The HTC Rezound (from $79 with a new two-year contract as of 1/27/12) is one of the more capable devices released this year. With beefy specs, including a 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor and Verizon LTE 4G connectivity, the Rezound stands its own against other Verizon smartphones.
Design
With a 4.3-inch 1280 by 720 resolution super LCD display, the Rezound is definitely on the larger side. While it may not fit in everyone's pocket, that large display is great for watching movies and playing games. At 6 ounces the Rezound can feel a bit hefty but that extra weight also makes the phone feel rock solid.
Like most other HTC phones, the Rezound has a straightforward design. On the front of the device are the four standard Android navigation buttons (Home, Menu, Back, and Search), as well as a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The back of the Rezound sports an 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flash and is composed of a soft rubber backing that feels nicely in hand. The volume rocker and power button sit flush with the rest of the phone, giving it a very streamlined look, but also making them somewhat difficult to press down. Buttons aside, the Rezound is still a very well-designed device.
Specs and Performance
When it comes to specs, the Rezound is a beast. Its dual-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon processor keeps the phone feeling zippy and is great for graphic intensive games like Grand Theft Auto 3 and Dead Space. Unfortunately all that power comes with a price, in this case the Rezound's battery life is less than optimal. After three hours of playing games, browsing the web, and downloading apps over LTE, the Rezound was down from a full charge to only 30% battery remaining. The Rezound has several different power modes to help regulate power consumption, but if you are a heavy user of apps you will want to invest in an extended battery pack. We will update this section once we put the Rezound through our official battery tests.
The Rezound's high resolution display looks great, but would sometimes lag when pressing a button or swiping between homescreens. This would usually occur after exiting an app, but didn't happen enough to really be a nuisance. The Rezound takes advantage of Verizon's blazing fast LTE network. Here in San Francisco, I was able to download several hundred megabytes of data in only a few short minutes over a strong connection. Using the FCC-approved Ookla Speed Test app, I clocked download speeds of around 11.55 Mbps and upload speeds of about 10.38 Mbps. Call quality was even, with no signs of hiss or static. The people I called said I came through clearly and that they couldn't hear any background noises in my call.
Software
The Rezound is running HTC Sense over Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and comes with a handful of preloaded software. Blockbuster Mobile, Slacker Radio, Polaris Office, and the Amazon Kindle app all come preinstalled along with the full version Need For Speed Hot Pursuit and a demo of Let's Golf 2. While some of these apps may be useful and entertaining, it's a shame that you have no option to uninstall any of them should you not want them running on your phone.
The HTC Sense overlay ran well on the Rezound and brought along a few features that are missing from stock Android Gingerbread. The lockscreen allows you to quickly launch applications without having to first unlock your phone and the notification bar contains a list of recently opened applications for easier multitasking. The Rezound is slated to receive Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) sometime later this year and it will be interesting to see how Sense interacts with the new OS.
Entertainment
If you are someone that likes to use your smartphone as a media player, then you will be interested to learn that the Rezound has built-in Beats Audio for a better listening experience. When you plug in the included Beats Audio compatible headphones, the Beats Audio software will auto-enable itself and will supposedly "enhance" the audio.
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