HTC Vivid Hardwear

Rob de la Vega made a bold statement only at that year's CTIA, claiming LTE phones on AT&T's network will be thinner and more longevous. We're not really exactly calling the CEO's bluff right here, but it appears he may happen to be solely referring to the Galaxy Utes II Skyrocket. Make no mistake about this, the Vivid is a hefty handset -- a well known fact that becomes apparent when it first plunks from the box and into your hand. Evaluating in at 176 grams (6. twenty-four ounces) and measuring 11. 2mm (0. forty-four inches) thick, you'd assume this heavyweight trade-off will be the result of an outsized battery, several ports and LTE radio. That is actually, unfortunately, not the case at just about all. With a 1, 620mAh battery that pales compared to the 1, 850mAh of its featherweight 4G LTE stablemate, the phone's mass is merely baffling. If you were hoping its casing is always to blame for this excessive girth, prepare to become sorely disappointed.

HTC's design flourishes are probably the most distinctive and daring in the business, and most have come to associate the organization with its aluminum unibody constructions. The actual Vivid, however, misses out on this particular traditional treatment. That's not to state the phone's chassis feels cheap. On the other hand, it's a sturdy hulk of polished piano black plastic (yes, it is a fingerprint magnet) that's more similar to the original Motorola Droid's angular build than every other HTC handset we've seen. There's absolutely no soft touch plastic here, though. Instead, we get a hard, shiny exterior that extends round the device to its back and suddenly slopes inward to surround a gunmetal gray, removable metal plate. This Droid-like battery cover is bisected with a faintly dotted, texturized pattern on its lower half along with a smooth upper portion broken only through the OEM's grooved logo and a recessed 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash towards the top left. The phone's speaker peeks out inside a strip above this plating which, whenever slid down, reveals the aforementioned electric battery, SIM card and barren microSD greeting card slot hidden beneath. HTC's packed within 16GB of internal storage, but if you are the type to load up upon media, you can expand that capacity by an additional 32GB. Interrupting the smooth perimeter up top is really a 3. 5mm headphone jack on the actual left and, opposite, a flush (perhaps too flush) power button. The silvery volume rocker barely juts out to the right, leaving the micro-USB port to stealthily occupy the low left hand side.

Whip this phone out in public places and you're not likely to appeal to much attention. That's because, much just like a mullet, HTC built this beast to become all business up front and an event (however lame and unattended) within the back. AT&T's logo is really the only real splash of flash your eyes is going to be treated to, located as it is simply beneath the Vivid's imperceptible sliver of the earpiece, with the front-facing 1. 3 megapixel VGA camera flanking it towards the right. Swallowing up the majority from the phone's face is that 4. 5-inch 960 x 540 qHD TFT Super LCD display and it is a knockout. True, you'll encounter a particular degree of difficulty reading this display in strong sunlight, but take it indoors and you will notice an ample brightness to the actual crisp display that delivers well-balanced comparison and excellent viewing angles. Colors reproduced about the handset belong neither to the over-saturated Extremely AMOLED realm nor the just-so quality of the IPS display, falling somewhere comfortably between.