Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

HTC Droid DNA Review

2012-11-28
what's up everyone Jon render from TechnoBuffalo at the full review for you of Verizon's the latest flagship this is the Droid DNA this guys packing a 1080p display quad-core 2 gigs of RAM Android 4.1 jelly bean beats audio and so much other goodness under its tiny little thin package let's go ahead dig in see if this is the super phone to grace your pockets for the next two years as far as Android phones go the Droid DNA's got it all good looks and specs to match its packing the same killer 8 megapixel camera we saw on the HTC One X the latest quad-core Snapdragon s4 pro processor from Qualcomm a wide-angle front facing camera we saw on the HTC 8x Beats Audio 2 gigs ram and so much more but it also has two hardware specs one good and one great which really stand out first it's got a crazy sharp 1080p HD display first of its kind on the US market with a pixel per inch count of 440 that's sharper than any other smartphone you can currently buy the phone only comes to 16 gigs of storage that's fine if you're a cloud-based kind of person in the streets really moving that way but it's not that much storage that's especially true if you actually wanted to advantage is that gorgeous 1080p display by storing Full HD videos on your phone it seems really silly but we learned that Verizon was the one who didn't want additional storage so whatever reason canting HTC for that hardware mishap HTC's long built its verizon android brand divisive to focus on making them look somewhat like sports cars and DNA it's really no different as a red racing stripe mesh ring down both sides don't let that mislead you those are speaker grilles for getting your jams on it's also a red ring right Meg beetle camera a red power button that's top of the phone and a brushed aluminum volume buttons on the right side there's also a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack on top liking a small mini sim port the microUSB charging port is on the bottom and the phone has a super annoying hatch protecting it the device itself is built out of partly carbonate plastic as unibody design which means it feels absolutely solid alright so back to at 1080p display for a second it is stellar text is noticeably much crisper than what I've seen on any other smartphone especially when reading websites or books it's also really bright easy to read on a direct sunlight since utilizes LCD 3 technology instead of Super AMOLED viewing angles totally rocked you can see the screen from nearly every angle total ease lastly there's a smaller canoe on the back of the film that's super hard to notice about looking for it this is actually an LED indicator hello it's basically completely useless I'm not sure why I was put on the back the phone instead of on the front it lights up green but just barely bright enough to see what a new message call or email comes in again no anyway she decided to put the LED notification where it is but there you have it I ran the full quadrant benchmark which I usually do for all high-end Android smartphones see how the Qualcomm Snapdragon s4 processor stacked up against the competition the Droid DNA receiving the overall score of drumroll please seven thousand four hundred and sixty one which blew the HTC One X totally out of the water bested the Asus Transformer Prime TF 201 and several other devices keep in mind though that the quad-core processor has to be able to render every single pixel on display which really puts a toll at how well it's X up against other quad-core phones basically it looks like your future-proofing yourself for the Droid DNA when it comes to more power intensive apps and games there no doubt going to launch in the coming year finally before I forget Droid DNA is a global smartphone and ships unlocked that means you can actually pop in an AT&T SIM card news HSPA in the United States or even t-mobile's edge network probably won't want to especially if you buy it on contract websites no device is totally unlocked out of the box alright so let's go ahead and jump over to software stop worrying about the upgrade from Ice Cream Sandwich to jellybean droid DNA runs Android 4.1 right out of the box which we need to get buttery smooth performance amazing Google announced support the option to use your voice for Google is pretty awesome Google search engine HTC also slathered its own HTC Sense 4 plus user interface which has a few design tweaks over since 4.0 skin.that launched on the One X the keyboard have changed a bit but take some getting used to if you're already using HTC phone but so a breeze to type on I love that there's a Settings button right on the notifications chain which makes it easier to jump in and turn off GPS settings connect to Wi-Fi now Orkut having to dig through menus to get to him Sense has really been one of our favorite Android skins TouchWiz is great sometimes but it's too colorful for me and seems too cartoonish I like how since fourplus looks on this phone obviously others do too is in this weather widget has been widely copied on a ton of third-party apps my big beef though with the current you is set up is that there's a small tab at the bottom right-hand side the main menu for Verizon apps oh this is good for Verizon subscribers they're new to smart phones that don't know where their phone is capable of but it's loaded with tons of bloatware including beezy navigator and really it's time to kill the navigator you can get it for free with Google Maps MX service my fries and mobile verizon Tunes the Vindhya game a demo for rain of a mere official voice but NFL mobile and a ton other stuff you're probably not gonna use since fourplus also allows you to manage multiple photo galleries across three party apps it's pretty cool you can view the files stored on your phone as well those from Microsoft SkyDrive Dropbox Facebook Flickr and Picasa similarly we also saw this in sense for beach audio support is integrated with third-party music applications such as Spotify which appear under the music menu alright let's talk about camera HTC really put a focus on camera quality introduced the HTC One X which remains my favorite mobile camera to date like that phone the Droid DNA could snap photos in rapid-fire and I mean crazy stupid rapid-fire HTC said that it changed the default settings to save 20 pictures while snapping quickly instead of 99 because users were snapping so many photos so quickly they're consuming almost all their space but you could always suggest that in settings however I also love you can take pictures while recording videos if you had a baseball game trying to film a homerun you can quickly snap the shutter button to grab photos right as the batter swings pictures were pretty much on par we saw with HTC One X and the one x+ generally think they're pretty close would I receive on the iPhone 5 two colors the great flash doesn't blow too much image out and the images look fantastic on that gorgeous 1080p screen likewise the phone is capable of recording 1080p video and for the first time you can actually view it back in 1080p glory right on your smart phone which is super awesome alright next let's talked about call quality data and battery life calls on the Droid DNA we're solid and what I've experienced other HTC smartphones I wasn't really blown away but have any issues either it works it worked well no white noise no drop calls let's gonna depend on where you go hard but if looking for a good phone this will definitely do it for you data speeds on Verizon's 4G LTE network we're pretty solid you fell around 15 megabits per second on the downside and close to 12 on the up those are crazy fast written it's gonna vary though again depending on where you are to add DNA features a 2020 million power battery which was able to get me to the end of the day with about 25 or 30 percent charge which is pretty okay in my book so you say charger to end the day anyway again it's pretty surprising considering the size of the screen amount of power that's under the hood so what's the final verdict on the Droid DNA we'd only got docked one point for lack of storage me again we can't ding HTC for that that was on four rise ins and as they dictated the storage size this phone is almost near-perfect with its killer specs 1080p screen you can finally view back the content as you filmed it this is it's expressed to me that it's kind of like watching blu-ray on a laptop yeah it looks great but still is a tiny screen but you've got the option to view it on there if you want to watch your video on here you can it's gonna be in 1080p or you can just pop it on a TV or any other format that you want to use it it's a really solid foam I can definitely recommend and gets a very solid night on the TechnoBuffalo score you want to get more tech news check us out at TechnoBuffalo comm for latest and greatest I'm John render from TechnoBuffalo see you next video you
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.