Gadgetory

well hey this is Dan with the verge and we are looking at the new HTC droid DNA for Verizon Wireless the DNA is a first phone in the US with a 1080p HD display and the 5-inch super lcd3 screen is nothing short of stunning it has a crazy high 440 PPI pixel density which makes it virtually impossible to distinguish individual pixels on the screen viewing angles and color reproduction are also excellent and the display is perfectly viewable in bright sunlight we've been saying all year that the HTC One X has the best display on any mobile device but it's pretty safe to say that the 1080p screen on the droid DNA beats it from a design perspective the DNA uses verizon's trademark black and red color scheme that's getting a bit stale at this point it's not an ugly look by any means but it would be nice to have a rise and mix it up a bit and utilize some more color palettes the back of the phone is a matte soft touch finish that feels good and provides enough grip so the phone doesn't slide out of your hand so easily the sides taper down from about 10 millimeters thick right down to four millimeters and feature red strips on the side that HTC and Verizon say are supposed to evoke a sports car the phone is also pretty light at just 5 ounces my biggest complaint with the DNA's design though is with its power button which is located on the top of the phone directly in the middle this means that you have to adopt a rather uncomfortable claw grip in order to turn the screen on and then reshuffle the device in your hand to unlock it the size of the DNA does make it difficult to perform a number of one-handed tasks but it's not much larger than the One X and other phones with 4.7 or 4.8 inch displays the coolest feature the DNA's Hardware are the notification lights which are located on both the front and the back of the device the back notification light is actually really cool and it means that you can see the notifications regardless of whether the phone is placed on its face or on its back also on the back is an 8 megapixel camera with an f 2.8 lens and HTC's image sense processing chip the camera opens quickly and can take pretty good pictures but they're not as good in low light as someone's taken with the iPhone 5 or Nokia's Lumia 920 the front-facing camera is also borrowed from the HTC windows phone 8x and features a really wide eighty degree viewing angle powering the DNA is a slot core qualcomm snapdragon pro processor clocked at 1.5 gigahertz and paired with two gigabytes of ram most of the time the processor doesn't have a problem with the DNA significantly higher screen resolution but there's instances where it drugs on scrolling especially in the Chrome browser but the DNA doesn't have any trouble with most 3d games and they actually look really great on its display the DNA runs Android 4.1 point one jellybean with HTC's Sense 4 plus interface since four plus is very similar to sense for and it features HTC's custom lockscreen home screen app drawer and multi-tasking menu unfortunately Google now is buried under a long press of the HOME key which is much less intuitive to use than the swipe gesture used in stock Android 4.1 battery life from the 2020 milliamp hour battery is less than impressive and it was not able to last a full day in my tests you can't swap out the battery either so the DNA will likely require trip to the charger at least once a day the micro USB port is covered with a fiddly and annoying plastic flap but HTC did build wireless charging directly into the device if you have a qi compatible car charging pad you can use that to charge up the phone verizon will be offering the DNA for 199 with a new contract on november 21st which is pretty good price for the features that it includes the display alone might be worth it but the occasional performance hiccups and subpar battery life weren't some pause before committing to that two-year agreement if you're a verizon customer there's a number of other choices to consider including the still relevant galaxy s3 and motorola's new droid razr HD and RAZR MAXX HD but if you want the only smartphone with a 1080p HD screen the DNA is the one to get you