HTC Vivid review

Ralph de la Vega made a 2 bold statement at this year’s CTIA 2 , claiming LTE phones on AT&T’s network will be thinner and more longevous. We are not exactly calling the CEO’s bluff here, but it surely appears he could have been solely bearing on the Galaxy S II Skyrocket. Make no mistake about it, the Vivid is a hefty handset — a indisputable fact that becomes apparent when it first plunks out of the box and into your hand. Weighing in at 176 grams (6.24 ounces) and measuring 11.2mm (0.44 inches) thick, you’d assume this heavyweight trade-off will be the results of an oversized battery, numerous ports and LTE radio. That’s, unfortunately, not the case in any respect. With a 1,620mAh battery that pales compared to the 1,850mAh of its featherweight 4G LTE stablemate, the phone’s mass is just baffling. In case you were hoping its casing will be responsible for this excessive girth, prepare to be sorely disappointed.

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HTC’s design flourishes are a number of the most distinctive and daring within the industry, and most have come to associate the corporate with its aluminum unibody constructions. The Vivid, however, misses out in this traditional treatment. That isn’t to assert the phone’s chassis feels cheap. In actual fact, it is a sturdy hulk of glossy piano black plastic (yes, it is a fingerprint magnet) that’s more equivalent to the unique Motorola Droid’s angular build than every other HTC handset we have seen. There isn’t any soft touch plastic here, though. Rather, we get a difficult, shiny exterior that extends across the device to its back and abruptly slopes inward to enclose a gunmetal grey, removable metal plate. This Droid-like battery cover is bisected by a faintly dotted, texturized pattern on its lower half and a smooth upper portion broken only by the OEM’s grooved logo and a recessed 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash to the head left. The phone’s speaker peeks out in a strip above this plating which, when slid down, reveals the aforementioned battery, SIM card and barren microSD card slot hidden beneath. HTC’s packed in 16GB of internal storage, but when you are the type to load up on media, you may expand that capacity by a further 32GB. Interrupting the sleek perimeter up top is a three.5mm headphone jack at the left and, opposite, a flush (maybe too flush) power button. The silvery volume rocker barely juts out over to the suitable, leaving the micro-USB port to stealthily occupy the lower left hand side.

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Whip this phone out in public and you are not prone to attract much attention. That’s because, similar to a mullet, HTC built this beast to be all business up front and a celebration (however lame and unattended) inside the back. AT&T’s logo is actually the one splash of flash your eyes would be treated to, located because it is simply beneath the Vivid’s imperceptible sliver of an earpiece, with front-facing 1.3 megapixel VGA camera flanking it to the proper. Swallowing up nearly all of the phone’s face is that 4.5-inch 960 x 540 qHD TFT Super LCD display and it is a knockout. True, you’ll encounter a definite degree of difficulty reading this screen in strong sunlight, but take it indoors and you may notice an ample brightness to the crisp display that delivers well-balanced contrast and ideal viewing angles. Colors reproduced at the handset belong neither to the over-saturated Super AMOLED realm nor the just-so quality of an IPS display, falling somewhere comfortably in between.

By now, you’re probably wondering what’s powering this HTC dark horse and we’re happy to report it is the same dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8060 processor that’s within the Skyrocket and 5 HP TouchPad 5 , clocked at a good 1.2GHz. The Vivid’s CPU may fall below the 1.5GHz territory of alternative rival dual-core phones just like the Amaze 4G and Skyrocket, but as we have seen up to now, a stronger speed doesn’t always translate into smooth performance. Here, that horsepower works admirably with the Sense 3.0 skin atop Android 2.3.4, treating users to a responsive, lag-free jaunt through HTC’s homescreen carousel and sub-menus. This brisk performance also extended to the device’s healthy choice of apps which loaded almost instantly.

We put the Vivid through its justifiable share of benchmark testing and taken along Motorola’s Droid RAZR and AT&T’s other LTE flagship, the Galaxy S II Skyrocket, for a handy comparison. We weren’t surprised to determine HTC’s black beauty repeatedly fall behind the 1.5GHz Skyrocket, but we certainly didn’t expect a zero.3GHz difference to forge this type of drastic gap in Quadrant scoring between the 2. It’s hard to claim what the culprit is, but when we needed to guess, we’d point our finger at Sense and the quantity of pixels rendered at the Vivid’s qHD screen versus the Skyrocket’s WVGA. The Vivid’s consistent loss to Moto’s similarly clocked beastie and its TI OMAP 4430 processor also caught us off guard. Despite multiple trial runs in each category, the Vivid claimed no title, but that of last place performance.

a high-quality workhorse this phone isn’t always. If you want a regular driver to depend on for a two day stretch or perhaps a full day, it is best you purchase elsewhere. HTC hasn’t exaggerated the meager battery life offered by the Vivid’s 1,620mAH Li-ion, of which it promises as much as 5.1 hours for WCDMA usage and seven.6 for GSM. In our formal battery rundown test, the Vivid held its charge for a paltry five hours and ten minutes — right on par with the company’s claims, so it is advisable to keep that charger nearby. In real world use, however, we managed to increase that timespan to about ten hours. That’s with one push email account, Twitter set to fifteen minute syncing intervals, GPS and WiFi enabled, the screen set to medium brightness, and moderate use of the LTE radio. The Vivid does have excellent standby power management, so if you are mindful of your phone, you will get throughout the majority the day unhampered.

Ny City’s long been considered as the capital of the sector, and has called itself home to many a “first.” But so far as AT&T’s LTE network goes, we’ve been shuffled back at the priority list. The carrier’s recently extended its “true” 4G imprint to four additional markets this month, bringing its total coverage area to nine cities — that’s small potatoes in comparison to Verizon’s 175 city-strong footprint. To get a true sense of ways blazing fast and constant AT&T’s 700MHz signal is, we traveled to Boston and wore down the soles of our shoes with an exhaustive neighborhood tour.

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We’d be remiss if we didn’t note this was Boston’s first day with live LTE and, as such, was subject to early jitters. AT&T definitely organize specific hotspots round the city’s majorly trafficked sections, but oftentimes the adaptation of 1 block, or maybe standing at the opposite side of the Hynes Convention Center would see the telephone drop from LTE to HSPA+. It isn’t a very disappointing fallback; faux-G performs admirably and you may hardly notice the loss unless you’re paying close attention. Once we did firmly latch onto an LTE signal, though, we couldn’t suppress our glee — speeds hovered between 20Mbps to 25Mbps down and 10Mbps to 15Mbps up, with rates maxing out at 32Mbps down / 17Mbps up. Coverage was strongest around four distinct areas, so if you are going to buy the Vivid and plan to profit from its radio, it’s good to end up hanging around Kenmore Square, Back Bay, Downtown and South Station. And revel in it whilst you can, as these are almost certainly the early, honeymoon stages of AT&T’s build-out where network congestion is at an absolute minimum — a brief-lived privilege for early adopters that’s certain to overturn given time and a more expansive choice of handsets. Still, it’s hard to justify dishing out for the Vivid when an HSPA+ only handset does the double duty of sparing your battery while zipping along at a pace slightly below LTE.

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Keeping according to the company’s recent high-end handsets, the Vivid sports a decent 8 megapixel rear camera with an f/2.2 lens in a position to 1080p video and a dual LED flash. Missing is that special, constantly auto-focusing sensor that comes outfitted at the myTouch 4G Slide and Amaze 4G, but you will not really miss it here. In our time with it, the camera module had no problem concentrating on our intended subjects with an easy double tap, though there have been a couple of moments of fussiness when shooting too close in macro. After all , we cycled through HTC’s familiar gamut of scene modes and were very happy with the consequences. It wasn’t apparent on the time of our picture-taking, drenched in bright light as we were, but photos taken at full resolution vividly captured the array of fall colors decorating the sunny New England tableau. Even shots taken at full zoom gave the impression to retain a meritable sharpness of detail, although you’ll still notice a small lack of quality.

Video, then again, left much to be desired. We tested the Vivid’s powers of full HD in two separate areas of Boston — one noisy and shut to traffic, any other a quieter thoroughfare for Sunday strollers. In both instances, the abundance of natural light ended in incredibly washed out colors and the phone’s video stabilization didn’t do much to remedy our shaky hands. framerate, usually, appeared to delay well, but audio recording is that this handset’s definite weakness. Even if taken in a comparatively wind-free, calm environment, clips played back with obvious voice distortion.

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Android purists, you could stop holding your breath. HTC’s hasn’t taken this flagship opportunity to dispense of its battery-hogging, custom UX. Nor has it shipped the Vivid with the most recent Sense skin to wrap round the 5 Rezound 5 and 6 Rhyme 6 , namely 3.5. No, here is firmly a three.0 experience running atop Gingerbread 2.3.4. The excellent news for prospective owners is that Ice Cream Sandwich is on its way, because the company’s recently added the handset to its official shortlist of upgradeable devices. Just when that Android 4.0 update would be delivered is anyone’s guess, so content yourself with the data that it’s coming… in some unspecified time in the future.

Until that major UI revision makes itself known, you will have to make due with daily navigation during the company’s finely honed interface. Yes, which means you should have access to HTC’s much-praised lockscreen implementation with accompanying widgets, as well as the slick weather app. There is not much else at play here we’ve not seen before, so if you have ever called an HTC Android phone you’re own, you’ll know what to anticipate.

Browsing wasn’t without its own share of hiccups. Full desktop versions of web sites would sometimes refuse to load in any respect, forcing us to filter out cookies and cache before attempting a refresh. After we did have the capacity to pull up flash heavy pages, they rendered in about 15 – 20 seconds. Pinch to zoom performed better than we have seen on recent handsets, following our fingers movements closely and not once resorting to white space or checkerboarding.

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Unlike the various carrier’s more moderen Android offerings, the Vivid doesn’t come slowed down with an offensive amount of bloatware. Yes, it’s still there and HTC’s added to the mess, but you will not end up eagerly awaiting the day one can root this puppy and clean it up. On AT&T’s side, you will find branded Navigator, FamilyMap, U-verse Live TV, Radio and Music apps to counterpoint the handful of third-party applications like Facebook, Twitter, Need for Speed, MOG and Qik lite. Whether you are making use of this crapware or not, you can not uninstall it. So discover ways to live with the weight and move on or simply hold out for a Galaxy Nexus.

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LTE is definitely-trodden territory for HTC, owing to its previous dalliance with Verizon and the Thunderbolt. And with AT&T now taking “real” 4G to consumer’s hands, it’s understandable that the operator would wish valuable hardware insight on its side. Sadly, the Vivid falls in need of clearing some performance hurdles, but when you absolutely should have an LTE device at the carrier’s network, it isn’t an altogether terrible choice. Does it enjoy the company’s early experience with Verizon’s LTE? Definitely there are noticeable improvements made to the phone’s power management abilities and Sense 3.0 is as refined as can be at this stage inside the game. Where the Vivid falls short, though, is within the looks department. There’s just no excusable explanation for its ugliness and heft, especially when de la Vega’s LTE remarks are taken into consideration. It doesn’t fall completely into the trap of being a juice-deprived paperweight, but that’s going to take various attention to settings adjustment in your part. Should you compare it side-by-side with AT&T’s only other LTE phone, the Galaxy S II Skyrocket, the winner is obvious: Sammy’s elegant handset puts the Vivid to shame. It’s lighter, faster, sleeker and packs enough battery power to truly will let you surf the blistering 700MHz waves. Really, though, the call boils all the way down to the chunk of change you’re willing to dole out. With a two-year contracted price of $199, the Vivid is the more frugal option of both — albeit by $50. Seen from this attitude, all that separates you from a long-lasting and classy LTE experience versus a corpulent, underpowered weapon of Sense 3.0 destruction is an issue of half a Benjamin.