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.:Official Review And Impressions Thread:.

So what do you think about the Rezound/Vigor?

  • Thumbs Up

    Votes: 154 93.3%

  • Thumps Down

    Votes: 11 6.7%
  • Total voters
    165
  • Poll closed .
rushmore said:
The KY, or the Rezound?? :confused::eek::rolleyes::)
Click to expand...

lulz, I say he should do both...get some sort of freaky 3-some going.... :D

rushmore said:
Anybody wanna buy some Beats? ;)
Click to expand...

Let me see how sturdy the beats are on the phone. If the Beats are rather flimsy and pathetic, would you consider swapping me your beats and $20 for a pair of brand new in the box S4s? I bought 2 sets since I was going to give 1 pair as a gift, but I wound up going a different route.

NightAngel79 said:
Just saw a "this nfl game sponsored by the HTC Rezound" during the 2-minute warning commercial break:)
Click to expand...

I haven't seen one yet, I did see a Razr commercial though. The game I'm watching is a blow out so from a Football fan's standpoint, it's a boring game, but from a team fan standpoint, I'm enjoying it. :D


rushmore said:
Just remember, if you see a bar of soap slide in front of you, stay up straight! :eek:;):)
Click to expand...


its-a-trap-funny-pictures.jpg
 
Mini review:
Handling: TBH, I love its size. This thing FITS right in my hand, perfectly. The thickness makes it so it rests dead center of your palm, unlike the razr which rests at the webbing of my finger/hand which is really uncomfortable for 1-handed operation. It could be a bit lighter, she is a bit of a porker but still lighter than my Droid 2. Screen USE is fine and dandy, buttons work fine and easily. Pocket, I wear Levi 560s and a bit losely, so it fits fine there, or fine in my coat. If you had a bumper style case, it could be a bit thick for jeans though. Overall, I would give it a 9/10.
Software: Sense 3.5 is actually really quite nice. The lock screen has customizable actions like instant access to messaging, phone, camera etc. You can add things here as well to your liking. Spinning through homescreens is smooth and silky, the notification area shows everything like normal along with recently viewed apps/files as well. I have always been a fan of Sense, and this version is excellent. Bloatware is there, and there is a fair bit of it. Lots of verizon stuff like account/video/etc, along with Kindle, Amazon MP3, Blockbuster (aren't they defunct?), couple stupid games and NFL live for a year (this is epic). App organization is set up for downward scrolling "cards", 1 flick is a new card of apps. You can organize them differently if you are so inclined to do so. Overall, I give this a 9/10 (would have been a 10 if not for the bloat)
Hardware: I am going to break this up into a few pieces.
-Screen: One word...Beautiful. No other way to describe it. It is flat gorgeous, the colors are fantastic and even with my eye pressed against it you can't see individual pixels. Think retina display but 4.3" and 720p. I could spend the next month raving about how nice it is, but I won't, its just that nice. Viewing angles are pretty darn good, outdoor viewing with auto-brightness turned on was fine for me. Special note on this, I live in Idaho and its been cloudy for weeks here so I CANNOT comment on sunny viewing at this time. I did shine a 3w LED flashlight at different angles dead onto the phone, and while being temporarily blinded because of the reflection, off-angle while it did wash some, was completely viewable. Compared to my buddies AMOLED Incredible 1, way better. On par with my Droid 2, maybe a minor edge to the droid2.
-Sound/call quality: I am going to point to you on down this thread to a prevouis page and my post on this for the music review I did. The iBeats are iCrap, except for rap. They are excellent for that, nothing else. Call quality seems on-par with the Droid 2, people hearing me said I sounded like I did before, me hearing them was better. The speakerphone is loud enough to wake the dead, or scare the crap out of you as an alarm clock. Perhaps both, hmm....
-CPU/GPU: Let me preface this with...I don't give 2 shits about benchmark scores. Yeah, this is an enthusiast forum but its a phone. I don't fold on this thing, I don't play Deus Ex or Skyrim on it. I play angry birds, Stickman Golf and 25-hand poker on it. For MY uses, this thing is scary fast. My droid 2 would lag some when loading the app launcher, this is there. Boom, no wait, no lag when scrolling, nothing. It just goes.
HOWEVER, for you obsessive folk out there that actually care about this kind of stuff, here are some numbers (all benchmarks were run with the phone exactly like it would normally be, ie cell radios on including LTE, no fresh reboots in between etc):
AnTuTu, average of 3 runs: 5644,5724,5245; 5537.7
Average of 10 Quandrant runs:1912,2727,2516,2509,2639,2483,2487,2404,2486, 2611; 2477.4, or if we throw out the 2 outliers its: 2516.4
For sake of comparison, my old phone a droid2 did after 4 runs cause I honestly got sick of running it:1586,1825,1587,1631; 1657.3
CF-Bench:Run 1; 1112, 3092, 6300 Run 2; 10530,3264,6152. I have no idea what these numbers mean but this bench was recommended on another android forum.
--Notes on hardware: WHY does every phone these days put the SD card where you have to take the battery out? WHY WHY WHY! This is one item that reallllly angers me, especially as you have to be careful with the back case of this phone. All of the LTE antennae and the 3G/Voice antennae are molded into the back cover, bend it wrong or break it and you have 0 signal. It's a good idea, but every time I need to swap the card makes me nervous.
-Camera: Ahh, what alot of you judging by the other Rezound/Nexus thread where flame wars are erupting like errant volcanoes. This is an area I feel very confident in what is going on, and what is good/bad/ugly as I have been shooting professionally (where I make 50% or more of my income from photography) for about 5 years so I do know a bit about what I am talking about.
--Firstly the camera's operation, options and setting control. You have control with the base camera app over WB, ISO, Flash, touch-to-focus, which camera to use ie front/back, scene modes, exposure/contrast/saturation/sharpness, timer, resolution, geotagging, widescreen/4:3 ratios (4:3 is native to this sensor from what little I can find on the net) and some enhancement stuff including a rule-of-thirds grid. Camera does have face detection as well. ISO range is 100-800 in 1ev steps, no manual control of shutterspeed/aperature though I doubt this has an adjustable iris so its mostly likely set to max which is f2.2 anyway.
--Focus is snappy, and pressing the shutter button on screen is instant picture. No lag that can be discerned by a human at least. It does sit and pre-focus constantly, which can be annoying but might be a software thing I don't honestly know. This lens IS wider angle than most default cameras, at 24mm compared to 28-35 on 99% of phones today. On that note, it IS wider and as such for people shooting and landscapes is a welcome change. For wildlife and distance shooting, it will be a major downfall. All depends WHAT you want to shoot. For me, the perspective options on this camera are greatly improved with this particular camera.
Picture quality is very good, especially in lower light. Outdoors, typical for such a small sensor highlights tend to blow out rather quickly, this things dynamic range can't be more than 5 or 6 stops of range (for comparison, a typical p/s has about 6.5-7 and most DSLRs have 9-11). Clouds are this cameras weak point, the scene will render very well lighting wise but clouds just blow to easily. Default picture settings DO push contrast pretty high, so this could maybe be fixed with an app with adjustable curves but even moving the slider for contrast low while it does help doesn't recover alot. Low light is very good, especially compared to my Droid 2 which has a flat awful camera. Noise is resonable even at 800, 100 its only visable at 100% view. Detail in things like hair/fur/carpet/etc remain visable and discernable at all ISO levels, you could easily do 5x7s at max ISO in a darkly lit bar. Flash helps alot, but isn't necessary. Overall, the camera is a fine camera and I did shoot the same things with a Razr/this phone when I picked mine up and just viewing them on the screens, the Rezound was...yeah lets just say it wasn't a fair fight...poor Razr.
-Video: Didn't test besides to see if it worked, I don't do video so...it works fine I guess?
-Battery: So far, it is on its second charge. I pulled it off the charger this morning at around 10AM MST. As of this writing at 5PM MST, it is at about 60% a mostly blue line under my battery graph. Lots of 4G tinkering and app re-downloading, it made it from 4PM till 1AM last night and still had 40% charge so to me, it seems it can go a full day. That is fine in my book, I recharge every night anyway.
Cliffnotes: So I started this as a mini review and it turned into a dissertation. Sorry. Overall, I am well pleased with this phone. Its a great package, its fast and snappy, has a great camera (the Nexus could well be better if they use the same/similar sensor to the iPhone though, this will have to be seen) and the screen is beyond superb. This vs. the Razr, to me is a no-contest win in the HTCs favor. When I played with both, the HTC was more responsive, screen looked far better and is far easier to hold in MY hands. The Razr, after 10 minutes of playing, was uncomforably hot while the HTC after an hour of benchmarking was mildly warm. This vs. the Nexus, that is far harder. The nexus will have ICS, no bloat, a bigger screen (to me a negative as this is almost too big of a screen for 1-handed as it is) and questionably superior hardware(barometer, NFC, maybe faster GPU, approx. equal CPU as the A9 are 25% faster clock-for-clock which means at 1.5ghz, the A8 based snapper is 25% over 1.2ghz. Overclocking will be the deciding factor CPU wise) but ultimately the form factor is going to be a big decider for YOU. For ME, I went with this phone because I feel the Nexus will be TOO big and for my little girl hands, that is a killer.
 
Nice review and I too think the RAZR feels too thin in my hand. Comparing the Rezounds screen to the Nexus'; although the screen is larger, the phone itself isn't that much bigger. We're talking .3" in length, .1" in width. Depth/girth is another thing. If I remember correctly, I believe the US version of the Nexus will actually be thicker than the pre-production version listed...don't know for sure. But this is something for everyone to decide on their own individually.

rezound-dimensions.png
 
misan23 said:
Mini review:
Handling: TBH, I love its size. This thing FITS right in my hand, perfectly. The thickness makes it so it rests dead center of your palm, unlike the razr which rests at the webbing of my finger/hand which is really uncomfortable for 1-handed operation. It could be a bit lighter, she is a bit of a porker but still lighter than my Droid 2. Screen USE is fine and dandy, buttons work fine and easily. Pocket, I wear Levi 560s and a bit losely, so it fits fine there, or fine in my coat. If you had a bumper style case, it could be a bit thick for jeans though. Overall, I would give it a 9/10.
Software: Sense 3.5 is actually really quite nice. The lock screen has customizable actions like instant access to messaging, phone, camera etc. You can add things here as well to your liking. Spinning through homescreens is smooth and silky, the notification area shows everything like normal along with recently viewed apps/files as well. I have always been a fan of Sense, and this version is excellent. Bloatware is there, and there is a fair bit of it. Lots of verizon stuff like account/video/etc, along with Kindle, Amazon MP3, Blockbuster (aren't they defunct?), couple stupid games and NFL live for a year (this is epic). App organization is set up for downward scrolling "cards", 1 flick is a new card of apps. You can organize them differently if you are so inclined to do so. Overall, I give this a 9/10 (would have been a 10 if not for the bloat)
Hardware: I am going to break this up into a few pieces.
-Screen: One word...Beautiful. No other way to describe it. It is flat gorgeous, the colors are fantastic and even with my eye pressed against it you can't see individual pixels. Think retina display but 4.3" and 720p. I could spend the next month raving about how nice it is, but I won't, its just that nice. Viewing angles are pretty darn good, outdoor viewing with auto-brightness turned on was fine for me. Special note on this, I live in Idaho and its been cloudy for weeks here so I CANNOT comment on sunny viewing at this time. I did shine a 3w LED flashlight at different angles dead onto the phone, and while being temporarily blinded because of the reflection, off-angle while it did wash some, was completely viewable. Compared to my buddies AMOLED Incredible 1, way better. On par with my Droid 2, maybe a minor edge to the droid2.
-Sound/call quality: I am going to point to you on down this thread to a prevouis page and my post on this for the music review I did. The iBeats are iCrap, except for rap. They are excellent for that, nothing else. Call quality seems on-par with the Droid 2, people hearing me said I sounded like I did before, me hearing them was better. The speakerphone is loud enough to wake the dead, or scare the crap out of you as an alarm clock. Perhaps both, hmm....
-CPU/GPU: Let me preface this with...I don't give 2 shits about benchmark scores. Yeah, this is an enthusiast forum but its a phone. I don't fold on this thing, I don't play Deus Ex or Skyrim on it. I play angry birds, Stickman Golf and 25-hand poker on it. For MY uses, this thing is scary fast. My droid 2 would lag some when loading the app launcher, this is there. Boom, no wait, no lag when scrolling, nothing. It just goes.
HOWEVER, for you obsessive folk out there that actually care about this kind of stuff, here are some numbers (all benchmarks were run with the phone exactly like it would normally be, ie cell radios on including LTE, no fresh reboots in between etc):
AnTuTu, average of 3 runs: 5644,5724,5245; 5537.7
Average of 10 Quandrant runs:1912,2727,2516,2509,2639,2483,2487,2404,2486, 2611; 2477.4, or if we throw out the 2 outliers its: 2516.4
For sake of comparison, my old phone a droid2 did after 4 runs cause I honestly got sick of running it:1586,1825,1587,1631; 1657.3
CF-Bench:Run 1; 1112, 3092, 6300 Run 2; 10530,3264,6152. I have no idea what these numbers mean but this bench was recommended on another android forum.
--Notes on hardware: WHY does every phone these days put the SD card where you have to take the battery out? WHY WHY WHY! This is one item that reallllly angers me, especially as you have to be careful with the back case of this phone. All of the LTE antennae and the 3G/Voice antennae are molded into the back cover, bend it wrong or break it and you have 0 signal. It's a good idea, but every time I need to swap the card makes me nervous.
-Camera: Ahh, what alot of you judging by the other Rezound/Nexus thread where flame wars are erupting like errant volcanoes. This is an area I feel very confident in what is going on, and what is good/bad/ugly as I have been shooting professionally (where I make 50% or more of my income from photography) for about 5 years so I do know a bit about what I am talking about.
--Firstly the camera's operation, options and setting control. You have control with the base camera app over WB, ISO, Flash, touch-to-focus, which camera to use ie front/back, scene modes, exposure/contrast/saturation/sharpness, timer, resolution, geotagging, widescreen/4:3 ratios (4:3 is native to this sensor from what little I can find on the net) and some enhancement stuff including a rule-of-thirds grid. Camera does have face detection as well. ISO range is 100-800 in 1ev steps, no manual control of shutterspeed/aperature though I doubt this has an adjustable iris so its mostly likely set to max which is f2.2 anyway.
--Focus is snappy, and pressing the shutter button on screen is instant picture. No lag that can be discerned by a human at least. It does sit and pre-focus constantly, which can be annoying but might be a software thing I don't honestly know. This lens IS wider angle than most default cameras, at 24mm compared to 28-35 on 99% of phones today. On that note, it IS wider and as such for people shooting and landscapes is a welcome change. For wildlife and distance shooting, it will be a major downfall. All depends WHAT you want to shoot. For me, the perspective options on this camera are greatly improved with this particular camera.
Picture quality is very good, especially in lower light. Outdoors, typical for such a small sensor highlights tend to blow out rather quickly, this things dynamic range can't be more than 5 or 6 stops of range (for comparison, a typical p/s has about 6.5-7 and most DSLRs have 9-11). Clouds are this cameras weak point, the scene will render very well lighting wise but clouds just blow to easily. Default picture settings DO push contrast pretty high, so this could maybe be fixed with an app with adjustable curves but even moving the slider for contrast low while it does help doesn't recover alot. Low light is very good, especially compared to my Droid 2 which has a flat awful camera. Noise is resonable even at 800, 100 its only visable at 100% view. Detail in things like hair/fur/carpet/etc remain visable and discernable at all ISO levels, you could easily do 5x7s at max ISO in a darkly lit bar. Flash helps alot, but isn't necessary. Overall, the camera is a fine camera and I did shoot the same things with a Razr/this phone when I picked mine up and just viewing them on the screens, the Rezound was...yeah lets just say it wasn't a fair fight...poor Razr.
-Video: Didn't test besides to see if it worked, I don't do video so...it works fine I guess?
-Battery: So far, it is on its second charge. I pulled it off the charger this morning at around 10AM MST. As of this writing at 5PM MST, it is at about 60% a mostly blue line under my battery graph. Lots of 4G tinkering and app re-downloading, it made it from 4PM till 1AM last night and still had 40% charge so to me, it seems it can go a full day. That is fine in my book, I recharge every night anyway.
Cliffnotes: So I started this as a mini review and it turned into a dissertation. Sorry. Overall, I am well pleased with this phone. Its a great package, its fast and snappy, has a great camera (the Nexus could well be better if they use the same/similar sensor to the iPhone though, this will have to be seen) and the screen is beyond superb. This vs. the Razr, to me is a no-contest win in the HTCs favor. When I played with both, the HTC was more responsive, screen looked far better and is far easier to hold in MY hands. The Razr, after 10 minutes of playing, was uncomforably hot while the HTC after an hour of benchmarking was mildly warm. This vs. the Nexus, that is far harder. The nexus will have ICS, no bloat, a bigger screen (to me a negative as this is almost too big of a screen for 1-handed as it is) and questionably superior hardware(barometer, NFC, maybe faster GPU, approx. equal CPU as the A9 are 25% faster clock-for-clock which means at 1.5ghz, the A8 based snapper is 25% over 1.2ghz. Overclocking will be the deciding factor CPU wise) but ultimately the form factor is going to be a big decider for YOU. For ME, I went with this phone because I feel the Nexus will be TOO big and for my little girl hands, that is a killer.
Click to expand...

Good review, but.....

fjke37.gif


:p
 
misan23 said:
Mini review:
Handling:
--Notes on hardware: WHY does every phone these days put the SD card where you have to take the battery out? WHY WHY WHY! This is one item that reallllly angers me, especially as you have to be careful with the back case of this phone. All of the LTE antennae and the 3G/Voice antennae are molded into the back cover, bend it wrong or break it and you have 0 signal. It's a good idea, but every time I need to swap the card makes me nervous.
Click to expand...

How often do you swap out cards? I've not swapped out my 16gb card in my DX one single time since i've owned it.
 
trophynuts said:
How often do you swap out cards? I've not swapped out my 16gb card in my DX one single time since i've owned it.
Click to expand...


I've pulled mine a few times, mostly when I was rooting it the sd wouldn't mount correctly. It's always nice to have access to it in the event that your phone doesn't read it correctly.
 
I pull mine out somewhat often, using a card reader instead of the phone to dump videos and music onto the SD card is far faster.
 
Misan said and agreed in words with what I posted in my mini-review, except has more weight since misan actually has a Rezound (I only tested one in VZW store).

BTW, I agree about the microsd being stuck behind a battery. Pure dumb, but the Nexus does not even have a microsd slot ;) Hard to add a 32gb or 64gb in that :) 64gb should work BTW, just need to either format using the phone or an app that does FAT32.
 
So I just wandered around on a 2 mile walk turning GPS on and off. Outside, it takes about 10 seconds to acquire between 8-12 sat fixes (measured with Tricorder app, this app is pure awesome if you haven't tried it). Was accurate down to about 20 feet. Inside my house, in my bedroom which is in the center of the house it can't find diddly, but in my living room which is at the edge of the house it finds about 5, accurate within about 100 feet. Overall not bad.
 
TxGoat said:
No worries, Does best buy match online prices? $249.00 at Wirefly HTC Rezound for Verizon Wireless - Wirefly.com

Amazon actually has an "international" version which I thought was unusual.

http://www.amazon.com/HTC-Sensation..._1_5?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1321246973&sr=1-5
Click to expand...

To my knowledge they will match everything. They use to match Verizon discount upgrades (after much debate) so they should honor this. I'm definitely bringing a copy of it tomorrow when I go there. I'll let you know how it goes.
 
On Verizon's website the phone price is $299 on 2 year contract. My NE2 upgrade date is 1/08/2012. I am eligible to upgrade at 2 year contract price. When I add the phone to upgrade the price is $249. Is this a special online price or am I eligible to get this discount in the store also? I want to go and get this phone at 10am at the store. But, is it worth it to order online and save $50?
 
TxGoat said:
You can always get the Rezound and if the Nexus comes out within the 14 days, you can always just return it. The Nexus would have to come out after the 28th in order for you not to get to exchange it.
Click to expand...


I ain't taking that chance with my luck It would be pushed back to the the 29
 
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