Gadgetory

hey guys this is Austin and today I'm here with a review with the HTC Droid DNA for Verizon with a 1080p screen quad-core processor an Android 4.1 let's take a look the DNA brings along a familiar Verizon red and black color scheme which gives a bit of pop to the design the front is fairly clean with a single piece of glass with the Verizon logo up top and the capacitive Android keys below along the sides are red accents which give a bit of texture to the phone and around back you'll see the DNA is entirely coated in a soft touch plastic generally these surfaces pick up dust and fingerprints easily but it really wasn't a huge issue 89.7 millimeters thick it's on the chunkier side but thanks to the heavily tapered edges if you look a much thinner phone in the hand here is where the 8 megapixel camera is found along with the speaker with Beats Audio branding it's not particularly noteworthy in effect it's a bit too easy to cover with a single misplaced finger along the top you'll see the 2.1 megapixel front-facing camera and red speaker grille and below or your capacitive back home and multitasking buttons there's a notification LED hidden in the grille of the phone as well as on the back which is a really useful feature the rest of the ergonomics are less than spectacular however unlike most smartphones the volume rocker is over on the right side and more still it's narrow and blends in HTC has opted to load the top up with your micro SIM slot sleep button and headphone jack having the sleep button centered up top is awkward as it forces you to hold the DNA differently compared to almost every other large phone out there finally on bottom is your microUSB port which is weirdly covered by a flap microUSB is plenty robust to handle being uncovered so it's beyond me why HTC and Verizon chose to cover it up here this wasn't cool on the palm pixi and it definitely isn't cool for a flagship phone at the end of 2012 it is compatible with the Qi wireless charging standard so your best bet is to buy a wireless charger and ignore the fiddly little micro USB port altogether the screen on the other hand is absolutely fantastic it's a 5 inch IPS panel with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 and with 440 pixels per inch this absolutely destroys every other smartphone out there right now even when viewing the screen much closer than you ever would normally there's still an incredible amount of detail not only is it high resolution but it's also among the most vibrant screens I've ever seen with top-notch viewing angles I have zero complaints at all here it's noticeably better than any other phone screen period the Droid DNA is running Android 4.1 jellybean with the HTC Sense 4 plus skin I've never been a big fan of cents and this latest iteration doesn't do anything to change my mind the overall UI design is very different than stock Android and a lot seems to be changed for changes sake rather than making things faster or better there's a lot of Chrome all over the phone which really doesn't hurt anything but it's not a slick of a look as even TouchWiz on the galaxy note 2 on the whole of it the DNA is certainly a fast phone thanks to the powerful internals and Android 4.1 but it's not as smooth as it could be with animations frequently losing frames most apps work just fine on the 1080p screen although it is easy to spot graphics made for 720p or lower resolution devices as with most recent Verizon phones there's a notification for Wi-Fi which never goes away which is a minor annoyance and there's a good deal of bloatware installed which gets its own category in the app drawer unwanted apps are fairly easy to hide however so it isn't a huge problem overall the software could be better but load up a custom launcher hide the bloatware and you're good to go the 8 megapixel camera is quite good overall saturation is solid and there's a good amount of detail to work with the white balance gets tripped up sometimes but you can adjust it manually if you need low-light performance is right on par with most smartphones salvageable for a quick shot but it pales in comparison to the nokia lumia 920 the camera software is generally quite good its intuitive is Android 4.2 however you have quite a few manual options for ISO exposure and more there are also some effects you can choose from including a fun little distortion effect which you can play around with dots which rendered the image in a series of interesting looking dots and finally your standard depth of field vignette and Instagram like filters powering the HTC Droid DNA is a Snapdragon s4 quad-core processor clocked at 1.5 gigahertz paired with two eco bytes of RAM and Adreno 320 graphics this is the same combo you'll find in the Nexus 4 and it delivers some of the best performance in any smartphone available right now it has plenty of power to push around all the pixels on that 1080p screen however some games aren't updated to work on the DNA just yet you'll also find 16 gigabytes of storage built in which is about average however the lack of a micro SD card slot is a bit disappointing call quality on the Verizon network is top-notch rifling Motorola phones like the Droid Razr HD you'll also get solid LTE data speeds topping 30 megabits per second at and even pulling in over 10 megabits in my office where most Verizon phones struggle with a 5 inch 1080p screen in quad-core processor running off at 2020 million power battery I was skeptical of the battery life but in my testing I found I was easily able to make it through a full day of use and then some the HTC Droid DNA has some faults the hardware is well built but a few design choices hold the phone back it's great to see Android 4.1 onboard but since is really in need of a redesign that said you're getting the best display on any phone out there and top notch specs all for a reasonable price if you're looking to pick up a new phone on Verizon the Droid DNA is absolutely worth a look you can check out more videos on the droid DNA here and don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe for more anyway I'll catch you guys in the next one