saw the 8S and its arrival on the market, Nokia has revealed the Lumia 620: it pairs a pocket-friendly 3.8-inch screen with both front and back cameras, NFC, and interchangeable back shells that are just as distinctive as the 8S. It also looks like the 620 will be cheaper than the 8S when it arrives early in 2013.

There’s no denying that HTC has crafted a good looking phone in the 8S, and the general user experience is solid. What makes it tough to recommend is the subpar camera performance and the absence of a front-facing camera; Microsoft is only going to emphasize Skype more, and for a new Windows Phone to launch without hardware provision for that is myopic cost-cutting. There’s certainly room in the market for a well-performing, affordable, compact Windows Phone 8 handset, but the HTC 8S lacks the all-round polish to fill that niche.

Hardware

To answer that last question, the answer is simply, yes, it can. It doesn’t necessarily stand alone, but it should make the shortlist for anyone narrowing down what top-of-the-line smartphone to get themselves or their loved one this holiday season. The unibody design that we saw on the One X is the same as what we’re seeing on the One X+. Thanks to the polycarbonate housing, the handset is pretty light and also really thin, and the soft-touch finish allows for a firm grip on the device, but our black version was quite a finger smudge magnet. However, despite the large 4.7-inch Super LCD 2 720p display, the entire device doesn’t feel overwhelming to hold at all, unlike other 4.7-inch handsets that I’ve played around with.

Since it’s a unibody device, there’s not a lot of things that you can take apart easily. There’s no battery cover, which means you can’t replace the battery with a bigger one or use a spare, but that also means it’s a lot sleeker than non-unibody handsets. On the top, there’s a headphone jack along with the ambient noise sensor, with the power button on the right. On the left side, there’s the microUSB port, with the volume rocker sitting on the right side. On the bottom, there’s just the microphone. And finally, on the front, you have the three capacitive soft buttons — Back, Home, and Recent Apps — as well as the typical elongated earpiece that HTC is known for, with a notification light hidden within.

There’s a bit more happening on the back of the One X+, though. The 8MP camera protrudes just a tad from the surface, and there’s a single LED flash to accompany the camera. Also on the back is the microSIM card slot. It’s not necessarily situated on the back of the phone, but it’s also not really situated at the top — it’s mostly located in between on the curve, which is almost an odd place for it, but it actually works. The speaker is also located on the back towards the bottom, as well as the five small gold contacts for docking purposes.

On the inside is where all the real changes occur, though. The HTC One X+ trades in the dual-core Qualcomm S4 Snapdragon processor of the One X for a NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset that pairs a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor clocked at 1.7GHz with GeForce ULP graphics. The device also comes with 1GB of RAM and a whopping 64GB of internal storage. While there’s no microSD card slot, we think the 64GB of storage is plenty of space for any user.

The 4.7-inch display has a resolution of 1280×720, giving it a pixel density of 312ppi, which pegs it right up against the Samsung Galaxy S III and the LG Optimus G. It’s the same display in the One X, which arguably has one of the best displays on the smartphone market (before the DROID DNA came along). It’s super crisp and clear, and it provides an excellent viewing experience with text and images showing up extremely sharp and bright.

Software

The HTC One X+ runs Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean right out of the box, with HTC’s Sense 4+ UI running on top. If you’re already familiar with HTC’s user interface, you won’t see many surprises in Sense 4+ other than the new Jelly Bean features like Google Now and Project Butter. Of course, if you’re looking for a device that offers a pure Android experience, you may not like HTC’s excessive skinning, but it adds a lot of nice features that many users will take advantage of. While HTC is sometimes accused of over-skinning, they actually left a couple of Jelly Bean features alone. For instance, they didn’t implement their own speech recognition tool over Google’s own solution. Instead, you’ll be greeted with pure Google Now and Voice Search on the One X+.

A lot of the differences between Sense 4.1 (on the One X) and 4+ are mostly behind the scenes and very subtle. The update claims smoother navigation, improved performance, and better battery life. HTC also seemed to remove shadows and embossments from text and replaced them with sharper effects in order to make text easier to read, although that may just be my mind playing tricks on me, but I did notice that text seemed a little crisper compared to other HTC devices I’ve played around with. Infinite scrolling has made a return as well, after being removed on the One X. This allows you to jump from the furthest left home screen to the furthest right, and vice versa.

As far as a possible update to Android 4.2, we wouldn’t be surprised if the One X+ eventually received it. It’s a new-enough device and a powerhouse of a smartphone for HTC and AT&T to definitely consider giving one of its best handsets an update to the latest Android version. Plus, an update to Android 4.2 would make the handset just that much more appealing to buyers who are wanting a future-proof device.

Benchmarks & Performance

With the HTC One X being an excellent smartphone, we knew going into it that the One X+ would only be an improvement, and that benchmarks would be a little better. However, the benchmarks showed that the One X+ provides quite the performance boost over the One X. In AnTuTu, the One X+ scored just over 16,200, which is right on par with Samsung’s Galaxy S III, but not quite up to snuff with the LG Optimus G or the Nexus 4. Of course, though, the difference is most likely negligible. Compared to the One X, which scores as high as 11,000, the One X+ is certainly quite a bit faster.

In Quadrant, the One X+ scored a 7,400, which is over double of what our scores were with the One X (3,400). It also does better than the Galaxy S III, which scored 6,000 during our testing, and performed just slightly better than the Optimus G. Of course, benchmarks aren’t everything, and what truly matters is if users will be happy with the performance of the phone and its user interface. Thanks to Project Butter that was introduced in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the One X+ is both snappy and smooth. Navigating through different screens and switching between apps was really quick. Surprisingly, playing a little bit of Asphalt 7 was a less-than-stellar experience, though — it was really laggy and framerates were disgustingly low. However, Mass Effect: Infiltrator played much smoother and provided better performance all around, which makes us think that Asphalt 7 may be an isolated issue.

Camera

The One X+ has an 8MP rear camera with a 1.6MP front-facing shooter. It’s essentially the same camera found in the One X, but with a slightly improved sensor that’s capable of recording 1080p video at 30fps instead of 24fps in the One X. The front-facing camera has also been upgraded to 1.6MP from the 1.3MP on the One X.

Overall, I really like the camera app’s user interface. It’s really easy to access all of the settings, and there’s even two shutter buttons, one for taking photos and the other for taking videos. This is extremely handy, since there’s no need to have to wait a few seconds in order to switch between the two.

Photo quality varies depending on the situation. With enough lighting, images can appear really crisp and sharp, but low-light conditions offer a different experience. Taking pictures in low light adds a ton of noise, almost to the point where images appear blotchy. Of course, you can manually adjust the ISO in the settings, but lowering it when you want to take a picture of a night scene opens the door for blurry photos, which is arguably worse than just having a lot of noise. Contrast and saturation is a bit too high as well, and sometimes exposure isn’t perfect at times, but with HDR mode turned on, photos get exposed a lot better. However, a lot of users won’t even bother with HDR mode anyway, since it’s a lot slower than just the automatic setting.

As far as different features, there’s Panorama mode and the aforementioned HDR mode, as well as a built-in Slow Motion mode. These aren’t anything new, as we’re already used to seeing these in the HTC One series. There are also a handful of color effects that you can choose from and apply them to photos and videos in real time — sort of like Instagram, but not quite as comprehensive.

As far as video quality goes, it was slightly above average, but it wasn’t without its faults. The increase to 30fps is certainly something that we don’t mind, but the difference from 24fps is negligible. Most videophiles will be able to tell the difference, of course, but casual videographers won’t care too much. Exposure changes going from dimly-lit areas to well-lit areas and vice versa is quick, and continuous autofocus works fairly well too, although there were times when it took a bit of time to refocus.

Battery

The HTC One X+ now comes with a larger 2100mAh battery compared to the One X’s 1800mAh battery. This is always a good thing, of course, but with the internal hardware enhancements, the 300 extra mAhs may have been required rather than just an amenity for picky users. Plus, the unibody design means that you won’t be able crack open the device in order to change out the battery for a spare or larger alternative.

However, we couldn’t find anything to complain about as far as battery life is concerned. HTC has certainly improved on the battery life of devices of yesteryear, and it seems the company is even advocating longer battery life in the software as well, with a permanent and easy-to-get-to “power saver” toggle in the notification tray. I ended up going all day long and well into the evening before I had to plug the One X+ into the wall. This was after I started the day on a full charge and with moderate to heavy usage, such as running benchmarks, playing games, and streaming Netflix at various times throughout the day.

With typical usage, I ended up getting well over a day and a half out of the battery, doing things like checking email, surfing social media, browsing the web, and keeping up with sports scores throughout the day. However, any hardcore gaming for an extended amount of time, as well as GPS navigation will certainly drain the battery faster than a water pipe can drain water, but that’s obviously to be expected, and we would hope that anyone who ended up playing mobile games on the One X+, or even have navigation up for an hour or two at a time would most likely have an outlet or car charger nearby.

Wrap-Up

The design and looks of the One X+ haven’t changed a whole lot since the One X, so if you were hoping for a cosmetic change of some sort with this updated model, you’ll be sorely disappointed. However, the real upgrades are on the inside, and while they may not be extremely significant (think Apple upgrading from 3G to 3GS, or 4 to 4S), they’re compelling enough that we’d easily recommend the One X+ if you don’t already have a HTC One device.

The presence of LTE alone can make this phone a viable competitor against the Nexus 4, even if it is just a slightly faster handset than the One X+. Other devices, like the Galaxy S III and the Optimus G are powerhouses, but if you’re not a big fan of their user interfaces, you wouldn’t be sacrificing a lot performance-wise if you ended up going with the One X+, except maybe the removable battery if that’s a concern for you. Other than the company’s flagship DROID DNA, the One X+ is certainly one of HTC’s best devices on the market right now.

Design

Pulling the device out of its box for the first time, I immediately started drawing comparisons to the look of the Optimus L9. Aesthetically, both phones look pretty similar – while the dimensions are different, both are black with silver trim, and both have the same textured back cover. The black color scheme lends to a minimalistic feel to the design, which I have admit is something I like. This look worked well for the Optimus L9 and it works just as well for the Spectrum 2. I think the phone looks pretty sleek, though I could also see some people finding the design to be a little on the boring side.

On the outside of the device, there isn’t all that much to talk about. A small round power button can be found on the top of the Spectrum 2, which is a little strange at first. I’m used to larger power buttons on Android phones, so the size of the button on the Spectrum 2 might take some getting used to for some. A 3.5mm headphone jack joins the power button on the top of the device, while the volume buttons and the microUSB port can be found on the left side.

The microSD slot has been packed in behind the battery cover, which is something I’m torn on. On the one hand, sliding a microSD card in and out of the slot is pretty easy, but on the other, swapping out the microSD card quickly becomes a hassle when you have to remove the battery cover all the time. Luckily the battery cover isn’t that difficult to remove, so at least the process isn’t as annoying as it could be.

One thing I particularly like are the soft buttons on the front of the device. The usual suspects – back, home, and recent apps – are there, and they’re joined by a menu button. The buttons themselves are nothing we haven’t seen before, but they glow blue when you touch one of them. That’s a nice change from other soft buttons that glow white, and I think they do a lot to make the Spectrum 2 look good.

With a 4.7-inch screen, this phone is pretty big, but it still feels good in the hand. It’s pretty slim at 0.36 inches, and its weight of 5.1 ounces means it’s got enough heft to feel sturdy. I’m a fan of larger screens, and 4.7-inches is just about perfect for me, but the Spectrum 2 might be a little too large for those with smaller hands. That said, if the size isn’t an issue for you, then you’ll be getting a phone that feels like a well-made device.

Hardware

As with most other mid-range phones, the hardware you’ll be getting in the Spectrum 2 isn’t the best. Don’t let that fool you into thinking that the hardware is bad, as the Spectrum 2 appears to make the most of what it has running under the hood.

Let’s start right off with the screen, which is easily one of the most impressive parts of this phone. The Spectrum 2 comes equipped with a 4.7-inch LCD screen displaying at 1280×720, which of course means 720p HD. The Spectrum 2′s screen looks great, especially for a mid-range device. Colors are bright and visuals are sharp, and the fact that it’s HD just makes the deal that much sweeter. As I said above, 4.7-inches might be a little too big for some people, but as far as I’m concerned, the screen is great.

We’ve got a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 clocked at 1.5GHz running the show. Dual-core may sound a little underwhelming with so many manufacturers chasing quad-core phones these days, but the processor in the Spectrum 2 actually manages to keep things quite speedy. Swiping through home screens and menus is fluid, and apps open quickly. That processor is working with 1GB of RAM, which is enough to keep things quick, but it isn’t as good as 2GB of RAM would have been. As much as I would have liked 2GB of RAM, 1GB does the job well enough, so there aren’t any major complaints in that department.

Rather surprisingly, the Spectrum 2 comes with 16GB of internal memory. I typically expect to see 8GB in less expensive handsets, so having 16GB along for the ride is great. Of course, there’s always the operating system and pre-installed apps to take into account, so in the case of the Spectrum 2, you’re working with about 11.5GB of free space out of the box. That amount should be enough to tide most users over for at least a little while, but remember that there’s always a microSD card slot you can take advantage of if you ever run out of space.

All in all, the Spectrum 2 ships with some decent hardware under the hood. Again, it can’t be considered excellent by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s all good enough to get job done and the Spectrum 2 makes the most of what it has to work with.

Software

The Spectrum 2 comes running Android 4.0.4, but just like the Optimus L9, it’s sort of hidden away behind LG’s Optimus UI. That isn’t a complaint though, as I like the Optimus UI. I think it looks pretty good and it doesn’t seem to slow the phone down one bit. If it contributed to problems with lag, it would be another story entirely, but as long as it doesn’t get in the way, I’m fine having the Optimus UI along for the ride.

As with any phone, you’ll have a fair amount of pre-installed apps to wade through the first time you start up the Spectrum 2. These apps range from pointless to handy, with one in particular worthy of some attention. The Spectrum 2 comes equipped with NFC capabilities, and LG has included two NFC cards in the box with the phone. You can use these cards to make something of a custom profile for your phone, touching the card to the back of the device to switch to these pre-set configurations.

Set up is a breeze, as you’ll be using the included LG Tag+ app to get everything going. By launching the app, you can change settings like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and your ringer, and you can also choose an app to launch when you touch the NFC card to the back of your device. Once you’ve got the settings how you want them, you simply touch the card to the back of the Spectrum 2 to write on it, and you’re good to go. You can change these settings whenever you want too, so I can see many people using the NFC tags on a daily basis.

Other that LG Tag+, you’ll of course have all of Google’s apps and a heaping helping of Amazon apps as well. Others, like Yahoo News, NFL Mobile, and V Cast Tones, will probably experience limited use, so there are a number of unnecessary apps to go along with the ones you’ll actually use.

Battery

The Spectrum 2 uses a respectable 2,150mAh battery, which lasted quite a while for me. With the screen brightness at 50% and Wi-Fi or mobile data always on, I watched videos, surfed the web, and played a few games to put the battery through its paces. The battery kept the phone going for more than a day before I had to plug it in, so I think you won’t have any problems getting a full day of juice with moderate use. If you’re on the phone constantly you may have to plug it in at some point throughout the day, but otherwise plugging the phone in when you go to sleep at night should be enough for day-to-day usage.

It’s also worth pointing out that you can charge the Spectrum 2 wirelessly, but you won’t be able to do so out of the box. That’s because you’ll have to buy a wireless charging pad separately, as LG decided not to package one in with the Spectrum 2. Wireless charging is a feature that gets a thumbs up from me, just make sure that you pick up a charging pad alongside your Spectrum 2 if you want to take advantage of it. The battery is also removable, which is always a plus. This obviously means that you can switch it out for a new one once the capacity starts decreasing due to use, and that should be appreciated by a lot of users. LG earns pretty big points for that one.

Benchmarks

With the Spectrum 2 being a mid-range phone, we can’t expect it to necessarily burn up benchmarks. Looking at scores for Quadrant and AnTuTu, the phone performed as expected, not coming out at the top of either list but rather somewhere closer to the middle. In Quadrant, the phone received a score of 5,432, which was enough to put it far ahead of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Nexus, and Nexus S.

The results are unsurprisingly similar in AnTuTu, where the Spectrum 2 ranked above the original Galaxy Note and Galaxy S II, but failed to top the ASUS Transformer Prime. Again, that isn’t a bad thing, as the hardware in the Spectrum 2 is powerful enough to run almost anything you can throw at it. There may be a few games that prove to be too graphics intensive for the Spectrum 2 to run silky smooth, but those are most likely few and far between. While we always love seeing quad-core processors, dual-core is alive and well in the Spectrum 2.

As is generally the case, Verizon’s 4G LTE speeds impress. I live in an area of Michigan where mobile data speeds can be hit or miss, but despite that, I saw some really impressive results in Speed Test. On the low end, my results showed a download speed that was just under 10Mbps, but on the high end, my download speeds threatened to break 30Mbps. Your mileage, like mine, will vary, but these tests serve to confirm Verizon’s dominance in the mobile data space yet again.

Camera

Equipped with an 8MP rear-facing camera, the Spectrum 2 is something of an anomaly among mid-range phones. The mid-range phones we’re used to seeing typically come with a 5MP camera, and there are even some higher-end smartphones that don’t bother going any higher than 5 megapixels. As a result, the pictures the Spectrum 2 takes are respectable, but I’d still recommend an actual camera if you want to take really excellent shots. In any case, if you want a phone that takes some good pictures, you might want to consider the Spectrum 2. One thing to note, however: the Spectrum 2 doesn’t make any kind of shutter sound when you take a picture, so other than a little thumbnail that silently appears in one of the corners, you won’t have any indication that you’ve actually taken a shot. It isn’t the biggest problem in the world, but not having a sound to indicate that you’ve taken a picture can be frustrating at times.

Wrap-Up

What can I say? LG has made a strong showing in the mid-range field once again. I can’t find anything to really complain about as far a mid-range smartphones go – no, you don’t have the best of the best in terms of hardware, but for $99 on a two-year contract, the Spectrum 2 is a pretty good phone.

I think the screen is the phone’s biggest selling point. It’s nice and big at 4.7-inches and boasts HD resolution to boot, so in that respect you really can’t go wrong. The phone runs nice and smooth, which is always a big plus. After all, there’s nothing worse than booting a phone up for the first time and dealing with lag right from the start.

There are plenty of solid phones that go for that same price, though, especially around the holidays. If you’re looking to get a decent phone for $100, you’re going to have a lot of options to choose from. Having options is never a bad thing, but you would be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t at least consider the LG Spectrum 2. It’s an all around solid phone that isn’t going to break the bank, so be sure to give it a spin before settling on a new handset.

The HTC Windows Phone 8X sports a 4.3-inch Super LCD2 720p display with a pixel density of 342ppi, and it’s protected with Gorilla Glass 2. We have to say that there’s not much to complain about with the display — viewing angles are adequate, and images and text are really crisp. The back consists of a curved piece of soft-touch plastic that provides a wonderful grip for those with butter fingers. The back is also flat enough that the device is able to rest on a surface without rocking back and forth. Holding the device feels great, and since it has a smaller 4.3-inch screen, the overall size of the 8X doesn’t make it overwhelming to hold.

Below: Our own Cory Gunther walks us through Windows Phone 8 using the HTC Windows Phone 8X, which is the same device featured in this review, save for the carrier.

On the top of the handset, you have the headphone jack (enhanced with Beats Audio technology, of course) and the power button, while the volume rocker and a dedicated camera button are placed on the right side, along with the SIM card slot towards the top. On the back, there’s the 8MP shooter with the speaker placed towards the bottom right underneath the carrier branding. The microUSB port is placed directly on the bottom in the center — right where we like it.

On the inside, there’s the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chip with a dual-core Krait processor clocked at 1.5GHz — the same chip that’s in the Samsung Galaxy S III and Nokia’s Lumia 920. Partnered with the S4 are Adreno 225 graphics, and there’s also 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (sorry, no microSD slot on this one either).

There’s really nothing to scoff at when it comes to performance. The 8X is fast and snappy, and the animations (which are what makes Windows Phone 8 look really good) are incredibly smooth. Apps opened quickly, and the dedicated camera button on the side of the phone makes it easy to snap a photo, which is great to have, honestly, since the camera app takes a bit of scrolling to get to. The 1800mAh battery is adequate, and while you’ll be able to go most of the day without having to keep it near an outlet, you’ll most likely have to charge it up by the evening with average usage.

Verizon’s version of the Windows Phone 8X has a little bit of the carrier’s own offerings squished inside the rest of the WP8 user interface. Thankfully, Verizon doesn’t go too crazy with the carrier-specific apps. There’s VZ Navigator, NFL Mobile, and My Verizon Mobile, which lets you manage your Verizon account and check to see how many minutes you’ve used up, as well as how much data you have left during the billing period. None of Verizon’s bloatware — if you could even call it that — gets in the way at all, and I actually hardly even noticed that the apps were there.

The 8X has an 8MP f/2.0 rear camera with a 2.1MP front-facing shooter. There’s nothing to complain about here, and while it’s not the best camera on a Windows Phone 8 device, it certainly performs. If you can’t get your hands on a Lumia 920 (which arguably has the best camera on a WP8 handset), the 8X is a good second choice. It handles low-light conditions surprisingly well. Although, even with adequate lighting, images sometimes appear darker than what they should. However, autofocus, as well as auto-exposure and white balance work pretty well.

The dedicated camera button on the side of the device is two-stage, which means you can push the button halfway down to lock in the settings and then all the way down to snap the photo. The button takes a little bit of force in order to push it down all the way, but you can also use the touchscreen as the shutter button for an alternative.

Wrap-up

Essentially, the 8X from HTC is a great and solid device to test out Windows Phone 8. Personally, it was my first time playing around with Windows Phone 8, and while it did take a little bit of time to get used to the UI, Microsoft clearly made a clean and and stylish mobile operating system, and it ran great on the 8X. Overall, if you’re wanting to stick with Verizon as a carrier (thus, taking the Lumia 920 out of the running), the 8X is an excellent choice if you’re looking for a Windows Phone 8 handset. Of course, there’s only a few options to choose from on Verizon, so the competition is still light at this point, but for $199, the 8X can certainly compete with other handsets out of the WP8 group.

Hardware

I had major reservations about the LG Nexus 4 after having experienced the strangely slippery hardware of the LG Optimus G (see our full review here). I’m not talking about any sort of slipperiness in an ephemeral sense – I mean the plastic and glass that makes up the bulk of the device is literally slick. As it turns out here with the LG Nexus 4 though, any little bit of grip friendliness lost is more than made up for by the fabulously well-crafted curved edges of the front-facing panel.

Both the front and back panels on this device are made of Corning Gorilla Glass 2, the newest in undeniably tough glass action from the biggest name in reinforced glass panels for mobile devices today. Under the back panel you’ll find the same Crystal Reflection pattern that the LG Optimus G has, many different squares of reflective material creating an ever-changing pattern of light and dark. The name “NEXUS” sits on the back in big clear letters so you know what you’re using, too.

The display on this device is a lovely 768 x 1280 pixels across 4.7-inches of IPS PLUS LCD. That’s 320 PPI, just above Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus at 316 PPI (PenTile* in that case), and the Nexus S which was all the way back at 235 PPI. For comparison purposes: the iPhone 5 (and 4/4S) sit at 326 PPI and the highest sharpness on the market today exists on the HTC DROID DNA at a massive 440 PPI (across 5-inches of display, no less).

*See more on Samsung’s PenTile choices here: “PenTile keeps you happy for Longer” – as spoken by Philip Berne for Samsung (Philip is also a columnist for SlashGear, mind you.)

The Nexus 4′s display is as bright, sharp, and vibrant as your eyes can handle – so says DisplayMate. Touch sensitivity on this display has been nothing less than top-notch, and viewing angles are essentially perfect. This device works with an RGB subpixel arrangement rather than the PenTile we’ve seen on several recent device including the Galaxy Nexus. LG’s choice here means that that any pixelation you might have noticed in the Galaxy Nexus is gone here and the display experience is easily one of the best you’ll find on any smartphone or tablet out today.

This device also works with not just wireless mirroring in the near future with Miracast, but SlimPort as well. With SlimPort accessories you’ll be able to mirror your display via full-sized HDMI while your device charges at the same time – quite similar to what the HDMI converter accessories for MHL-compatible devices do. Here though you’ve got compatibility with HDMI, VGA, DVI, and DisplayPort too – though just the HDMI accessory exists at the moment.

Also note that the Miracast standard wireless technology exists on several devices at the moment, also including the Samsung Galaxy S III. You wont find so much as a peep from this technology in the Nexus 4 at the moment, though – we must assume that it’ll show itself once more accessories working with the Miracast standard hit the market. It is strange that Google would market the device as having said abilities without them being utilized right out of the box – isn’t it? Have a peek at a column by the name of Miracast Accessories: don’t jump in head first just yet for more information on the future of this technology – the imminent future, that is.

Camera

The camera is a vast improvement over the Samsung Galaxy Nexus’ clunky 5-megapixel shooter, and not just because you’ve got a few more megapixels to toss around here. It would appear that LG, Qualcomm, and Google have come together to create a camera experience here that’s sharp and clear. It’s not perfect, and we’re not quite ready to say it beats out the Samsung Galaxy S III, Nokia Lumia 920, or iPhone 5, but it’s certainly a contender.

The panorama mode as well as Photo Sphere create images that are impressive to behold, but again, are not perfect. While the stitching of images together to create a whole are rarely done without error, the final product is almost always worth keeping. Have a peek at a couple of Photo Spheres in action in the following: [Mall Parking Lot], [Gas Station], [Arcade] – each are posted to Google+ in full-on exploration mode so you can see them in their natural state. Google cross-promotes their social network and the software here as Android 4.2 Jelly Bean+ will bring on this Sphere ability to all devices that run with it from that point onward – fun stuff!

Initial Cost and Data Plans

Once again, let’s not forget that you literally get the same device from T-Mobile that you’d get from Google here, packaging and all. That said, the off-contract price for the T-Mobile-sold Nexus 4 is up at $499, that being approximately $150 more than the off-contract model you can buy from Google Play. Considering the fact that the Google Play online store is completely sold out of the device right now, with a 4 week wait (for some) before device delivery, you might want to drop that $150 to get it sooner.

The device is available from T-Mobile attached to a 2-year contract for $199.99 (this being that $150 less than the Google Play $349.99 price), which you might as well go for if you’re planning on working with T-Mobile one way or another. T-Mobile has a large collection of monthly plans for data, text, and talk, with the largest being a lovely $124.99 per month for unlimited action for all services with 10GB of data working at full speed (with throttling after that). This plan also includes hotspot abilities so you can share data from your smartphone to your other devices as well as 10GB of cloud storage.

Though T-Mobile does have several unlimited data plans, its worth mentioning that you will be “throttled” after the specified amount of data is used each month. Throttling data speed means you’ve got significantly slower data delivery than, in this case, T-Mobile’s 4G HSPA+ network normally delivers. You’ve also got a $79.99 per month plan that includes unlimited data, text, and talk, this time with 2GB of high-speed data before throttling.

Wrap-up

The LG Nexus 4 is just as awesome a Nexus device as any that’ve come before it. Google continues to bring forth stronger and stronger devices, amalgamations of power here in addition to standardization for developers. With this generation comes one of the most powerful processors on the planet along with one of the strongest cameras on the market and a rather top-tier experience for not just the expert Android user, but the average smartphone lover as well.

The only thing you’ll want to keep your eye on is the fact that this device does not work with 4G LTE – if you need data speed in a mobile way, this isn’t your best bet – not yet, anyway. If you’re in the shade of the great wi-fi gods on the regular: no worries. Outside of data speed, this is easily one of the most fabulous smartphones on the market today.

Hardware

This device works with a body that’s not going to blast past the top smartphone tier as far as outright beauty goes, nor is it about to keep your iPhone 5 friends at bay with a more high-class feel. What it is going to do is offer you Windows Phone 8 in just about as perfect a combination of hardware and software as you’re going to see on the market today (also see our T-Mobile Nokia Lumia 810 Review for a similar solution). Nokia has always been known for their high-quality builds and long-lasting equipment, and this device is no exception to the rule.

With a body that’s 127.8 x 68.4 x 11.2 mm and carrying a weight of 142 g, you’ll find that this device is just the little “Monoblock”, as Nokia calls the form factor, that you’ll want to experience Windows Phone 8 at the fullest. Inside you’ve got a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor, the same as you’ll find in the Samsung Galaxy S III and the bigger brother to this device, the Nokia Lumia 920. This device has an 8 megapixel camera on the back with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and 2.2 mm F number/aperture. The front-facing camera is no joke, also, at 1280 x 960 pixels ready for video chat – nothing compared to the iPhone 5, but still perfectly useful.

The big differences between this device and the Nokia Lumia 920 are the camera and the display – the display on the 920 is larger (have a peek at our full Nokia Lumia 920 review) and the camera on the 920 works with PureView technology. That means it works amazingly in the dark, effectively. The Nokia Lumia 822 still brings on amazing photos in normal lighting conditions – and you’ve got a dual-LED flash to back you up if you want to head down to the basement as well.

Software

Under the hood you’ve got essentially the same software as you’re getting with every Windows Phone 8 device today plus a collection of Nokia’s own augmented reality and mapping apps. These apps really do make the difference if you’re planning on using your phone for its GPS abilities or if you want to go out exploring the city you live in or want to get to know better. Have a peek, again, at our Nokia Lumia 920 review to see what these apps are all about – or just have a peek at this handy hands-on with the Nokia Lumia 920 courtesy of Nokia – apps ahoy!

You also get a taste of Nokia Music as well as Verizon-specific bonuses like NFC Mobile. This device also comes with Univision for Spanish speaking video lovers and Data Sense. Data Sense is an app that allows you to closely track the amount of data you’re using each day so you’ll never go over your allotted amount – no more pocketbook busters for you! My Verizon Mobile also exists in your app list right out of the box, this allowing you more control over your Verizon account – no hassle!

Camera / Battery

With a combination of the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4′s battery conserving abilities and the ease with which you’re able to manage how much energy you’re using via Nokia and Windows Phone 8, this device will last you at least a full working day. If you’re doing nothing but streaming video via 4G LTE, expect less than a standard 8 hours – anyone can drain a battery if they try hard enough. Also note – we’ve not yet heard about wireless charging for this unit, but the removable back panel gives us hope that the 822 will follow the 820′s lead.

The camera, again, works rather well here with the Nokia Luma 822, just as well as its brethren each starting with the number “82″. It would appear that the Snapdragon S4 processor helps here as well as the high-quality lens and sensor to create an image processing package that’s right up there with the top tier smartphones on the market. Windows Phone 8 also provides a unique opportunity to closely integrate apps with the camera itself rather than opening apps that also have camera abilities, this making the entire photography experience a joy no matter which Windows Phone 8 device you’re on.

Wrap-up

The crowning jewel on this device is, of course, Verizon’s 4G LTE. We’ve had no Lumia device work with data this quick thus far, nor indeed any Windows Phone 8 device not on Verizon’s network. The Nokia team was smart to finally make a connection with Verizon for Windows Phone 8 here, especially now that the Windows 8 wave has begun. Hopefully the hot selling action that’s happening with the Lumia 920 will continue here with the Verizon-bound 822 so Nokia can continue to bring unique solutions like this one to the market. Available immediately if not soon in any color just so long as it’s black.

Hardware

You won’t mistake the Galaxy Camera for anything other than a camera: while phones like Nokia’s Lumia 920 are making a play for being taken seriously as photography tools, the Samsung shooter approaches the space from the other direction, adding mobile smarts to a camera housing. In fact, it’s based roughly on Samsung’s existing WB850F Smart Camera, though the interface and controls are very different by virtue of the Android OS.

The 21x optical zoom dictates most of the bulk, and while the body of the camera is – aside from the bulge of the grip – reasonably slim at 19mm, the non-removable lens means the Samsung is hardly pocket-friendly. It’s also quite slippery, and while there’s some texturing to the grip, the large expanse of glass touchscreen and the otherwise smooth plastic body don’t exactly make grabbing the Galaxy Camera an entirely reassuring experience.

It does feel sturdy, though, with decent plastics thankfully taking after Samsung’s camera line, not the more glossy, cheaper-feeling materials of the Galaxy smartphone range. Physical controls fall under the fingers, though they’re sparse beyond the point of minimalism: a recessed power button on the top, a trigger for the pop-up Xenon flash on the side, and the shutter release button surrounded by a zoom-control ring. Everything else is controlled via the touchscreen (or your voice, more on which in a moment).

And what a touchscreen it is. Nearly the entire rear of the camera is covered by a 4.8-inch 1280 x 720 display, the same size and resolution as on Samsung’s best-selling Galaxy S III phone. It’s not the same display technology, however; the Galaxy Camera uses an HD Super Clear LCD TFT panel, rather than the AMOLED-based panel of its cellular cousin. It’s incredibly bright and super-detailed, and usable even in direct sunlight just as you’d hope for a camera. Touch responsiveness is brisk, and there’s plenty of room for a sizable onscreen keyboard, even when in portrait orientation (as some Android apps demand).

Inside, components fall either under the “camera” or the “phone” heading. For the former, there’s a 16.3-megapixel 1/2.3-inch backside-illuminated CMOS sensor, with optical image stabilization, ISO 100-3200, and a 21x optical zoom. It’s capable of Full HD 1080p video recording.

For the latter, there’s a quadcore 1.4GHz Exynos 4412 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 3.87GB of onboard storage, in addition to a microSD card slot (compatible with up to 64GB SDXC cards); that internal memory can be a life saver, as we discovered on one outing with the Galaxy Camera when we realized we’d forgotten all of our memory cards. Connectivity includes 4G on the AT&T Galaxy Camera offered in the US and Europe gets quadband HSPA+ as well; both include WiFi a/b/g/n (2.4/5GHz) and Bluetooth.

There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack and, under a flap, a microUSB port on one edge, while a microHDMI port is found when you open the battery door on the bottom (which sits alongside a tripod mount) though you can also prize open a small “sub door” to expose just that video output. It’s also where the microSIM card is slotted in, and where the 1,650 mAh battery is inserted.

Samsung has made some mildly interesting decisions in the specs. The Galaxy Camera can’t be used as a phone for voice calls, though since Android offers various VoIP apps like Skype, there’s a microphone and earpiece speaker; however, you don’t get an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust the backlighting of the screen, which seems an odd omission given a mixture of indoor and outdoor use is likely. GPS/GLONASS, an accelerometer, gyroscope, and a digital compass are all present, just as you’d find in a phone.

Software

With Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the Galaxy Camera is running a newer version of Google’s smartphone software than some recent phones we’ve seen; it’s also several versions ahead of alternative Android-based cameras from Polaroid and Nikon. Turn the camera on, and the interface is instantly familiar if you’ve used any of Samsung’s recent TouchWiz smartphones, albeit in landscape orientation by default.

So, you get the Android homescreen with widgets and user-customizable wallpaper, access to the Play market to download third-party apps, all the cloud-integration and sharing tools you’d expect, and the usual gamut of Gmail, IM, messaging, and other communication apps. The only icon missing, in fact, is for the phone. Samsung pins the camera app shortcut to the bottom left corner of the homescreen, or you can simply press the shutter button to wake the app and power up the lens. The Galaxy Camera can go from idle to ready to fire off a shot in a couple of seconds, on a par with regular point-and-shoots.

The bulk of the apps are as you’d expect from an Android phone, though Samsung has modified the camera app to suit the greater flexibility the Galaxy Camera allows. There are three modes – Auto, Smart, and Expert – stepping up through the range of manual options; Auto mode takes all of the decisions upon itself, while Smart mode has fifteen presets to suit different shooting styles, environments, and desired effects.

So, you get Landscape, Waterfall, Sunset, Night, and Fireworks for the more typical scenes, along with Panorama, Action Freeze, and Silhouette for more specific situations. There’s also Rich Tone, for enhancing the colors, and Light Trace for the smeared-light patterns that look particularly good when you’re taking photos of moving cars. Finally, there’s Beauty Face, which softens skin tones, Continuous Shot, Best Face to combine different faces from group scenes, Best Photo which fires off multiple images in one go and allows you to pick your favorite, and Macro for close-ups.

Finally, there’s Expert mode, which half-fills the touchscreen with concentric dials for the various manual settings. Options are selected roughly speaking from the right edge inward: first the overall mode, whether P/A/S/M priority or camcorder, and then granular control over ISO, shutter speed, exposure, and aperture (depending on which priority mode you’re in). It works, but it’s not the most ergonomic of arrangements, and we wish there was a way to save user-presets (we’d even allow Samsung to blunt some of its minimalism and add a few dedicated preset keys along the top).

Of course, since this is all based on Android, you’re not limited to Samsung’s interpretation of the camera app. The Galaxy Camera can also run third-party camera software downloaded from the Play store, such as Instagram, Paper Camera, or any of the hundreds of options out there. Not all take full advantage of the hardware, however; outside of Samsung’s own app, the zoom control is recognized as a volume rocker instead. Still, we were able to quickly get up and running with Instagram.

Since it’s Samsung, there’s no shortage of tweaks and gimmicks, some more successful than others. As on the company’s phones, there’s AllShare Play for wirelessly streaming your media to a nearby smart TV, or alternatively you can use WiFi Direct and beam images directly to a compatible phone, tablet, or computer. Of mixed use is Voice Control, which allows you to not only fire off a shot by shouting at the Galaxy Camera – potentially useful if you yourself are the subject – but control zooming and the timer. It works, most of the time, as long as background noise is minimal, but without a swiveling screen it’s tough to know exactly what you’re taking a picture of in the first place.

Point-and-shoot cameras claiming any degree of flexibility have had onboard editing tools for some time now, and the Galaxy Camera comes equipped with a number of options. More basic edits can be done in Photo Wizard, such as crops and rotation, while Paper Artist plays up the effects side, with filters, textures, frames, and layers, as well as the ability to add text or handwritten notes directly to the frame. There’s also a video editor, carried over from Samsung’s phones, which permits basic cuts, music backing to be added, some titling, and combining clips into longer videos.

None of them, it must be said, are especially successful, and what Android needs is a true iMovie and iPhoto alternative now that devices are powerful enough to run – and capable of producing sufficiently good photos and video to warrant – capable editing apps. As it stands, we would struggle to put together a video at, say, a tech event, or watermark hands-on photos, all on the camera itself, but it’s not hard to imagine being able to do so with the right app.

Samsung is making a big deal of the sharing potential of the Galaxy Camera, and since you’re paying no small premium for the integrated wireless connectivity, that comes as little surprise. All of Android’s regular sharing options are present, so you can quickly fire off a photo via email, but since it’s Android any app with a sharing facility – such as Box, DropBox, Facebook, and other social networks – is added to the list for easy access. That’s before you get to auto uploads, either offered by third-party services such as Google+ – automatically shuttling off your photos and video to a (private by default) online gallery – or, when it launches in time, Samsung’s own cloud-based alternative.

Camera

All the flexibility and the connectivity would be for nothing if the Galaxy Camera produced poor quality photos and video, of course. The reality is mixed, and depends considerably on your expectations from a camera. If, for instance, you like the instant sharing options of your smartphone’s camera, but want a step up in image quality, then the Galaxy Camera will undoubtedly be an improvement on what you’re used to.

Above: Click image for full-sized version.

However, the added complexity of the quadcore processor, 4G radio, and other components means the hardware cost of the Galaxy Camera overall is disproportionately high when compared to point-and-shoots in its class. For instance, the Samsung WB850F it shares its key photography components with has an RRP of $380 (and a street price $120 less than that). $499.99 for the AT&T Galaxy Camera, meanwhile (with a month-to-month data plan, rather than a two-year agreement), puts it alongside a Micro Four Thirds camera from Panasonic, Olympus, or others, or a Sony NEX-5N, or even one of Samsung’s NX-series models.

Unsurprisingly, you’ll get better results with a dedicated interchangeable lens camera from that list. The Galaxy Camera does well in good lighting, but noise increasingly becomes an issue as the ISO climbs; the camera tops out at 3200, but you really don’t want to get anywhere near that in practice. There’s a tendency toward over-saturation of colors and a blunt approach to contrast in low-light, meanwhile, which leaves shots looking vivid at first glance but, with closer examination, sacrifices accuracy for artificial warmth.

Step out of Auto and take the time to tweak the Smart mode to suit your situation, and the results improve. The Galaxy Camera still buts up against the limits of its CMOS size, but fast-moving subjects such as running water really are caught well in, say, Waterfall mode, and the creative options do a good job of distilling some of the more popular photo effects into something that’s user-friendly.

Video, meanwhile, benefits considerably over smartphone cameras by virtue of the optical zoom and image stabilization. There’s some focus hunting as you reach maximum zoom, but the level of detail and the absence of blur in panning shots is impressive; the optical image stabilization belies the reach of the lens, too. Colors are generally accurate, if somewhat on the cool side, and low-light performance is considerably better than what a smartphone could achieve. It’s also worth noting that video playback looks particularly good on the 4.8-inch display, certainly not something that could be said about all compact cameras.

Battery

Samsung quotes up to 168 hours of 4G standby (280hrs for 3G) from the 1,650 mAh battery, or up to 4.5 hours of “in-use” time. It’s a gray area in a sense, since traditionally cameras would be measured in shots-per-charge but Samsung is obviously expecting Galaxy Camera owners to spend more time editing, sharing, and generally being social.

In practice, after roughly an hour of photography, with auto-upload to either Dropbox or Facebook, and video to YouTube, the Galaxy Camera’s battery gage dropped to 70-percent. That suggests just over three hours of practical use, though you could obviously extend it if you were more selective with your uploads.

Wrap-Up

Is the Galaxy Camera a game-changer? Yes, and no. In itself, it’s the best of the Android-based cameras, though that’s hardly a well-stocked category. Judged purely on its photography abilities it struggles, falling short of what similarly-priced rivals can produce while costing significantly more than the point-and-shoots it’s quality is on a par with. Taken into context as an all-in-one photography, editing, and social sharing studio, however, and it’s a different matter, occupying a niche sweet spot between the flexibility (but underwhelming photos) of a smartphone, and the quality (but cumbersome sharing options) of a camera.

Then there’s price. AT&T offers the Galaxy Camera for $499.99 with a month-to-month plan, not the usual two-year agreement, and if you’re an existing smartphone customer you can add the Samsung to Mobile Share data plan for an extra $10 per month. Alternatively, you can get it a data plan of its own, starting at $14.99 for 250MB per month, or $30 for 3GB, or finally $50 for 5GB. Given the increasing number of users with mobile hotspot functionality on their phones, or willing to simply take advantage of WiFi hotspots, we can see plenty opting out of a cellular data connection altogether, which does somewhat undermine the Galaxy Camera’s abilities.

Far more interesting, perhaps, is the potential for Samsung to build upon the Galaxy Camera with a range of Android-based smart-cameras. Going from the Galaxy Camera’s intuitive Android interface to a regular camera feels like a step back in time: we quickly got used to being able to offload new shots in an instant, whether that involved social sharing or simply pushing them to our computer for editing. Not having to mess with cables or memory card readers has a big impact on workflow, and we’d love to see that added to a more capable interchangeable lens camera.

The Samsung Galaxy Camera is a first-generation product, and they inevitably carry a compromise. In this case, it’s a case of price and expectations: do you spend your money on a great camera, or on a good camera with the added benefit of social options we simply haven’t seen offered on a point-and-shoot before? It’s undoubtedly a niche product, but the convenience and flexibility is addictive, and we’re left hoping Samsung sticks with the concept for at least a second-generation to broach the mass market.

Hardware

HTC hasn’t strayed too far from its recent design language with the DROID DNA, and unlike its brightly-colored Windows Phones, the new Android flagship sticks with sober black for its chassis, lightened only with some splashes of red and fine detailing. That’s not to say it’s an ugly phone, nor a badly constructed one. It’s plastic, but HTC’s polycarbonate feels far more impressive than Samsung’s comparatively flimsy materials.

The 141 x 70.5 x 9.73 mm casing is surprisingly compact, given the size of the screen, a perception helped by the taper to the rubberized-finish rear panel and the bevel of the edges. The micro-perforated red grilles running down those edges are, HTC tells us, meant to be reminiscent of a Lamborghini, though they work more as a simple visual cue pulling together the slice of red at the earpiece and the matching camera lens trim on the back.

Less successful are the physical buttons, the centered, recessed power key being tricky to find with your finger on the top edge, and the volume rocker being on the right side rather than the left, as is more usual. We’re close to forgiving HTC for that, though, since it included not one but two notification LEDs, the first hidden behind the earpiece grille on the front, and then a second on the back of the phone, so that there’s more chance of you spotting when an alert comes in.

Obviously the DROID DNA’s pride and joy is its display, which we’ll cover specifically in the next section. The rest of the phone is no slouch, however. At its heart is Qualcomm’s quadcore 1.5GHz APQ8064 Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, paired with 2GB of RAM; it’s the same chip as in the LG Nexus 4, but we’re told that HTC and Qualcomm worked together on refining the firmware so as to eke out even greater performance.

Elsewhere, just about every shiny and appealing part from the other devices in HTC’s line-up has been squeezed into the DROID DNA. The 8-megapixel main camera has the f/2.0 aperture, 28mm lens and 1080p Full HD video recording we’ve seen on the HTC One X+, along with HTC’s dedicated ImageChip processing that optimizes photos in their RAW state rather than after they’ve been converted to JPEGs. HTC says that’s better for final quality, and the front-facing 2.1-megapixel camera – which gets the 88-degree wide angle lens, for fitting more people into group shots even when the DNA is held at arm’s length, as on the Windows Phone 8X by HTC – also routes its shots through the standalone processing.

Beats Audio makes an appearance, as per most mid- to high-end HTC phones of late, but the DROID DNA also gets the twin amplifiers of the One X+, one each dedicated to the headphone socket and the internal speaker. According to HTC, it makes for a device that can comfortably drive more powerful headphones, and without distortion. We had no problems turning the volume up to painful levels when listening to music via headphones, and the DROID DNA’s speaker is similarly capable of loud playback, with admirably little hiss or grumble until you reach the very top end of the scale.

Wireless connectivity ticks all of the expected boxes. You get LTE for Verizon’s 4G network, as well as CDMA EVDO Rev.A for when you’re outside of 4G range; the DROID DNA is also a global phone, with quadband (850/900/1900/2100) UMTS/HSPA and quadband GSM/EDGE for use when you’re outside of the US. Verizon preloads a microSIM for when you’re roaming.

You also get WiFi a/b/g/n (2.4/5GHz) and Bluetooth 4.0, along with NFC and wireless charging. All of the standard sensors are including, such as GPS, a digital compass, accelerometer, and an ambient light sensor, and you can turn the DROID DNA into a mobile hotspot, sharing its 4G/3G connection with up to ten WiFi-tethered devices (though Verizon may charge you for the privilege, depending on which plan you’re on). A microUSB port – hidden under an unnecessary flap – does duty for traditional charging, swapping data with your computer, and as an MHL HDMI output with the appropriate adapter, though there’s also DLNA streaming support.

In fact, the only real blip on the spec sheet is storage. HTC has outfitted the DROID DNA with 16GB of internal storage, roughly 11GB of which is available to the user; beyond that, there’s no way to augment the memory since the phone has no microSD slot. There’s also no sign of a 32GB or 64GB version.

Unsurprisingly, that fact hasn’t gone down well with potential users. Neither HTC nor Verizon will say on the record why the decision around a 16GB maximum was made, though since the HTC J Butterfly – Japan’s DROID DNA counterpart – makes room for a microSD slot, it seems obvious that it’s something other than physical constraints forcing HTC’s hand. Were we conspiracists, we might wonder whether it was carrier-led, so as to maximize LTE traffic by users regularly accessing data stored in the cloud.

Display

HTC breaks new ground in the US market with the DROID DNA’s display, a 5-inch 1080p Super LCD 3 panel delivering twice the resolution of big-screen rivals such as Samsung’s Galaxy S III or LG’s Nexus 4. It’s not physically the biggest smartphone screen on the market – the Galaxy Note II, for instance, measures in at 5.5-inches – but by delivering 1920 x 1080 it simply blows rivals away.

Pixel density has become the obsession of smartphone and tablet manufacturers in recent years, after Apple made pixels per inch (ppi) a selling point of the iPhone 4. Today, the iPhone 5 has a pixel density of 326ppi, still competitive despite larger Android handsets with greater screen sizes, but the DROID DNA’s 440ppi count puts it in another league entirely. Even when you get up close – far closer than the distance from which you’d normally view a smartphone display – text and graphics are silky smooth, and it’s enough to make 720p panels look crunchy and unrefined in comparison.

It’s not only how many pixels the HTC is packing, though, it’s their quality. LCD displays tend to avoid the over-saturation of colors that AMOLED can sometimes deliver, and indeed the DROID DNA has a cooler image than, say, the Galaxy Note II. Not lacking in brightness, though, and highly accurate, while viewing angles are sufficiently broad so as to look at the phone entirely askew and still not suffer any distortion.

HTC has sensibly protected its flagship feature with a slice of toughened Gorilla Glass 2, but has also made sure the bezels around the display are as narrow as possible. That pays dividends in the hand and in the pocket, with the DROID DNA feeling less comically oversized than the Note II. In fact, despite offering a larger screen, the HTC is less than 5mm longer than the Galaxy S III and even a fraction narrower, though Samsung’s phone is still thinner.

Of course, just as a bigger display demands more power, so does driving a higher resolution panel, and the Full HD of the DROID DNA will inevitably make demands on the smartphone’s battery and GPU. Still, 1080p videos look incredible, with accurate colors and good brightness, while ebook text was particularly easy to read thanks to the smoothness of the fonts and the excellent contrast.

Software

HTC missed getting the DROID DNA out of the door with the latest version of Android, Google’s relentless release schedule meaning the new Verizon flagship ships with 4.1 Jelly Bean rather than the very newest 4.2. That means you miss out on the lockscreen widgets and Photo Sphere camera functionality, though updating to the latest version of Google Search on the DROID DNA brings the more advanced Google Now functionality as well as offline voice typing.

Of course, HTC hides the regular Android interface under its own, with the DROID DNA packing HTC Sense 4+ as is the “house style.” Custom reskins generally meet with mixed reactions, some users appreciating manufacturer efforts to simplify or refine the core UI, while others would far prefer the raw Android dialogs, not least on the assumption that subsequent OS updates will come through in a more timely fashion.

DROID DNA vs Others

For manufacturers like HTC, though, skins such as Sense are an opportunity to further brand the user-experience, and they don’t look to be going anywhere soon. In its latest iteration, Sense 4+ supports Evernote synchronization with the onboard Notes app (for text, photos, and audio) and Audible for ebooks, while the new Gallery pulls in content from the DROID DNA’s own storage, as well as your Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, and Dropbox accounts.

HTC also persists with dedicated touch-sensitive buttons on its phones, despite Google’s attempts to lead by example on the Nexus range and switch to on-screen keys. The back, home, and app-switcher buttons are, by virtue of the pared-down bezel, quite close to the bottom of the handset, which can make one-handed use tricky at times. Long-pressing the home button triggers Google Now, while HTC has reskinned the app-switcher, showing larger thumbnails than Google’s default, in an animated carousel.

Unfortunately, Verizon has its way with the DROID DNA, and the phone comes preloaded with numerous apps from the carrier. There’s My Verizon Mobile for checking your account, along with VZ Navigator if for some reason Google’s excellent Maps app isn’t satisfying your navigation needs. NFL Mobile, Viewdini, American Express Serve, and Verizon Tunes all seem of comparatively little use, and while the IMDb, Slacker Radio, Kindle, and Facebook apps are probably more to the tastes of everyday owners, we’d still prefer to have their presence optional rather than see them forced on us by default. Given the limited onboard storage, not being able to uninstall the preloaded apps makes their presence even more infuriating.

Overall, Sense 4+ does the job, but we can’t escape the feeling that, in its more recent versions, Android is already sufficiently approachable to make skinning it less valuable to the end-user. We’re a long way from the rough and ready early days of Android, and the compromises in update timeliness are simply less acceptable than they perhaps once were. The third-party modding community will undoubtedly flock to the DROID DNA, but regular users may find themselves forced to wait longer for newer versions of the core OS, with not a huge amount to show for it in return.

Performance

With Qualcomm’s current flagship processor inside, we had high expectations from the DROID DNA, and the reality didn’t disappoint. In day to day use there was little we could throw at the phone to slow it down: apps load instantly, and Full HD video plays back jerk, judder, and lag free, whether you’re watching it on the HTC’s own display or pushing it out to your big-screen TV.

That experience is weighed out by some of the most impressive benchmarking scores we’ve seen. In Quadrant, the DROID DNA scored a whopping 7,879 – comfortably besting the LG Optimus G (7,306) and Nexus 4 (4,961) which each use the same CPU – while its 14,486 score in AnTuTu was more than 3,000 points higher than the Optimus G.

Qualcomm’s own Vellamo test perhaps unsurprisingly saw the DROID DNA at the top of the chart, scoring 1,778 in HTML5 tests and 616 in Metal tests. Smartbench 2012 saw a particularly strong showing in the Productivity category, at 4,764, though slightly less impressive in Gaming, at 2,478. Finally, the SunSpider 0.9.1 test of browser JavaScript performance came in at 1,210.7 ms (lower is better), nearly half the time it took the Nexus 4 to complete the same test.

As for LTE performance, we saw stronger download performance than upload, on average. Side by side with an iPhone 5, the DROID DNA pulled in on average 7.97 Mbps, versus 6.84 Mbps on Apple handset for downloads, and 2.05 Mbps versus 1.51 Mbps for uploads. That pays dividends when you’re using the DROID DNA as a mobile hotspot, though we did encounter a frustrating intermittent issue whereby our connection to the hotspot would periodically drop. Obviously, LTE performance is very much network and location dependent, and your experience of speeds will vary.

Camera

The DROID DNA’s cameras aren’t unfamiliar to us: HTC used the same 8-megapixel/2.1-megapixel combination on the One X+. The phone is capable of Full HD video recording front and back, and Sense 4+ has various tweaks to improve usability. Self-portrait shots using the front-facing camera now support an optional timer countdown, helping reduce phone-shake when you tap the button, while if you leave the camera app active when you lock the phone, it bypasses the lock screen when you next hit the power button so that you don’t miss your shot.

Those shots turn out to be very good, with plenty of detail albeit with colors slightly more subdued than on other phones we’ve tested of late. Low light performance can’t hold up to the PureView technology on Nokia’s Lumia 920 – you do get an LED flash, though it’s as mediocre as all of its ilk – but daylight shots are solid, and the extra detail we spotted in frames in comparison to what Samsung’s Galaxy S III produced is welcome, especially if you’re subsequently cropping.

The front-facing camera, meanwhile, suffers some from its lower resolution, and pictures can tend toward the grainy. HTC’s vaunted wide-angle lens does what it promises, however, and there’s comfortably room for three people to fit in-frame with the DROID DNA at arm’s length; four people if you’re closely packed in.

As for video, it has the same balance of extra detail though slightly less saturated colors as we’ve seen in the HTC’s stills, but is watchably smooth and the twin microphones are sensitive. Both video and still capture buttons are on-screen throughout, meaning you can grab a still shot without interrupting video recording.

Phone

Tenacious with a signal, the DROID DNA gave us no problems with making and receiving voice calls, though the earpiece has a hollowness to it – particularly at high volumes – that means it’s not the very best for phone duties. Still, the twin microphones do well at noise cancellation, and callers found it easy to hear and understand us, even when background noise levels were higher.

Battery

With a 2,020 mAh battery and no option to swap it out for a second pack, we were concerned that the DROID DNA wouldn’t hold up to daily use. In practice, the huge screen resolution and the LTE connectivity do mean there are decisions – and compromises – to be made that significantly impact how long you can be away from the charger, and they have a lot to do with how HTC and Verizon expect you to use the phone.

The cloud plays a huge role in the ownership experience of modern smartphones, and for the DROID DNA it’s even more central. Photos and video that are automatically uploaded to Google+, or Facebook, or Dropbox, or other gallery services; streamed music and video from online stores; the usual gamut of push services like email, messaging, Twitter, Facebook chat, and the rest. Use the DROID DNA as it’s arguably “meant” to be used, and we saw it go from charged to flat in under seven hours.

That’s not to say it’s impossible to stretch the runtime out. Be more sensible with auto-uploads, temper the brightness of the display, and resist the urge to spend all day watching 1080p video, and you can get a day’s use from it. Power management tweaking is basically a default chore for Android devices, at least those which push the envelope on the spec sheet, and there are plenty of people willing to go the extra mile in setting up their phone to achieve the best balance for them.

Wireless charging does help that – as we’ve found with other devices that support it, you generally drop your phone on the charging mat when it’s idle, thus giving it a minor top-up that helps extend its runtime – but HTC and Verizon opt not to include the mat in the box. Though you could argue that, since the DROID DNA is compatible with any Qi-standard charging mats, that doesn’t penalize those existing owners, wireless charging is in itself such a fledgling market that it’s far more likely to just frustrate new owners who have to stump up $59.99 extra for the accessory.

Price and Value

At $199.99 with a new, two year agreement, you’re getting a lot of specifications for your money. The DROID DNA is priced on a par with the Galaxy S III and iPhone 5 (all in 16GB form, though only the Samsung allows you to expand on that), a minor surprise given we would not have been too shocked to see Verizon opt for $249.99 or even $299.99 for the new handset.

Verizon requires a Share Everything plan, priced from $40 per month for unlimited calls and messaging, with the DROID DNA, though that only gets you 300MB of data. Stepping up to 1GB is $50 per month, doubling that allowance costs ten bucks more. If you’d prefer to go month-to-month, Verizon will charge you a not-inconsiderable $599.99 (and offer you the same monthly plan pricing).

The big comparison at this level is LG’s Nexus 4. Although T-Mobile USA is offering it subsidized, Google is plainly expecting most people to buy it unlocked, starting from an impressive $299. You need to step up to the 16GB version to more closely match the DROID DNA’s specifications, and you don’t get LTE, but even then the $349 off-contract price is very impressive.

Both phones have the same processor, but the HTC offers the better display while the LG promises more timely Android updates. In short, if budget is the primary concern, then there are better deals to be had with the Nexus 4, but power users or multimedia addicts will miss the Full HD of the DROID DNA.

Wrap-Up

We’ve criticized HTC in the past for taking what has felt like the safer route through the mobile landscape, and its decisions have seen it struggle to stand out while rivals like Samsung dominate Android device sales. The DROID DNA, though, is a return to the trail-blazing form of HTC’s earlier days in Android: those times when the company had the best screens, and the fastest processors, and were legitimately “the phone to have” if you were a power user.

Chasing the cutting edge demands some compromises, however, and the DROID DNA has two significant ones. The first is storage, with the 11GB of usable capacity being simply too little for a modern flagship when there’s no microSD support; we’re tempted to blame Verizon rather than HTC for that decision, but whoever is at fault, it’s the user that loses out in the end. Expect to go through your monthly data allowance more quickly if you rely on the cloud to make up the difference.

More worrying, though, is battery life. Superlative display and processor performance needs a power source to match, and the DROID DNA’s 2,020 mAh, non-removable battery is a compromise that’s likely to cause owners headaches. Yes, you can tweak better runtime out of it, but it’s frustrating to have a powerhouse of a phone that can’t be run at its best all the time unless you’re willing to charge it up twice a day.

And yet, it’s hard not to fall for the DROID DNA’s charms. It’s better put together than Samsung’s high-end devices, and the screen is the best around; we can’t wait to see what mobile game developers do to take advantage of the S4 Pro’s potency. It’s a win for Verizon, then, but a crying shame that it’s not available on other carriers in the US: HTC needs to follow Samsung’s lead in that respect, and make sure everyone who finds the DNA appealing has the chance to pick one up, no matter their carrier of preference.

Big, bold, and beautiful. The DROID DNA is a return to what we’ve loved about HTC before, and while it’s not perfect, it’s a significant improvement in the manufacturer’s range and a compelling option in Verizon’s line-up. The Galaxy S III and iPhone 5 just got some real competition.

What you’re seeing here is a device with a perfectly loud and well-working set of hardware. The Windows Phone 8X has a lovely 4.3-inch 342 PPI display using S-LCD2 technology with 720 x 1280 pixels – that’s quite a few, mind you. Up front you’ve got a pane of Gorilla Glass 2 from Corning with curved edges and around the edges and the back you’ve got one single piece of soft-touch plastic. Don’t let it fool you though, this device is designed to be rough and tough and hardcore even without a 3rd party case to protect it – though they do already exist, mind you.

Inside you’ve got 16GB of storage and 1GB of RAM paired with a the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor at 1.5GHz – the same as the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Nokia Lumia 810 (the other Windows Phone 8 device released on T-Mobile at the same time as this unit.) On the back you’ve got an 8 megapixel camera and up front a 2.1 megapixel camera, both of them capable of recording 1080p video for video chat or sharing to the web.

The S4 processor paired with Adreno 225 graphics make this machine run rather quickly no matter the situation and we’ve yet to find an app that runs less they completely optimally. Video playback is swift and clean, opening any app is a snap, and starting the device up straight from the camera shutter button works extremely reliably. Inside you’ve got an 1800 mAh battery which, helped out immensely by the Qualcomm processor’s battery conservation abilities, makes for a full day’s hard work without a problem.

This device is smaller than the Nokia Lumia 810 and certainly feels more like a top-tier device than that unit. The only thing the Lumia 810 has that the Windows Phone 8X does not is a selection of Nokia apps for augmented reality and mapping abilities. Otherwise they work and feel essentially the same – in the software department, at least. The HTC device is also $50 more than the Nokia device at launch.

The camera on this device is remarkably similar to the one on the Lumia 810, bringing on high-quality images almost without fail. The one Windows Phone device on the market right now that has photography abilities above and beyond what this Windows Phone 8X is capable of is the Nokia Lumia 920 – what with its PureView technology embedded and all. Have a peek at our Nokia Lumia 920 review and check out a gallery of photos taken by the Windows Phone 8X by HTC right here:

Then know this: this device is a great example of what Windows Phone 8 is possible of. You’ll certainly still have to compare to the competition with alternate operating systems, especially those made by HTC running Android, if you want to make a fair decision about which smartphone is best for you. But if you’re hankering for Windows Phone 8 specifically, the HTC Windows Phone 8X is easily one of our top choices on any carrier it’s with.

Hardware

Just as the Lumia 920 and 820 come loaded with the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor at 1.5GHz with Adreno 225 graphics, so too does the 810. It’s certainly not in the processing department that you’ll see any less a device here than in the higher-up members of the Lumia family. Likewise you’ll be getting a great display at 4.3-inches of OLED screen with 480 x 800 pixel resolution.

This device also comes with Nokia’s own “Clear Black” technology for the deepest of blacks, so they say, and a “super sensitive touch” as well. Though the blacks don’t seem particularly blacker than any black we’ve experience before (aka none more black), the touchscreen is indeed more than responsive enough for anyone’s tastes. You will not have to double-tap here, that’s for certain.

This device has a lovely soft plastic back that comes off essentially all in one piece and contains a removable 1800mAh battery for all-day action (more on that in the Battery section below). The device measures in at 5.03 x 2.69 x 0.43 inches (127.8 x 68.4 x 10.9 mm) and weighs in at just 5.11 oz (145g). This machine has a front-facing camera for web chat at 1.2 megapixels and works with a perfectly excellent 8 megapixel camera on the back with 1080p 30fps video capabilities as well.

Gone is the Pure View technology included on the Lumia 920, but the Carl Zeiss F2.2 aperture remains, complete with dual-LED flash action. You’ve got all the same abilities that the Lumia 920 comes able to work with – everything except the ability to take great photos in the dark.

This machine doesn’t have nearly as daring a physical shape and feel as the Nokia Lumia 920 or 820, but it’s certainly great to work with. It feels comfortable to hold and certainly wont be blasting out any eyeballs with its standard black casing, that’s for certain.

Software

Inside you’ve got Windows Phone 8 with a set of applications that remains the same as the Nokia Lumia 920 internationally – but here with T-Mobile additions. You have T-Mobile exclusive apps here the same as you have AT&T exclusive apps in the AT&T Lumia 920. Also the same is your ability to toss these apps if you do not need them – the same goes for the Nokia apps, but in that case, you’ll want to take another look.

Here the Nokia Lumia 810 shines with a set of Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 hero apps, each of them designed to bring you an awesome mapping or music experience that you’ll not be able to get on any other hardware. Nokia provides an ever-so-slightly unique experience in the software department designed to set them apart as a Windows Phone 8 competitor to be reckoned with. As it stands, they’re doing a pretty darn good job as far as we’re concerned. T-Mobile is doing a pretty OK job as well here, making it easy to grab the apps they suggest for your ideal Windows Phone 8 experience.

Be sure to take a peek at Nokia Music as well as each of Nokia’s mapping apps, each of them designed to help you find out more about the environment you’re living in and to help you navigate your way through it. That’s turn-by-turn navigation tied with augmented reality showings of businesses and landmarks near you along with public transport planning as well. Nokia Music, on the other hand, is quite simply a totally awesome free streaming music service – that also leads you in to Nokia’s own music store, as well.

With Nokia Music you’ve got the ability to tap three of your favorite artists and put them in a playlist, Nokia creating for you a high-powered mix made with algorithms of greatness, shooting out mixes you’ll love by all manner of artists related to your favorites. There will certainly be smartphone users out there who purchase a Lumia device simply because Nokia Music is aboard – it’s just that slick.

Battery Life / Camera

The battery on this device is up on the high end with 1800mAh capacity – that’s going to last you at least one day’s worth of average usage as well as camera work. If you’re a heavy user, you may have to charge before 10 hours are done, but if you’re only going to use the device for web browsing, texting, and taking photos, you’ll have more than a day’s usage out of the Lumia 810. This is due in part to the software not needing too much from the battery to keep up and running, but mostly because Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor is great at battery conservation.

The camera is 8 megapixels strong on the back with 1080p video recording ready for action – and it’s pretty nice. Again you’ve got partially the Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor to blame for the nice images at the end due to its dedicated image processing architecture, but Nokia has really stepped up their efforts in the hardware department as well with a fabulous lens. The Nokia Lumia 810 works with a camera that’s easily one of the top in its class – both in your ability to quickly and easily shoot photos and video and in the end result photos.

Again you should note that this device does not have the same PureView technology that the Nokia Lumia 920 does, so when you take a photo in the dark, you’re going to want to put the flash on. Otherwise you’re getting great photos in essentially any environment, and being able to access your camera with the physical camera button right through the lockscreen is a definite plus.

Above: Dark – it doesn’t work on the 810, but it definitely does on the 920. Below: In the light, the 810 can take perfectly wonderful photos galore.

Wrap-up

In the end, Nokia has created another real winner for the Windows Phone 8 universe as a whole. The Nokia Lumia 920 may be just that little bit better with a slightly larger display and loud body, but the 810 takes care of the user who doesn’t want to take a monster out of their pocket every time they need to make a call. This is the business person’s Windows Phone 8 smartphone.

You’ll want to consider this device if you’re definitely working with T-Mobile in the near future and will be living in the Windows Phone 8 universe. It’s not going to be winning any popularity contests against the Samsung Galaxy S III or an unlocked T-Mobile-wielding iPhone 5 any time soon, but that’s not what it’s made for. Instead its your first great choice for Microsoft’s next generation in mobile OS action. The Nokia Lumia 810 is a truly solid Windows Phone 8 experience, top to bottom.

Hardware

It’s strange, the mentality one quickly falls into when it comes to budget handsets. The expectation with inexpensive phones is that they aren’t going to be anything to write home about from both a cosmetic and a hardware perspective. It would be shady of me not to mention that I wasn’t expecting much when I learned I was getting the Optimus L9 in to review – I expected another cheap handset that didn’t perform very well and left me wanting when it came to looks.

Image my surprise, then, when I opened up the box and was greeted by a phone that’s actually pretty sexy. The Optimus L9 certainly has a lot going for it in the looks department – not only is it a sleek device with its black chassis and silver trim, but it’s thin and lightweight to boot. At just 0.36-inches thick, it definitely isn’t the slimmest smartphone we’ve seen, but it’s thin enough. The phone also weighs in a just a hair over 4.4 ounces, and it feels very light in the hand. I was surprised when I was picked it up for the first time, and immediately grabbed my girlfriend’s iPhone 4S and my Atrix HD to compare. The Atrix HD and the iPhone 4S both come in right around 4.8 ounces, and though that isn’t much more than the Optimus L9, the difference in weight in certainly noticeable.

Typically a lightweight and thin design would lend to a fragile feeling, but not with the Optimus L9. It feels like a well-constructed device, and though I’m not willing to begin hurling it across the room, it does feel like it can take a bump or two. There’s also Gorilla Glass 2 covering the display, so it should stand up pretty well against scratches.

Speaking of the display, you’ll be working with a 4.5-inch IPS LCD display that’s running at qHD resolution. That means 960×540, so no, you don’t have an HD display to boast about. That’s okay though, because the display on the Optimus L9 is still colorful, sharp, and surprisingly bright. Before I began my battery test (more on that later), I went to turn the display down to 50% brightness, only to discover it was already there. Cranking it up to 100% results in a display that’s very bright, so 50% should be sufficient for most and serves to conserve battery life at the same time.

Underneath the screen are a set of soft buttons – a back button and a menu button – with a physical home button placed in between them. I’m a sucker for physical buttons, and I think that the home button helps make the Optimus L9 look even better. On the top of the device, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, with the power button on the right side and the volume button on the left. On the bottom is where you’ll find the micro USB port. On the back is where the speaker and camera have taken up residence, while the microSD slot has been tucked away behind the removable backing. It isn’t the most convenient place for it, but hey, at least LG included one.

On the inside, we’ve got a dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 processor clocked a 1GHz. That’s working alongside 1GB of RAM, and while that may not sound like much power, it’s actually enough to keep the Optimus L9 running smooth. Swiping through home screens and the apps menu is fluid and lag-free, so you probably won’t notice the fact that your Optimus L9 is using aging hardware all that often. Sadly, there’s only a rather pitiful 4GB of storage, which in reality is about 1.6GB after the pre-installed apps and operating system are accounted for. In other words, you might want to buy a microSD card alongside your Optimus L9, as it won’t be long before you run out storage.

Software

Starting right off with the operating system, the Optimus L9 is running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, so I suppose it was a bit too much to hope for an Android 4.1 install. In any case, Ice Cream Sandwich functions well enough, though it’s covered up by LG’s own interface. Thankfully, that custom interface doesn’t seem to slow anything down, and I actually like the look of it, so I see no need to complain.

T-Mobile, naturally, has included plenty of pre-installed software, and you’re probably not going to use most of what comes pre-installed. You’ve got things like WildTangent Games, Lookout Security, More for Me, Slacker Radio, and T-Mobile TV alongside Google’s typical suite of apps, and T-Mobile has packed the home screens full of widgets and shortcuts, so you’ll definitely want to do some rearranging once you get your Optimus L9 out of the box. Sadly, you can’t delete most of the apps that come pre-installed, so allow me to take this moment to stress once again that you’ll want a microSD card.

Keyboards on mobile phones are typically a crapshoot, but I’m pleased to say that the one on the Optimus L9 works pretty well when you’re using it in landscape mode. Portrait mode will likely be another issue, and the smaller amount of space will probably lead to more typos. T-Mobile and LG have also included their own version of gesture typing, and while it works, I think I’d rather stick with just punching in each letter individually. That’s because the word that was selected for me usually wasn’t the word I had just attempted to type, but it’s worth pointing out that the word I was shooting for was in the list of words that the system suggested for me most of the time.

The Optimus L9 also features gesture zooming, which is pulled off by sliding the browser menu up while you’re looking at a webpage, holding down to the zoom button, and then tilting the phone to zoom in and zoom out. Like gesture typing, it works, but I feel like you’ll have more accuracy if you’re just doing pinch-to-zoom instead. They’re neat little features, don’t get me wrong, but I think regular typing and pinch-to-zoom will suffice for most folks.

Battery

The Optimus L9 comes packing a relatively beefy 2,150mAh battery, and the phone seems to do a good job rationing out its power. It took quite a bit of game playing and video watching to get the battery to dip down below 50%, and even with the screen brightness at 50% (remember, I said earlier that 50% brightness is still quite bright) and Wi-Fi connected all the time, the battery still didn’t drain as quickly as I was expecting it to.

Leaving it connected to the Internet – be it T-Mobile’s mobile data network or my own Wi-Fi connection – while the phone was asleep didn’t do much to drain the battery either. You won’t have a problem getting a full day of use out of a full charge, and if you’re not the type who’s on their phone constantly, you might even have enough juice left over to make it through a second day.

It’s also worth pointing out that the battery is indeed removable, which should be a big win for some folks. As far as I’m concerned, the battery that comes packed in the Optimus L9 is good enough, but if, like all batteries, it begins to have issues holding a charge as time goes on, you’ll be able to swap it out for a new one.

Camera

The Optimus L9 features a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera and a front-facing 1.3-megapixel shooter. The 1.3-megapixel camera will obviously only do for video chatting, but the 5MP rear camera is decent for taking pictures. As with most 5-megapixel cameras, the images aren’t the best, and I’d suggest using an actual camera for taking photos as opposed to the camera on the L9.

The L9’s camera also features a panoramic mode, and while that’s pretty cool, again the quality of the images isn’t any to write home about. Have a look at the sample shots I took to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

Benchmarks

In our benchmark tests, the Optimus L9 performed okay, but as you can imagine, there are plenty of other devices that rank higher. In Quadrant, it was given a score of 3035, which is enough to put it ahead of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Galaxy Nexus, and the Nexus S. In AnTuTu it’s more of the same, coming in just below the Samsung Galaxy S II but above the LG Optimus 2X and the original Kindle Fire with a score of 5648.

As far as speed tests are concerned, T-Mobile’s network did decent. It obviously isn’t the fastest around, and your results will vary, but for where I’m at in the world (mid-Michigan), T-Mobile’s network posted some good speeds.

Of course, we knew from the start that the Optimus L9 wasn’t going to be the best handset on the block and that T-Mobile’s network wasn’t going to be fastest around. The Optimus L9 performed within expectations though, so don’t let these seemingly low benchmark scores dissuade you if you’re in the market for a budget handset – the Optimus L9 runs smooth enough, and that’s all that should really matter.

Wrap-Up

What can I say? For a budget handset, the LG Optimus L9 impresses. In no way is the phone the best, but its sleek design, nice screen, and the fact that it runs so smooth with have you thinking otherwise. Be sure that you consider the options before you pick one up, however, because while the Optimus L9 is good enough to be worthy of a recommendation here in 2012, its aging hardware means that probably won’t be the case when you enter the final part of your two-year contract in 2014.

Still, for $80 on contract, the Optimus L9 certainly isn’t a bad phone. It’s perfect for budget-minded consumers who don’t need the very best, but instead just want a phone that runs well and looks good. It’s not likely to win awards in either category, but it gets the job done, and that’s all you can really want in a phone that only costs $80.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the Optimus L9 is one of the best budget handsets on the market at this moment. If you’ve been thinking of picking up a new phone but don’t have hundreds to drop on the latest and greatest, be sure you take a look at the Optimus L9, as you really are getting a lot of bang for your buck.

Hardware

The Nokia Lumia 920 is almost exactly the same device here on AT&T that it is internationally, close enough that you’ll see some reviews just titling their articles “Nokia Lumia 920″ without the AT&T note. Because of this, Nokia wins serious points for keeping their industrial design standard at least here with this device. The Lumia 920 is a monster of a handset, certainly not paper-light the way its competition is, and not making any qualms about being thick, either – but it is rather beautiful.

Just as you’ll see me mention later in the review regarding the software on this device, I must note that, used in a world without competing devices in my backpack here to compare to, this machine is amazing. As it stands, the competition will not let go of our subconscious: the advertisements for the iPhone 5, the Galaxy S III, and the whole DROID RAZR family (on Verizon, in this case) are present in our visual environment without end. The two items you’re adopting here instead of “thinnest” and “lightest” are Windows Phone 8 and Nokia, your two new best friends. Have a peek at the column “Smart device specs are over, long live the ecosystem” to explore this idea further.

The pillowy features of the casing that makes up the Lumia 920 as well as the bright color that makes up the bulk of the case are comfortable and fun. Nokia aims for a crowd that wants their smartphone to stand out as entirely unique amongst the many black and white smart devices on the market – and it does just that. HTC’s own Windows Phone 8X has a bafflingly similar approach that you’ll find we also had a relatively pleasant experience with, but Nokia’s “signature design” here feels just about as true to their brand as any device on the market.

The display on the Lumia 920 is absolutely gorgeous. It’s got all sorts of fancy terms running around in it like “ClearBlack” which is supposed to bring you super-deep blacks and “PureMotion HD+” for latency reduction – all of it adding up to one lovely experience. You have “guaranteed” 60FPS animations with PureMotion HD+ (if you need it) and the colors are true throughout the whole of the display experience – and this is just about the smoothest experience we’ve had with the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor under the hood, and that’s saying a lot. It’s most certainly the most fluid experience we’ve had with Windows Phone, without a doubt.

You’ve got a 4.5-inch IPS LCD display here, mind you, with a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels across it, this bringing in one of the higher standard pixels per inch densities on the market. Right up near the top of the list in the world right now, in fact, with 332 PPI beating out the iPhone 5‘s 326 PPI and the Nexus 4‘s 317.6 PPI – it’s not quite the HTC J Butterfly (aka the DROID DNA) with 440 PPI, but it’s certainly sharp!

Working with the device on a daily basis is rather enjoyable, if only because it feels really trendy to carry this machine around. It’s bold, it extremely solidly put together, and it’s fun to use. This isn’t a device I’d recommend buying someone who is hesitant to carry a smartphone in the first place – it’s made for people who love to stand out. The device loves to stand out so much that it doesn’t sit flat on a table, it wants to wobble around and dance – it does this both visually and physically, mind you.

The camera shutter button can be long-pressed to turn the camera on straight past the lock screen – you don’t have to press anything else to make this happen. This is a big issue for a lot of people, especially those who have kids or pets they want to take photos of on the run. Lucky you, too, as this machine is made to catch kids running around in the dark in photo form – more on that in the shot-blasting section of this review.

Software

While we do have a full Windows Phone 8 review separate from this Lumia 920 post, you should know that Nokia provides just about as unique an experience on their devices as Microsoft allows. With their own suite of apps like Nokia City Lens and Nokia Music, you’re getting an experience that’s simply not offered on any other Windows Phone 8 hardware brand. Because of the Nokia experience, the Lumia family is a Windows Phone 8 environment in and of itself.

If you’re pumped up about Windows Phone 8 and want to run with a company that’s made the effort to be unique in this space – unique in a good way, that is – then Nokia is your only choice. This is unlike Android which still suffers from a stigma that exists around non-Nexus smartphones because Google wants developers to have a “pure” experience on devices like the Nexus 4 – but just like Samsung is doing with the Galaxy S universe, so too does Nokia bring a healthy family of apps and experiences here to Windows Phone.

One of the greatest things about Windows Phone shines clearly here with the AT&T version of the device – if you don’t want an app, you can just delete it. This should seem like a rather simple thing, but given the competition’s unwillingness to allow such a thing without hacking their smartphone devices, Microsoft deserves a high-five for bringing it on again here – if you don’t want the always-excellent AT&T U-verse Live TV app in your library, you can simply toss it.

That said, this device provides a rather good collection of apps right out of the box. You can head to Nokia Music to listen to some tunes for free, AT&T has a barcode/QR-code scanner on the device straight away, and Office is here too, ready to bring you full document reading and editing as well as connectivity to Office365 on the web as well. You really don’t need to download anything if you don’t want to, this device is prepared to act on its own.

It’s Nokia City Lens, Nokia Drive+ (Beta), and Nokia Maps that really make this experience a special one though – and Nokia’s been clear about that from the start. We saw this maps experience for the first time all the way back at CTIA 2012 and it’s only gotten better since then – and real, I should say. Here in the real world, these location-based apps work. Nokia Maps hasn’t lead us astray once, and the augmented reality involved in City Lens remains magic – and most importantly, works exactly like Nokia said it would – rather lovely.

Nokia Music is fun to use – it’s still in more of an infant stage than it is part of a real ecosystem we’d support up and down, but it does work. If you’ve already got an Xbox Music Pass, you probably wont end up using Nokia Music, but if you don’t, it’s certainly worth trying out the free streaming action Nokia provides here first. Purchasing music from the Microsoft Store still works great, and the live widget showing what you’re listening to as well as the quick-access to your currently-active tracks with the physical volume button is useful as ever – no other platform provides such a simple and well-working solution for smartphones as far as flipping through tracks goes.

Windows Phone 8 is an absolutely beautiful mobile operating system in both aesthetics and usability. It’s certainly not perfect – but if it’d come out back in 2007 and wasn’t attempting to live up to the monster presence of both iOS and Android, it very easily could be the top mobile operating system in the world right this minute. As it stands, the biggest obstacle in Microsoft’s way, and the biggest factor you might want to look out for, is the fact that developers have yet to dedicate themselves to Windows Phone OS en masse – not enough to tip the scales, as it were.

But over the past two years we’ve seen Android’s own “Android Marketplace” as it was called not that long ago turn into the Google Play multimedia environment and gain the support of just as giant a following in the developer universe as iOS has. There is no argument to be had at the moment for would-be detractors from Android’s viability: their developer tipping point happened long ago, they’ve got all the apps you could possibly want. Windows Phone isn’t there yet – but it’s survived this long – it certainly stands a decent chance.

Camera

This device comes with PureView – Nokia’s way of saying that they’ve dedicated their best workers in the imaging department to create a fabulous media experience. What’s that mean in the real world? It means that when you’re taking photos here, you’re going to have a difficult time taking something that’s absolutely terrible. This camera’s mix of hardware and software create a situation in which you’re going to be able to take still photos even with a shaky hand and will be shooting video with lovely results even with a little stutter in your fingers.

The colors can be odd – while most of the time we’re getting photos that look good, often they don’t appear to be “correct.” Have a peek at our Nokia Lumia 920 camera hands-on post (with bonus comparison to the Samsung Galaxy S III and see how diverse the photos can be. These color variations as well as the end result of photos that with one device appear to be much sharper than the Lumia 920 mean that we’ve got software at work here that attempts to create for you a finished image – not just something raw, but one that always looks “good.”

Above you’ll see three photos of the same subject matter – notice how they’re each ever-so-slightly different in their temperature and sharpness. While this has a little to do with the photographer and non-machine-precision, it’s not impossible to see how the Lumia 920 is processing differently – the photo that’s warmest was taken with the physical camera shutter button while the other two were taken with a tap to the screen.

Nokia offers a new way to work with your camera outside the traditional 3rd party app taking control of the camera – Lenses that you download from the Windows Phone store that sit in a folder inside the camera. Of course the end result is the same: you’re still entering a separate app each time you work with a new environment, but it’s a more integrated and enjoyable way of doing things in the end anyway. Below you’ll see an example of Cinemagraph, a “lens” that allows you to make a gif with just one moving part from a short series of photos by holding your device still – rather fun!

(Click image to see animated gif)

Finally have a peek at a gallery of photos here as well as an example video – this device has amazing photography and video abilities, but we’re not done with it yet. Stick around SlashGear for additional comparisons to other devices in our Nokia Lumia 920 portal for sure. (See more examples in the larger gallery at the end of this post as well.)

Battery

The battery on the Lumia 920 is going to last you a full day if you let it – what I mean is if you ram through it with nothing but on-screen action for hours at a time, you’ll knock it out in less than a a couple of hours – but that’s not easy to do. Normal usage will give you at least a day’s worth of web browsing here and there and photography on the regular. You might want to consider turning on the “Battery Saver” mode, too, for extended life – this option turns off all apps when you’re not actively in them and has everything but phone calls and texts coming in when your phone is asleep.

Wrap-up

The Nokia Lumia 920 is clearly the most unique Windows Phone 8 experience on the market today. Though the selection of Windows Phone 8 devices out in stores right this minute is extremely limited (the Lumia 920 itself isn’t in stores at the time this review is being published), this unit will remain solid for some time to come. Nokia has made it clear that they’re behind this device in a big way, and that their partnership with Microsoft makes their brand the one to team with for a “true” vision of the Windows Phone 8 experience.

And trusting that talk of an “experience” is quite suddenly much more important than it ever has been in the past. Microsoft has just launched Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Windows RT, each of them working with one another to create a family that Microsoft has bet it all on. Your trusting this device is inextricably tied to your trust of Microsoft as well as Nokia through the future. Remember – it’s the ecosystem, not just the hardware, that you’ve got to consider.

Hardware

If you’ve been keeping up to date with recent Android devices, the Nexus 4 should come as little surprise. Like Samsung before it, LG has looked to a recent flagship to build from, and the Nexus 4 is a not-too-distant cousin to the LG Optimus G.

That’s not a bad place to start, however. The Optimus passes over its 4.7-inch 1280 x 768 resolution HD IPS+ display – mustering 320ppi, versus the 326ppi of the iPhone 5, but in practical terms equally smooth in appearance – and while LCD is a first for the previously all-AMOLED Nexus line-up, it’s a beautiful panel. Blacks are deep and rich, while colors are bright but not over-saturated as can sometimes be the case with AMOLED. LG’s integration of the touch-layer and the top glass means graphics swim right underneath your fingertip.

The Nexus 4 also gets Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz quadcore Snapdragon S4 Pro with Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM. As per the Galaxy Nexus, there’s no room for a microSD card: instead, you’re stuck with either 8GB or 16GB of internal storage, and relying on Google Drive if you need any more.

It’s not the only compromise, either. Unlike the Optimus G, the Nexus 4 lacks LTE, topping out instead at pentaband HSPA+ 42Mbps with support for both AT&T and T-Mobile USA’s networks. That, Google has said, is because of the cost and complexity of outfitting phones with LTE radios to suit each carrier, particularly when you’re aiming – as the search giant is – to sell more devices unlocked and SIM-free than you are subsidized through carriers. Other connectivity isn’t quite so disappointing, with dual band WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC for Android Beam, and microUSB.

The usual array of sensors are present – accelerometer, digital compass, ambient light, proximity, gyroscope, barometer, and GPS – and the 2,100 mAh battery can be charged either via microUSB as normal, or using a wireless charger. Google has opted for the Qi standard, which means any compatible wireless charger – including those Nokia will offer alongside its new Lumia Windows Phone 8 range – will work to juice up your Nexus.

On the back there’s an 8-megapixel camera and an LED flash, while the front-facing camera offers 1.3-megapixel resolution. The 139g body itself – which measures in at 133.9 x 68.7 x 9.1 mm – is made of a combination of plastic and glass, and feels considerably better in the hand than it looks in pictures. The edges of the Gorilla Glass 2 fascia curve slightly along the longer sides, meaning your thumb never encounters a blunt line when you’re swiping, and the glass back panel is a cool, crisp touch. The soft-touch sides are easily gripped, and while opinions have been mixed here about the sparkly finish LG has given the rear, it’s at least better than mock carbon-fiber.

Performance

With a final software update yet to come – more on that in the next section on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean – it’s possible that Google could coax some extra performance out of the Nexus 4. As it stands, our benchmarking describes a phone that falls behind what the near-identically specified Optimus G achieved. In AnTuTu, the Nexus 4 scored 8,903, behind the scores of the HTC One X+, Note II, and Galaxy S III; in the same test, the Optimus G managed a huge 11,278.

In Smartbench 2012, the Nexus 4 scored 2961 in the productivity category and 2954 in gaming, while in Quadrant it edged ahead of the original HTC One X with a score of 4961. SunSpider, the test of browser JavaScript performance, the new Nexus scored 2170.4ms (lower is better).

What’s interesting is that the difference in raw numbers doesn’t add up to a phone that feels sluggish in use. No matter the app or the complexity of the webpage, the Nexus 4 whipped through with zero lag or delay. It’s fast and responsive, and a great playing ground for the new version of Jelly Bean.

Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

Google’s new version of Android is a minor refresh, as the unchanged name suggests, but there are a few key improvements which the Nexus 4 (and the Nexus 10 tablet) debut. Ostensibly it looks the same as Jelly Bean as we’ve seen it before, with the most visible difference promising to be the new lock screen, which will show widgets for calendar, email, and other apps. Third-party developers will be able to add their own lock screen widgets to apps available from the Play marketplace. Unfortunately, the new lock screen tech wasn’t ready in time for our review, and will go live when the final ROM hits the Nexus 4 in time for its November 13 release.

What we could try is the new Google Now, which introduces fresh cards highlighting nearby events and concerts, upcoming hotel and flight reservations, places known for being photography hot-spots, and what movies are showing in nearby theaters. Voice search gets an update too, and can now be used – if you speak sufficiently clearly, and have a data connection – to set and search appointments along with open up apps. It’s worth noting, though, that Jelly Bean 4.1 users can already try the new features by updating the Google Search app on their device.

Android’s flexibility with third-party keyboards has seen a number of alternative input options arise, though Google may well be putting some of them out of business with its new Gesture Type ‘board. Like Swype, it allows text entry by sliding a finger between letters, rather than the usual hunt and tap, with a new word prediction system floating a box above your fingertip for easier review. It makes a real difference with one-handed typing, Google’s new system keeping up with faster swiping and proving capable of picking out the most likely word we were typing, as well as gradually learning from our most frequently used words.

Wireless displays, with Miracast, are now supported natively, though you’ll of course need a smart TV or monitor that can handle the standard. Alternatively, there are various third-party set-top boxes that can bring an existing screen up to speed. It works particularly well when watching streaming video, whether rented from Google Play and streamed from the cloud, or stored locally on the Nexus 4 itself.

Jelly Bean was already a solid, capable OS, and this 4.2 version only polishes that. There are a few useful tweaks to the Gmail app with new gestures to shift messages from the inbox to the archive, along with zoom support. Finally, the pull-down notifications menu offers options to respond to an alert, not just open or dismiss it. You can snooze a ringing alarm, for instance, or fire off an email to meeting attendees from a reminder about an upcoming appointment.

Camera

The Nexus 4′s main camera uses an 8-megapixel BSI sensor with f/2.4 lens, and is capable of 1080p Full HD video; unlike some variants of the Optimus G, it misses out on the 13-megapixel sensor. Up front is a 1.3-megapixel camera with 720p video recording.

Previous Nexus phones haven’t been known for their incredible camera quality, but the Nexus 4 delivers a noticeable step up. It’s not the best camera we’ve seen on a recent phone – Samsung’s Galaxy S III produces more colorful stills, to our eyes, for instance – but it’s a huge improvement over the Googlephones that came before.

Video, unsurprisingly, is much in line with what we saw from the Optimus G. Colors are accurate, if a little muted, and the continuous autofocus makes it easy to piece together a more impressive clip than the usual point-and-shoot.

(Click for expanded view)

Of course, it’s Photo Sphere that has been getting the most attention, a new addition to Android devices. It pieces together different frames into an overall 360-degree image, which can then be shared as stills or uploaded to Google Maps for use with the Street View viewer. In practice, while some impressive images can be coaxed out of Photo Sphere, it’s also capable of some pretty underwhelming pictures. Indoors, with busy scenes, we had problems with badly-blended joins; outdoor panoramas proved far more successful.

Phone and Battery

Voice calls with the Nexus 4 were in line with what we experienced from the Optimus G, clear and with no issues with drops or static; the dual microphones help there. Google quotes up to 10hrs of talktime from the 2,100 mAh battery, or up to 7hrs web browsing, though in our experience it was heavily dependent on how bright we had the screen set. LG’s HD IPS+ technology is certainly capable of some impressive brightness levels, but it also chews through battery life at the same time. Set to a more moderate level, we got through a full day before needing a recharge.

Of course, Google would like you to be setting the Nexus 4 down on a wireless charger when you’re not using it, though one isn’t included in the box. The switch to Qi technology from previous types of dock means you don’t get Pogo pins on the Nexus 4, though the number of products that actually use them is so slim that for most people it’s unlikely to make a difference.

Pricing and Value

Google’s first Nexus was not only a spur to smartphone manufacturers, but the company’s attempt to claw back some autonomy in mobile from carriers. That failed to transpire, but Google hasn’t given up on its strategy of marginalizing them to “dumb pipes.” The Nexus 4 will be offered via T-Mobile USA, priced at $199 for the 16GB model with a new, two-year agreement, but the real deal is when you go SIM-free.

Google is offering the Nexus 4 via the Play store, priced at $299 for the 8GB or $349 for the 16GB, unlocked and SIM-free. That means you can simply drop in your choice of AT&T or T-Mobile SIM – or, indeed, a SIM from an international provider – and get going, whether it’s a post-pay or a pre-pay card.

The deals available when you’re not wanting a subsidized device are generally significantly better, and so those willing to piece together a phone and plan separately are at an advantage. Considering the specifications, the Nexus 4 makes other Android phones – not to mention recently-announced Windows Phone 8 devices and the iPhone – start to look expensive.

Wrap-up

The LG Nexus 4 and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean are a very strong combination. LG’s flagship hardware is capable of a smoothness we’ve only really seen hinted at with the effects of Project Butter until now; on the S4 Pro chipset it simply flies. Meanwhile, the gradual refinement of Android itself is more than welcome, and though Photo Sphere is undoubtedly a gimmick, features like Gesture Type make a noticeable difference to the usability of the phone.

That makes it all the more frustrating that so few people will have access to Android 4.2. With so few devices updated to even the previous version of Jelly Bean, the saga of Android fragmentation shows little sign of ending. Google’s strategy to address that appears to be more affordable hardware, though it remains to be seen whether the company can make unlocked devices popular in a way that it failed to manage at the start of the Nexus project.

None of that takes away from how capable the LG Nexus 4 is, however, and how keenly priced. Nexus devices are already appealing, being as they are at the front of the line for new Android updates, but until now there’s always been a compromise somewhere along the way. With the Nexus 4, the compromise is as small as its ever been, and the fact that it’s so very affordable makes it strongly recommended for those wanting the best of Android today.

Now there’s a lot to get here with the 8X from HTC, but we’ll be digging into the impressive new hardware they’ve brought to the table with this flagship WP8 device, as well as everything that makes it fly. The 8X from HTC is the best from them, and from Microsoft so lets take a peek.

Hardware

The Windows Phone X8 by HTC has a clumsy name, but very classy hardware. Combining this awesome new hardware with the latest from Windows, this just might save HTC. Nokia might not like it, but this has been confirmed as the “signature handset” for Windows Phone 8 — and the hardware is a huge part of that. HTC’s really stepped up their game.

The 8X is crafted in a polycarbonate shell that neatly wraps around and meets the 4.3-inch HD display for a squared-off and simple design — just like Windows Phone 8. The bland design and finish of old is replaced by an edgy, sleek, smooth, yet matte design this is elegant and stylish. A big part of Windows Phone 8 is the support for higher resolution bigger displays, and faster multi-core processors. Today we have both with the 8X.

The HTC 8X comes with a 4.3-inch 1280x720p HD SLCD2 display that looks great. It’s bright, vivid, crisp, colorful, and has exceptional viewing angles and colors. The HD resolution fits right in with WP8 and those personalized live tiles. The optical lamination and rounded Corning Gorilla glass is strong, durable, and smooth and curves right into the polycarbonate shell for a seamless design. The hardware really is the star of the show here.

Without preaching too much about the hardware (as we’re big fans) HTC’s added a Qualcomm 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor with 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and a mid-sized 1,800 mAh battery. Sadly they’ve opted not to offer removable storage via micro-SD support, something that’s been improved in Windows Phone 8. You’ll get HSPA+ support, 4G LTE where available, WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, Beats Audio, and micro-USB all in a device that measures 132x66x10mm in size. It might be 10.12 mm thick but you’d never ever tell by holding this device in hand with the curved and elegant edges. It’s extremely lightweight with the polycarbonate casing being just 130 grams.

The 8X has a lot to live up to with the HTC One X running Android, the iPhone 5, and competitors in Windows Phone such as Samsung and Nokia — and the 8X does just that. As you can see above we have the simple black model, but HTC will offer blue, yellow, red, and more for a personalized love affair. To wrap things up on the hardware the design and button placement is all exception, and very comfortable with daily use. However the power button up top is flush with the device and hard to locate at times — not to mention is a bit squishy and occasionally takes more than one try. Then the squared off edges cause the bottom micro-USB port to have a few sharp edges, and can be bothersome based on how you hold your smartphone.

This is the “signature handset” of Windows Phone, and it certainly fits the bill. HTC’s envisioned and designed an elegant home for Windows Phone 8 to stay — and showcase to the world.

Software

The HTC 8X is one of the first smartphones to grace the world running on the new and improved Windows Phone 8. While it might be hard to notice at first glance, this is an entirely new Windows Phone and a step up from Mango. Everything is faster, better, HD, and more personal. This is the most personal and most customizable Windows Phone yet. There’s tons to talk about with Windows Phone 8 as far as software, so here’s a few bullet points regarding what’s new. Windows Phone 8 now has a re-imagined and more personal start screen. Their live tiles are as friendly as ever, and highly customizable. WP8 supports higher resolution displays, multi-core processors, a better camera app, native screenshots, lockscreen notifications and shortcuts, Kid’s Corner, enhanced sync and backup, and much more.

To get a better feel about Windows Phone 8 and what’s new, you’ll want to check out our in-depth Windows Phone 8 Review. For now, we’ll just rundown a few things here specifically for the HTC 8X and what we enjoyed with Windows Phone 8. Based on more than just Windows 8′s kernel this is Windows 8 in a way, for mobile. Everything is extremely smooth, fluid, and efficient. Boot times are quick, memory management is awesome, and this device flies thanks to the 1.5 GHz dual-core processor support.

Below is an in-depth video showing you many of the new things mentioned above with Windows Phone 8. You’ll see the impressive new personalized experience with live tiles and sizes, lockscreen shortcuts and notifications, kid’s corner to save you from your children, and more. Everything is faster, smoother, easier, and funner with Windows Phone 8. You’ll be flowing through tiles in no time.

The People app now has an improved “What’s new” stream where you can get updates and status details from all your friends and contacts. Now with support for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. What makes this even more unique and personal is groups. With groups you can set certain friends or family members you wish to see what’s new and status updates from. This will cut out the clutter as I’m sure you don’t need to know what everyone in your entire contact list posts to Facebook — but the option is there.

Without getting too in-depth here the video above should give you an excellent idea of what to expect from not only Windows Phone, but Windows Phone 8. I’m sure many are looking at this option for the first time, as are there some die-hard Windows fans that can’t wait to upgrade. As far as competing with iOS and Android, this is only just the beginning of Windows Phone, but we’re starting to see their direction with 8. The start screen is the focal point of their streamlined, yet personalized experience. Managing to do both at once is a real task. With iOS your iPhone will look just like those around you, and with Android all the widgets are awesome, but they have custom skins, tons of different OS versions floating around (fragmentation) and more. While I’m not here to say which is better, Windows Phone 8 feels very similar, smooth, and streamlined — yet offers more personalization than anything available today.

With the App Store approaching 700k apps for iOS, over 650,000 for Android, and about 125,000 for Windows Phone the options are still limited, but certainly headed in the right direction. Now that Windows Phone 8 supports HD resolution displays, dual-core processors and more, we expect app and game developers to really step up their game. Whether or not they will remains to be seen however. This is only the beginning folks. The beginning of a driven Microsoft team, so stay tuned!

Performance

With WP8 performance has been seriously improved. As you saw from my various videos above the user interface is extremely crisp and fluid in its actions. From resizing tiles, opening apps and games, changing theme colors device-wide and more everything is snappy. This is in part to the new, improved, and efficient Windows Phone 8 — but you can’t forget that dual-core processor is under the hood either. While benchmarks aren’t as popular as say, our Android friends with quad-cores, here’s a few just for good measure. AnTuTu has made its way to WP and we scored nearly 12,000 here. Once more start using AnTuTu we can really measure performance. Then for fun we ran a quick test of WP Bench, and you can see those results below for an idea of just how fast Windows Phone 8 and this dual-core really is.

There really should be no debate here. This is one of the best, fastest, smoothest, and quickest Windows Phone experiences yet. Combining new hardware with the latest software, you’ll surely love what it has to offer.

Camera

Now with HTC’s camera we have the first WP device with their dedicated ImageChip for enhanced photos. Using an 8 megapixel backside illuminated sensor (BSI) for better low light, while offering an f/2.0 lens for superior performance the camera does an excellent job with today’s smartphone camera standards. We have 1080p video recording that is exceptional, although there’s still the occasional motion-blur here. Windows Phone 8 now allows for simple pinch-to-zoom in camera and video, and you can simply tap the screen to snap a photo (and focus) as well as quickly tap to start recording 1080p video.

The dedicated two-stage camera button is a nice touch, but is almost pointless when you can just tap the screen to take a quick photo. However, it does allow you to press and hold to skip unlocking the phone and head right into the camera app to snap a quick shot and never miss the perfect moment. Here’s a gallery of images testing the 8 megapixel camera and ImageChip, as well as a 1080p video clip.

Offering a 2.1 megapixel front facing camera with the 8X, HTC has one of the best cameras for video chat using Skype and more. Offering the widest angle lens on any smartphone, in landscape mode the HTC 8X can fit 4 people in-frame using the front facing camera. Get ready to share and enjoy some family moments together on Skype with ease.

Phone & Battery

As a phone the HTC 8X is comfortable to hold, easy to use, sounds great with Beats Audio, and is just the right size for a new smartphone user. We don’t have a tiny small display, or a massive 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II screen size. It’s the perfect size for most, and will be a joy for first time smartphone buyers. The speakerphone is one of the loudest, and crispest sounding speakers we’ve used to date. A lot of that is thanks to Beats Audio, but music still inevitably has that tin-can sound to it.

Battery life has always been a strong suite for Windows Phone, and the same holds true with WP8. The changes under the hood to the Windows 8 kernel, software stack, and efficiency allows for all-day battery life. You’d think those increases would be balanced out by HD screens and dual-core processors, but they are not. Qualcomm’s 1.5 GHz S4 is their latest offering that is highly efficient. Without being able to properly test 4G LTE radios on our international 8X we can’t comment there, but I’ve achieved far better battery life than expected with an 1,800 mAh battery. Expect a solid 14-15 hours with average usage from push notifications for emails, browsing the web, the occasional game, and more. I’ve managed a good 4-5 hours of actual “screen-on” time during the day, and still had enough to make it through an entire work day without reaching for a charger.

Competition

As far as competition goes HTC also has their lower end Windows Phone 8S that still will be plenty for most, but will come at a lower price point due to a slower CPU, less RAM, and a smaller 4-inch screen. It still has the aesthetics we love, and of course Windows Phone 8. Then Nokia — who we can’t forget — will be on the other side of the battle with their impressive Lumia 920 and its slightly larger 4.5-inch HD display. Without mentioning Android or iPhone the Windows Phone 8 platform has a lot to look forward to in terms of competition. Then the Samsung ATIV S with its massive 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display will surely shake things up.

For those looking for an all around package in this new Windows Phone 8 ecosystem the 8X by HTC is an optimal choice. We’ll reserve full judgement for once we’ve had our hands on the rest of the pack.

Wrap-Up

With the 8X from HTC the Windows Phone platform has a new leader, being called the “signature handset” of Windows Phone 8 — and it delivers just the qualities that Microsoft was looking for. This embodies their OS’ style and design. It’s elegant, sleek, and powerful! Without a doubt the all new Windows Phone 8X by HTC is one of, if not the absolute best WP device we’ve tested to date. Offering the newest OS with it’s sleek new personalized features, an impressive HD display, powerful dual-core performance and more this phone is everything we’ve been waiting for in the world of Windows Phone.

Like mentioned above, HTC faces some stiff competition from the other manufacturers in the game, but with this new device they’ve certainly set the tone for their product line. Windows offers phone users a truly easy to use smartphone experience. Now that they’ve polished up their interface and added more features, Windows Phone finally has the hardware and software requirements to compete with the big players in mobile. We can’t wait to see what else HTC brings to the table, and this is certainly a great start for the new realm of Windows Phone 8. Get the new Windows Phone 8X by HTC from AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon coming in November.

Hardware

This device presents the same greatness we saw with the DROID RAZR M with enhancements well surpassing the original DROID RAZR as it was presented many months ago. With the RAZR branding we’ve got a certain amount of excellence that Verizon and Motorola have to live up to, and with the RAZR HD they’ve certainly done it. The display is a massive 720 x 1280 pixels spread across 4.7-inches of Super AMOLED screen, that ringing in at 312 PPI dense. That’s above the Galaxy S III (306 PPI) and just under the Galaxy Nexus (316 PPI) – have a peek at the S III next to the RAZR HD here, bright as they can be.

The front of the device is also covered by a single sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass for maximum protection against scratches and dings. It sits inside a slight rim around the edge that keeps your thumb inside the bounds of the display and makes for an interesting – and unique – feel to the whole device. This rim is hard plastic and will be the same color as whichever color device you so choose – we’ve got white, here. Below that is a ring of metal – aluminum more than likely – then a full back panel made from the same kevlar-weave that each of the previous DROID RAZR devices have had.

This back panel takes over the entirety of the back of the device instead of just sitting inside a pocket as previous DROID RAZRs have, this letting us know that they trust the design now well enough to command the device. It’s a good decision in this case, as the whole smartphone feels comfy to hold and to work with – not to mention hardcore. The front of the smartphone feels a bit fragile only because glass has traditionally been a material that breaks – but with Gorilla Glass sitting here instead, the whole device is tough enough to take a few bangs.

The interior of this device is splash-coated (protected from moisture, that is) as each of the DROID RAZR smartphones have been, and the SIM and microSD slot is kept secure with a pin. With the pin tool you get with the phone (in the box) you can push out (or pull, however you see it) the drawer where you can replace at will. This device has 12GB of storage inside and a microSD slot capable of working with another 32GB of space.

At a slightly massive 131.9 x 67.9 x 8.4 mm, this device would be relatively difficult to hold if it were made of the same slippery materials that the LG Optimus G is – but it’s not. Motorola’s choice to buck the trend of glossy plastic and glass backs on devices makes the RAZR HD an easy to handle unit.

Software

With the RAZR HD we’re getting essentially the same experience we did with the RAZR M in the software department. Same Android version (4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich), same Motorola software modifications, and nearly the same set of applications. Verizon and Motorola (and Google) have clearly agreed here to present a single family feel with the RAZR releases they’ve got on deck this season. Have a peek at our full DROID RAZR M review for another look at how this family functions.

Have a peek at our hands-on with the RAZR HD to see how similar these devices truly are, right down to the speed at which they flip back and forth between home screens. They’re using the same processor too, mind you; the dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4. This is the next-most-powerful Qualcomm processor on the market this Autumn, with the most powerful sitting pretty in the LG Optimus G with four cores instead of two.

You’ve once again got some cool modifications to Android 4.0 starting with Quick Settings that appear all the way to your left alongside your home screens. You’ve also got Smart Actions, a feature that activates certain tasks based on the time of day, your GPS location, or your power level. You’ll have ICS’s Face Unlock as well as a modified unlock screen with Camera, Phone, Texts, and standard to keep you quick. Have a peek at a few benchmark results here as well to see how the Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor performs.

Camera

This device works with an 8 megapixel shooter on the back that’ll keep you in the high definition business, especially since you’re working with a Qualcomm processor that comes with dedicated architecture made specifically for image processing. Here we’ve got a set of photos and a video that’ve been captured with the standard camera for you to glance at and decide for yourself. This device also had a 1.3 megapixel camera on the front for video chat and a single LED flash on the back for photos in the dark.

We’ve also got a couple of nice examples of panorama and HDR modes, both of them able to be expanded at a click here and in the larger gallery at the bottom of this post. The gallery at the bottom of this post also has additional shots for you to peruse.

Battery

Like each of the other devices we’ve tested running the Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor, the battery life you get here really depends on how you’re using the device. If you do nothing but run streaming video over Verizon’s 4G LTE data network, you’ll get a few hours out of it. If you’ve got your display on auto brightness and are only checking email, browsing the web, and using Facebook all day long, you’ll have at least 8 hours at your disposal – at least. For those of you needing more than you get here, there’s always the MAXX version of the smartphone with just a bit more bulk on the back in exchange for a much larger battery.

Notice how the battery life basically flatlines when you’ve got the display off? It’s the display that takes up most of your power here – especially when you’re blasting at full brightness.

Wrap-up

Here we’re working with another winner, with Motorola making full use of their new partnership (ownership) with Google in many fine ways. You can see that this device (as well as the RAZR M, for example) are not the same DROID devices we saw a couple years ago. Here we’ve got a fine example of an Android-running smartphone, to say the least. The hardware is top-notch, the camera takes rather nice photos, and the processor is powerful enough to take on the highest-quality games and apps the Google Play app store has to offer.

The device is also nice to hold, has a bit of grip to it so you wont be losing it right out of your palm any time soon, and looks pretty darn fine too. Be sure to let us know if you’ve got any questions about the device that haven’t been addressed in the review above, and make sure you let us know if you end up picking it up at Verizon soon!

Hardware

The LG Optimus G’s display resolution of 768 x 1280 pixels across 4.7-inches of real-estate rings in at 317.6 PPI, right between the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the iPhone 5 for pixel density. The iPhone 5 (also the 4/4S, being that they’re all the same) works with 326 PPI, and the Galaxy Nexus is literally the next densest display-toting smartphone in the world on the grand chart of them all at 316 PPI. The Samsung Galaxy S III, just so you know, has a screen density of 306 PPI, while the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha has the densest display of them all with 355 PPI, (this followed closely by the HTC Rezound with 342 PPI.

But enough of that display hubub – what we really want to know is if LG can back it up with power to make it blast forth! Of course it can, in this case, with Qualcomm‘s Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor under the hood. With this beast of a system-on-chip rolling out at a clock speed of 1.5Ghz with 2GB of RAM to devour and the Adreno 320 graphics core, you’ll not be left wanting. This device allows the shutting off of two cores if you like – if you only need two cores for normal everyday action, that is – this allowing you to save a whole heck of a lot of power if you’re just an average power-consuming citizen.

You’ll find that this device is slightly larger than your hand unless you’re a giant. In combination with the glossy front, back, and sides – that are also rounded – you might be dropping this beast more than once before you even turn it on. Beyond that, it’s a gorgeous model of an LG, that’s for sure. There’s a notification light that rings around the power button, the cover that sits above your microSD and SIM card slots is held more securely than we’ve ever seen on a smartphone before, that the back panel is a collection of multi-faceted gems under a panel of polycarbonate (LG calls this “Crystal Reflection”). And it all looks nice, very nice.

You’ll be working with 16GB of internal storage with 16GB additional via your microSD card slot (with a 16GB card in it right out of the box). This slot is able to work with a card that’s up to 64GB large, so go big! You’ve also got NFC, BLuetooth 4.0, and a microUSB port on the bottom center that also doubles as MHL for HDMI if you’ve got the right adapter – through it you’ll be able to play 1080p video like a charm. The single speaker appears at first to be the same delivery as in past devices with the tiniest of slits revealing its energy, but here we’ve got rather loud delivery and balanced sounds on the whole.

You’ll be working with an 8 megapixel camera that’s capable of collecting 1080p HD video on the back while you’re front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera is fairly standard, made best for working with video chat. The battery inside is a lovely 2100mAh and is non-removable. The entire back of the device is non-removable as well, the only access you’ll be given being the door with the cards previously mentioned. This device feels and looks extremely solid and high-quality, top to bottom.

Software

This device comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with LG’s newest and most high-quality user interface over the top. As LG likes to say, it’s more of an integration and pairing with Android’s system than it is an overlay as many devices have had in the past – regardless of manufacturer. Here LG presents a rather unique look at the abilities of Android 4.0 with customization, organization re-arranging, and features that Google hasn’t yet moved to their core system- but you wont be surprised when they do in the future.

The apps that come with this device are abundant, and as AT&T is want to do, you’ve got every single angle on the carrier tip. Telenav-powered AT&T Navigator, AT&T Locker (cloud storage), and AT&T Messages are all welcome additions – they all work extremely well and make me glad to be using an AT&T device specifically. LG also adds a collection of their unique apps and features that’ve been appearing on devices of all kinds over the past few months. One example is QuickMemo, allowing you to take a note on a blank page or a screenshot, this app revealed in all its glory back on the LG Optimus Vu (as reviewed by SlashGear as the Verizon-carried 4G LTE LG Intuition).

The app known as LG Tag+ makes full use of this device’s NFC capabilities with instantly-working profiles based on how each of your NFC stickers (sold separately) have been programmed. We’ve got a tag here programmed for “Office” mode which means we’re on wi-fi and want our mobile network shut off so we’re not using up precious data. You can see this ability working in this first hands-on video below – along with a lot of user interface excellence as well.

Another app is Video Wiz, this being the first time we’ve seen it working like a charm – it’s a rather strange (yet appealing) montage-making app that shows not only how silly the mobile universe has become, but how awesome the video-processing powers of this phone are. Watch the video below to see this as well as a feature called QSlide – here allowing you to watch a video in varying levels of transparency while you do other tasks. It only works for videos that are actually on your device, and has us completely baffled on why it exists at all – if someone can explain why someone would want to have a half-transparency video playing while they do any other task, please let us know.

Of course there is one obvious reason, as it was with the video editing app: QSlide might be best at showing the power of the processor in this device. You’ll also see this power existing in a variety of HD games we’ve got on tap right this minute. Start your gaming journey off right with a bit of the ol’ Asphalt 7 from Gameloft:

Next have a bit more car-on-car action entertainment with Indestructible from glu – it’s all the destroying of automotive with more guns than you’ve ever seen in a racing game before! This would be because it’s not a racing game at all, but a destruction derby with death wishes and wishes for murder ready for hours of fun. And it’s got a collection of rather-smart bots running around in it that not just any processor would be able to handle.

The final game you’ll see here is Wild Blood. This is another game from Gameloft, this time working with the Unreal engine for massive graphics power from top to bottom. Notice the hefty sword wielding and screen utilization – and all the killing of the monsters, to boot!

Benchmarks

This device destroys the competition almost without fail. Qualcomm brought on their Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor earlier this year and it very much appeared to have NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor on the ropes (see the HTC One X AT&T review to see that match-up). Now we’ve got four cores from the same company and they’re burying the rest of the processor architecture left and right. Have a peek at a few examples here.

And of course pay attention to the hands-on videos most of all throughout this review to get a real example of the true power this device has. Benchmarks can say a lot, but it’s the real working and playing that you’ll want to know the most.

Camera

The camera on this device has been changed ever so slightly coming over the sea, with our first look at this smartphone being in its international edition with 13 megapixels backing it up. There is another iteration of this device on a different carrier here in the USA with the same (or a rather similar) 13 megapixel camera as the original, but from what we’ve seen, this 8 megapixel camera is the winner across the board.

Ever so slightly truer colors in low-light and what appears to be a bit more ease in executing a final product – the 13 megapixel camera, needless to say, should not be your deciding factor when deciding between iterations here (data speed should be). The camera here is not perfect on the AT&T version of the device, but it certainly benefits from Qualcomm’s dedicated image processing power in the Snapdragon S4 Pro inside, and you will be able to knock out quality shots along the same lines as your favorite smartphones on the market today.

If you’re looking for the nicest smartphone camera on the market, this isn’t it (it’s the Nokia PureView 808) but you will not be let down if you’re willing to take the time to get the hang of it. For you camera addicts out there heading to AT&T specifically: try this device, the iPhone 5, and the HTC One X+ (or the X if the X+ isn’t out when you get there) to decide between the best. There’s also the Nokia Lumia 920 which we’ve not yet gotten to test – we shall see soon for the final Autumn battle.

Have a peek at a few different sorts of shots here in this section and in the final gallery below as well. There are a vast number of effects and shooting modes you can use, filters, panorama, non-stop shot, and a special feature shooting mode that takes photos “before” you take your final shot – that’s called “Time catch shot” and the only time it’ll come in handy is if you’re standing still and you want to capture the precise moment at which your child is smiling perfectly. Have a peek at this cat example first, then see some standard shots right after, along with some video as well.

Battery

With a quad-core processor and 4G LTE running with an ultra-bright IPS+ LCD display up front, it’s not difficult to see how this device’s 2100mAh battery would have trouble keeping up with day-to-day activities. If you’re worried about how quickly you’ll drain your battery, you can worry yourself right into a less-than-a-few-hours complete drain situation – stream some video, play with some benchmarks, and keep that display at full blast.

If however you’re thinking about conserving your battery, you’ve got several options. This device comes with an Eco mode that’s rather expansive in its options for how your phone will react to you reaching a low battery level. Once you’re down to 30%, for example, you could potentially be using 2 CPU cores instead of 4, your display brightness could be at near-zero, and your app syncing could be turned off entirely. You can also, of course, set your display to automatic brightness (with an added bonus of a brightness base to start with) – all that will do you great favors right alongside Qualcomm’s power-conserving abilities inherent in the S4 Pro – you just have to be smart about it, that’s all.

Wrap-up

This device is the most well-refined package that LG has ever delivered, with a generous amount of processing power, a high-class physical feel, and a final product that finally does justice to the display power LG has been bringing on for months in past devices. This smartphone has a display that’s viewable from all angles – there’s no bad way to see it – and if you’re not against having a glossy front and back, you’ll have a great time feeling like you’ve got a piece of slightly rugged jewelry in your palm.

That’s a bit of the problem though at the same time, with LG appearing to get into a space where they know their design identity, but they’ve not quite perfected setting the device in a human hand. This smartphone is just slightly too wide for my adult male hand, which would be perfectly fine if it weren’t for the gloss across the back and up the sides of the device. With a case or with some grippy backing, this unit will feel great. You’ll certainly be willing to make that extra jump when you see how powerful the heart of this device really is.

Design

I have to say that I really like the design of the Electrify 2. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s still a good-looking device. It’s a super slim phone, coming in at only 0.33” thick. That doesn’t mean it’s the slimmest smartphone on the market – nor the slimmest Motorola phone around – but it’s still pretty thin. It has a height of 5.06-inches and width of 2.59-inches, and the whole package comes in right around 4.6 ounces in weight. That means it’s very slightly on the heavy side as far as smartphones go, but that helps it feel sturdy despite its thin design.

The 4.3-inch screen may not be as big as some people would like it, but naturally that decreased screen size means that the Electrify 2 is smaller than devices with a 4.5 or 4.8-inch screen (like the Motorola Atrix HD and the Galaxy S III, respectively). Because of this, the Electrify 2 feels great in the hand – the screen is large enough to get the job done, but small enough that the Electrify 2 avoids feeling bulky. That’s definitely a big plus.

On the upper right side of the device is where you’ll find the volume buttons. On the left side is a multi card slot, and on the top is where the power button, 3.5mm headphone jack (which is right in the middle) and micro USB port – for charging and data transfer – are located. The Kevlar back that has become so common on Motorola phones is present on the Electrify 2, and that backing helps it feel more like a higher-end handset. Even though the rest of the phone is just plastic, the silver trim and the angles on the face help make the Electrify 2 look pretty sleek.

Hardware

As stated above, we’ve got a 4.3-inch screen with multi-touch functionality that is running at 960×540 resolution. Personally, I like the screen a lot, but 4.3-inches is about as low as I’m willing to go when it comes to smartphones. It doesn’t boast HD resolution, but the items on screen are still plenty sharp. Overall, I think the display is good, though as I said, 4.3-inches is getting to be a bit on the small side for me. Any smaller and typing tends to be a hassle, but thankfully the Electrify 2 avoids that problem. Typing on the screen is easy for the most part, and though you’ll inevitably run into a few errors every once in a while, you can still type up a storm while staying pretty accurate. Ease of use while typing is something that can’t be understated, and I’m pleased to report that typing is a joy on the Electrify 2’s screen.

Overall, the display is nice, and the backlighting is excellent as well. You can pop it on auto brightness if you want – and indeed, the Electrify 2 defaults to auto brightness out of the box – but I prefer to turn auto off and waste a little more battery power to have a screen that’s brighter all the time. Turn the screen up to 50% brightness and the phone looks great, and having it at that setting doesn’t kill the battery much faster than auto brightness will (more on that later). At the end of everything, the screen probably isn’t anything that will get you jumping for joy, but it’s a solid display that will get the job done for anyone who doesn’t mind its lack of HD.

On the inside, we’ve got a 1.2GHz dual-core processor that keeps the phone chugging along at a nice pace. Sure, it isn’t as good as, say, a Snapdragon S4 quad-core would be, but I don’t think you’ll need that extra power when using the Electrify 2. The processor is more than capable of handling the apps and games you’ll download from the Google Play Store, and I doubt there will be many times where you’ll notice the decreased clock speed over processors running at 1.5GHz

That processor is working alongside 1GB of RAM, so with those two put together, you’ve got a speedy phone on your hands. Swiping between home screens is fluid and lag-free, and apps open up relatively fast. I don’t have any complaints about the speed of the phone, and for most mainstream users who just need a quality phone that doesn’t lag every time you try to do something, the Electrify 2 will be satisfactory.

You’ve got 8GB of internal storage at your disposal, but when the Android OS and pre-installed hardware is accounted for, that drops down to right around 5GB of free space. Of course, the Electrify 2 comes with a microSD slot on the left side of the device, so you can expand on that internal memory by quite a bit if you want. I’m very happy that Motorola went with 8GB instead of 4GB – it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it drives me nuts when manufacturers only put 4GB of internal storage in the phone, then take up 3GB with bloatware. If Motorola had gone with 4GB, it would have lost some points with the Electrify 2, especially since you can’t delete a lot of the pre-installed software that comes packed in with the phone. Thankfully, the remaining 5GB should hold you over for a while, and if it doesn’t, you’re still in the clear so long as you have a microSD card on hand.

Call quality on the Electrify 2 is pretty good – voices come through loud and clear, though they do have a tendency to sound a bit tinny from time to time. It’s worth pointing out that I actually get better service on US Cellular’s network in my apartment – which is mostly underground – than I do with AT&T, though naturally the quality of the coverage will vary depending on where you live in the country. The speakers aren’t much to write home about, but then again it’s a pretty rare thing to find yourself impressed with smartphone speakers. They can get pretty loud, but again the problem with tininess rears its ugly head once you crank up the volume, so it might be a good idea to keep the volume at about the midway point to strike the perfect balance between loudness and quality.

Motorola has also done some invisible splashproofing work on the Electrify 2, and while it won’t keep your phone safe if you drop it in the toilet – as so many smartphone owners are prone to do – it will help protect against things like getting caught in the rain and having your phone fried. It’s nice to have it around, and it means that the Electrify 2 will be a little more resilient than a lot of other phones on the market.

Software

The Electrify 2 comes running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, which isn’t entirely unexpected but still kind a bummer. It would have been nice to see it running Jelly Bean, but until Motorola gets around to pushing an update for the phone (if it ever does), Ice Cream Sandwich will have to do. Still, it isn’t as if Ice Cream Sandwich is a bad thing – we all love ICS, it would just be nice to have manufacturers opting for Jelly Bean since we’re now a few months out from its release.

The Electrify 2 comes loaded with a fair amount of bloatware that you probably don’t want. Of course, having things like the Google Play Store, Play Music, Google+ and Google Maps on the phone is essential, and their inevitable presence makes the inclusion of Amazon Apps, Kindle, Amazon Shop, and IMDB a little pointless. I’m sure some consumers will like the fact that Amazon’s suite of apps is right there along all of the Google stuff, but it seems like it would have been a better idea to let consumers install the Amazon stuff on their own instead of clogging up the Electrify 2’s internal memory with them from the start.

Here’s a good example of unnecessary apps on the Electrify 2: you’ve got Google Maps and Navigation, but for some reason US Cellular decided that wasn’t enough and included its own navigation app too. I understand why the carrier did it, but with Google Maps, Latitude and Navigation standard on nearly every Android phone, there is no reason at all for US Cellular to put its own Navigation app on the phone as well. You’ve also got apps like US Cellular Daily Perks – an app that collects all sorts of news in one place – Tone Room Deluxe (for ringtones), Zappos, and City ID, which all may come in handy for a select few people, but will amount to nothing more than an annoyance for most.

That annoyance is compounded by the fact that you can’t delete most of the software that comes pre-installed on the Electrify 2, so you’re stuck with a lot of unimpressive stuff right from the get-go. You’ll also see ads pop up on your home screen once in a while, which is by far the biggest headache. Still, at least some of the software that comes pre-installed on the Electrify 2 is stuff that you’ll probably want to use at some point, so I can’t complain too terribly much.

Battery

The Electrify 2 comes equipped with a non-removable 1,780mAh battery, which isn’t the best but also isn’t the worst. Motorola says you should be able to get up to 11 hours of talk time out of it, but as you can probably imagine, it’ll be a rare thing to get that much out of the battery. If you turn mobile data off when you aren’t using and keep the phone’s screen on auto brightness, you’ll be able to get a full day of use out of a single charge and have some juice left over when you’re headed to bed. Even if you leave mobile data on, you should be able to squeeze a day of life out a full battery, as long as you aren’t constantly on your phone.

For my tests, I turned the screen brightness to 50%, left 3G on (Wi-Fi when I was at home), and used the Electrify 2 like I would use my regular day-to-day device. I played a few games on it, used it to look up some stuff on the Internet, watched some videos on YouTube, and naturally used it to make calls. All in all, I was able to make it a full day on one charge, but by the time I woke up the next morning, the phone was dead. Keeping mobile data turned on all the time will do its part in draining the battery, and it’s probably a good idea to keep the phone’s brightness on auto if you want to squeeze as much juice as you can out of a single charge.

Of course, this being a Motorola phone, you have access to Motorola Smart Actions, which you can use to preserve battery life. With the Electrify 2, it’s probably a good idea you make use ofSsmart Actions, as it will help you get more out of a single charge than just making sure you switch mobile data off and keeping the screen on auto brightness. The battery could be a bit better, but if you use Smart Actions, you probably won’t notice the battery’s shortcomings as often.

Camera

Like a lot of phones these days, the Electrify 2 sports an 8MP rear-facing camera, which is pretty decent as far as snapping pictures go. I’ve never been crazy about the idea of using a phone as my main camera, but if you were going to use the Electrify 2 as yours, it would probably fare well enough. The pictures it takes certainly are decent, and the fact that it can record 1080p video is a nice bonus. Have a look at the sample pictures below to get a better idea of what I’m talking about, and be sure to click the thumbnails in the gallery at the end of the review to see larger versions of the sample shots.