Hardware
Make no mistake: the HTC Rezound is brimming with goodies. a snappy glance on the spec sheet makes this perfectly clear, because the phone offers a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8660 CPU, Adreno 220 GPU, 1GB of RAM, an 8MP rear camera with 1080p video capture and a 2MP front-facing cam, 16GB of internal storage (10 of that are user-accessible) and an included 16GB microSD card. Last and certainly not least, it is the first carrier-branded phone within the US with a 720p HD display and integrated Beats Audio — essentially, it comes with a couple of $100 iBeats included inside the box (the irony of the name of the headphones isn’t lost on us). To sum up, It ain’t your run-of-the-mill HTC phone.
With nearly all of attention pointed directly on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Nexus, it is simple for the other high-end smartphone to wander away inside the fanfare. The HTC Rezound is a victim of this very scenario, despite the fact that its overall features are quite competitive. The successor to the 0 Thunderbolt 0 , here is the Taiwanese maker’s second appearance in Verizon’s LTE lineup — which until now month has suddenly exploded to almost double the choices.
In overall dimensions, the Rezound doesn’t hold a candle to the Droid RAZR. The previous, measuring 13.7mm thick, is sort of double that of the latter’s 7.1mm; in spite of its depth, the Rezound’s still not less than thinner than the 14mm Thunderbolt. We’re a little curious as to how HTC’s utilizing the additional space, because the overwhelming majority of second-gen LTE phones are much thinner than the primary — even the 12mm Droid Charge and 13mm LG Revolution, either one of that could be considered first-generation, are thinner than the Rezound. It is usually hefty, weighing in at 5.78 ounces (164g), which, as you’d expect, is significantly heavier than the RAZR’s 4.5 ounces (127g).
Despite the heft, we were surprised to search out that it actually fits snugly in our hands.
Despite the heft, we were surprised to seek out that it actually fits snugly in our hands, likely because among the thickness is tapered towards the center, giving it more of a convex build (its 4.3-inch screen size certainly doesn’t hurt either). The soft touch plastic at the battery cover not just adds to the relief level by making it more grippable, it also keeps the Rezound from picking up fingerprints easily. Unfortunately, the phone’s surfaces work no such magic against greasy hands. Eat pizza near the Rezound at your individual risk.
Upon the back of the device, we were immediately reminded of the Incredible series. Actually, it’s more of a hybrid, mimicking a 1 Droid Incredible 2 1 with its contours on top that gently disappear as you continue down the phone’s back and finally merge right into a gentle slope that’s akin to the ground of the 2 Vivid 2 . On the crest of those contours, HTC’s wisely added a chain of textured ridges that provide a dash more friction to the tip of your fingertips, that’s just another measure to avoid the telephone from slipping from your hands.
The Rezound tries to preserve a completely minimalist approach in button / port placement. At the left side you’ll notice the micro-USB compatible 3 MHL 3 socket near the ground and secondary noise-cancelling mic in the direction of the highest; the most mic are located at the bottom of the telephone. Drifting right, a volume rocker is located by its lonesome, without dedicated shutter button to maintain it company; the rocker’s sunken pretty deep into the side of the telephone, making it slightly tougher to crank up the Beats. Topside is your destination for the facility / lock button and a three.5mm jack for those red headphones inside the box which can be calling your name.
Display
The HTC Rezound could be the first US carrier-branded device to give a real HD display, but it’s on no account the primary on earth. We’ve already seen the 4 Samsung Galaxy S II HD 4 , 5 Galaxy Note 5 and 6 LG Optimus LTE 6 , and the Galaxy Nexus will hit the market soon enough in addition. Indeed, our choices are about to get pretty crowded here, and we’re definitely not complaining about it.
In the beginning glance, the 1280 x 720 Super LCD panel at the Rezound won’t seem that a lot better than the qHD found at the HTC Vivid, and even the Super AMOLED Plus at the 7 Samsung Galaxy S II 7 series — a screen that continues to provoke despite its WVGA resolution. But it is all concerning the tiny details here: once we looked closer on the Rezound and compared its screen quality with that of the aforementioned devices, we started to see the little things that show the particular worth of getting high resolution.
With a resolution of 1280 x 720 on a 4.3-inch screen, the Rezound offers a mind-boggling 342ppi.
The proof is within the ppi — the collection of pixels per inch, which is called pixel density. We’ll calculate it out here: with a resolution of 1280 x 720 on a 4.3-inch screen, the Rezound offers a mind-boggling 342ppi. From what we will tell, it tops the charts — the 8 Retina Display 8 found at the iPhone 4 and 4S isn’t any longer tied for first with the LG Optimus LTE. And never only does the Rezound beat the iPhone’s display soundly, it does so with a bigger screen size. Rivals reminiscent of the Vivid and Droid RAZR are left within the dust, the latter getting beat out by a healthy 86ppi and the previous by much more. For a more comprehensive comparison, take a look at the chart below:
Impressed yet? Let’s kick another nugget your direction. This beautiful display makes this achievement while using an ordinary RGB matrix configuration; unlike the Galaxy Nexus, no 9 PenTile 9 setup is to be found at the Rezound. Granted, with this type of high pixel density, we doubt that tidbit really matters up to it could on, say, a qHD panel (just like the one at the Motorola Droid RAZR, as an instance). But it surely still enables the actual high-def resolution to completely shine, and we appreciate the indisputable fact that HTC went the additional mile here.
Needless to say, such high pixel density implies that you will not have the ability to see pixelation with the naked eye, and it’s obvious with the Rezound’s display. Watching an HD-quality video, as expected, is actually stunning; everything appears more life-like, and it’s easier to look finer details comparable to freckles and little hairs. Text seems incredibly crisp, and it is the most noticeable with smaller fonts; when viewing Engadget, as an example, tiny print appears just as smooth because it does once we zoom in. It is a more satisfying visual experience than seen at the Vivid, which shows further and further jagged edges because the text gets smaller.
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Having the chance to enjoy 720p resolution on a smallish screen was lovely. The colours gave the impression to glow with just the correct quantity of saturation and the screen was viewable in direct sunlight (albeit, only under its brightest setting). The viewing angles weren’t pretty much as good at the Super LCD panel as they were at the Super AMOLED Plus, but we still managed to no less than see everything clearly enough when viewing the telephone from its side. Should we be taken with the influx of phones that provide this kind of high resolution? Absolutely.
Camera
1 The Rezound uses an identical 8MP f/2.2 BSI sensor, dual LED flash and 28mm wide-angle lens because the Vivid and Titan, and a bit like at the other devices, it holds its own here. The camera UI brings memories of the feeling 4G and made it easy in finding everything we wanted, offering an entire menu of options at the sidebar (in addition to an effects icon hidden within the top corner). The camera employs continuous autofocus, so that you can be certain it’s able to snap a shot at a moment’s notice. It also offers touch to focus, so that you can find different objects inside the viewfinder to spotlight. Sadly, there is not any two-stage hardware shutter button at the Rezound, and an extended-press of the virtual shutter only tells the camera to focus before automatically taking the image — it unfortunately doesn’t lock within the focus and / or exposure as we have seen at the Galaxy S II.
We enjoyed seeing the extensive form of features available at the Rezound. ISO, effects, face detection, white balance, exposure / contrast in addition to saturation and sharpness adjustments are all present, all of which might be important because they offer you much greater control of everything your camera has to provide, letting you are making essentially the most of every shot.
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6 There’s also a panorama mode the same as the 9 myTouch 4G Slide’s 9 SweepShot, which only stitches together a small choice of images but offers a shorter pic with much higher resolution than what you’d find in most six-shot panorama pictures. Backlight 0 HDR 0 is another one in every of our favourite modes since it has the power to take most poor-lit scenarios and grab more errant light from the high dynamic range for the picture (admittedly on the expense of a few detail). Close-up is the device’s macro focus setting, giving the user the power to take a well-detailed image while only a couple inches clear of an object. Lowlight mode also is useful, but we found that HDR works better at capturing backlight; the choice on which one to apply will mainly rely on how poorly-lit the item is and what kind of detail you’re willing to sacrifice to get the quantity of sunshine you want. Finally, Action is a shutter priority mode that works great for capturing moving objects.
As we briefly touched upon, the camera fared the worst in low light, but using HDR definitely had a beneficial impact on evening shots in addition to pictures taken within the shade. Within the instances where this option was necessary, we weren’t too fascinated by losing a bit of detail, since we likely should not have it with the poor lighting anyway. We were impressed by the shots were ready to take at full zoom, and our noonday pictures outside led to above-average color and detail. Overall, the software and contours are top-notch, and we were satisfied with the shots we took, but we still prefer the picture quality at the myTouch 4G Slide and the Galaxy S II series.
The Rezound captures video at a maximum resolution of 1080p at 30fps. In most scenarios, the footage we recorded was smooth and our voice came out loud and clear. We specify that here’s case in most scenarios, but not all: 1080p video capture turned out okay when our target was either stationary or moving slowly, however it had a controversy maintaining with faster subjects like cars. 720p capture, however, didn’t offer any issues of moving objects, though as expected it didn’t pick up as much detail. Speaking of which, 720p is enabled at the front-facing video cam, a feature we’ve already seen inside the Vivid but enjoy seeing here to boot.
Just like the Rhyme and 1 Sensation XL 1 , it throws within the method to record in 2x slow motion. How is that this done? By capturing the video at 60fps and slowing it all the way down to 30fps, it maintains the identical frame rate because the normal mode so it sounds as if just as smooth. As a disclaimer, this mode can only be used to capture 720p and doesn’t allow audio; our juvenile selves were a little disappointed we couldn’t have a bit fun hearing our voices run at half the rate.
Software
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1 The Rezound comes with Android 2.3.4 installed, but you most likely won’t notice it since it’s buried underneath the thick skin of 8 HTC Sense 3.5 8 , the most recent version of the OEM’s proprietary UI. Here’s only the second one device within the US to supply it, with the 9 HTC Rhyme 9 as its predecessor. ‘Course, even though these two phones are running at the same version of Sense, they do not really look that much alike. The Rezound exhibits more of the normal interface elements, electing to revert back to the similar bar on the bottom which supplies you the non-customizable choices of app menu, phone app and personalization options (which, incidentally, is a superbly good waste of space when considering you could access this panel by long-pressing the screen or just tapping at the menu button), instead of the Rhyme’s two small icons hiding in its bottom corners. The signature clock can also be back by default — in any case, who wouldn’t miss the HTC clock if it was banished?
There aren’t a number of drool-inducing enhancements in Sense 3.5 that may make you should exit and root your old phone simply to get it. For one, you will get rid of home screen panels now, that’s nice if you are anti-clutter; the slow-motion video capture mode mentioned above is additionally exclusive to three.5. And lest we forget, HTC and Dropbox have 0 struck a deal 0 which offers 5GB of free cloud storage at the service (incidentally, that’s 5GB total, not additional to the 2GB that’s already included) to any device using the newest version of Sense. Except this, any real changes are so minor they don’t seem to be worth covering in any extreme detail here.
Obviously, it wouldn’t be an entire review of the device’s software without making mention of the pre-installed apps at the Rezound. Being a Verizon-branded handset, it probably won’t take an excessive amount of guessing as a way to determine how much is on here — it’s saturated with it. Unlike the Rhyme, Big Red left its proprietary tab on the bottom of the app tray to focus on its vast selection of bloatware. Do not be concerned, you will find every last one on the whole tab just in case.
2 So what’s at the list this go-round? Among others, we’ll commence with Blockbuster, Mobile IM, VCAST music and video, My Verizon Mobile, Polaris Office, Slacker and VZ Navigator (someday carriers will acknowledge the presence of Google Maps and Navigation). Throw in a number of games and other programs meant to showcase the phone’s high-end dual-core CPU with the HD display, like NFS: Hot Pursuit and Let’s Golf 2, and the recipe of crapware perfection’s complete. And we all know you’re thinking about what number of those glorious space-suckers are uninstallable: none of them. Not a single one. Zilch. Oh, and it gets better — unlike TouchWiz 4.0, the Sense UI doesn’t have any ability to store these eyesores into folders, nor can it even filter them into categories for less complicated organization. You’re stuck with ‘em through thick and skinny. The best alternative is to make use of the frequent tab inside the app tray to filter right down to only those apps you employ often. On the subject of bloatware, Verizon’s the worst offender, and it seems that it is not getting any better.
Also, here is a breath of clean air that we didn’t see with the 1 AT&T LTE-enabled phones 1 : a homegrown choice to turn the 4G service off if you’d rather have better battery life than faster downloads. It’s still buried inside the settings menu (under Wireless & Networks < Mobile Networks < Network mode), so it is advisable to seek out a handy widget within the Android Market if you’d wish to have a faster access point.
It is also important to notice that while the Rezound currently sports Android 2.3.4, HTC decreed that it’s destined and able to receive an upgrade to 2 Android 4.0 2 — often referred to as Ice Cream Sandwich — once possible. Chances are high that that we can’t see it happen until sometime early next year, but we understand o.k. how nerve-wracking it usually is to buy a phone with an uncertain future, not knowing if or when the most recent and greatest firmware updates will roll out.
Performance and battery life
3 The Rezound has a beast rumbling inside it — namely, a 1.5GHz dual-core 3 Qualcomm MSM8660 3 (Snapdragon S3) CPU with an accompanying 4 Adreno 220 GPU 4 . It is a splendorous slab of silicon hiding somewhere within that 14mm of thickness, and it shows inside the phone’s performance. We found the high-end processor to be greater than able to handling our multitude of different simultaneous tasks, and made Sense rather smooth. We never experienced any lags or crashes as a result of phone not having the ability to handle our usual smattering of multitask demands. Here’s how the benchmarks turned out:
4 a lot of factors like LTE, HD display, Sense UI and a smaller 1,620mAh power pack all contributed to the phone’s subpar battery life. When performing our standard video rundown test, the Rezound ran through looped movies for around four hours and fifteen minutes before shutting off completely, and that was while 4G, WiFi or GPS was turned off. We managed to eke out twelve hours of life when using the device at a moderate pace — in other words, our usual litany of push email, social networking, taking cameras and videos, and other smallish tasks — it gave us a battery performance worse than the Droid RAZR, this means that you’ll definitely have to charge it each night before going to bed. We didn’t experience any concerns with call or audio quality, because of a robust Verizon network in our local area and the secondary noise-cancelling mic to assist clear out unwanted background sounds. We were also ready to lock down an excellent GPS location in lower than five seconds.
Beats
We mentioned earlier that the Rezound’s the primary HTC device inside the US to supply integration with 5 Beats Audio 5 . This fusion is 2-fold: first, the music player itself is Beats-enabled, making the most of a distinct sound profile (EQ setting). Second, the Rezound comes included with a collection of 6 iBeats 6 in-ear headphones (a $100 value). We’ve already covered the Beats Audio integration in exhausting and incredibly scientific detail as component to our review of the 7 HTC Sensation XE 7 ; because the setup on all sides of the pond is similar, our scientifically justified opinion of the Beats Audio integration hasn’t changed.
5 The tailor-made iBeats headphones that are available in the box is, hands-down, the fanciest set we’ve ever seen included with a US handset. Heck, there are many times that carriers won’t even throw in a complimentary pair in any respect. In case you are not a gung-ho music enthusiast and just need a quality pair of earphones to compliment your new LTE treasure, this may occasionally be greater than you ever bargained for. And quite frankly, they finally end up offering a great overall listening experience — so long as you’re being attentive to tracks which might be thick at the bass and the Beats Audio is enabled, this is. Even then, it is not that far better than our delight in the HTC Vivid music player using a $100 pair of earphones from a competitor. Also, disable the Beats Audio enhancement and listen as your music dramatically becomes a lot more quiet, the EQ flattening in traumatic fashion. And there is no option to customize the sound profile to suit your own wishes, whether Beats is enabled or not.
Sure, it’s great to peer a phone include a couple of headphones that does not seem to be it was picked up in a bargain bin, but what is the additional cost to the handset here? While the hardware certainly adds value to the general phone, the software itself isn’t expansive enough for our tastes and we wish to be capable of customize our tunes to slot our own personal preferences in place of be forced to hear music the way in which Dr. Dre intended it to be heard.
Wrap-up
6 The Rezound is without doubt one of the most well-stocked phones we’ve ever seen. It’s certainly got swagger, because it tops the spec comparison charts in nearly every category or even beats out the iPhone’s Retina Display. Speaking of Beats, it has those too — though hardcore music enthusiasts is generally disgusted by the inability of customizable options. We enjoyed the Rezound due to display and the phone’s performance, but you should be keen on Sense — and tolerate the lackluster battery — to be able to place it above the Galaxy Nexus at the wish list.
There’s also another factor at play. Verizon’s debuting its newest LTE phone at a premium cost: $300. Until AT&T started releasing most economical LTE handsets just like the Vivid ($200) and the Skyrocket ($250 in stores; $150 online), Big Red did a great job at making its high prices sound just like the norm. We need to admit — while the Rezound is filled with all the specs lets want, three Benjamins continues to be a difficult pill to swallow, regardless of how wonderful the device is.
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