HTC Aria (AT&T)

Pros: Very good performance in a a phone that fits easily in your pocket. It does everything I need it to. It seems quite fast despite it's mid-level specs. Great still photos and decent video. This does not feel like a mid-level phone.

Cons: Small keyboard but that is to be expected with such a small phone. After 2-3 days I stopped noticing it. I do not have very big hands though.

Summary: This is my first Android phone and after doing a lot of research I noticed that it never gets a bad review but it is way cheaper than the "Superphones" like the Evo 4G and DroidX. I needed 4 smartphones for myself, my wife and 2 kids. Any of the 1ghz phones would have been over $900 with contract. I got the 4 Arias for $98. The small screen may not have big specs but it looks great. The phone feels fast. I love it and the kids love it. My daughter really wanted an iPhone 4 but now she loves the Aria. The battery life has been good for all 4 of us so far. My wife gets 2-3 days out of hers while the always-online 14 year old daughter has to charge at the end of the night. The 5mp camera is great even without a flash. The video is OK but not nearly as good as the stills. It comes with a 2gb micro SD card so I will have to replace that but for the price I can understand why a larger card wasn't included. I did not like the small virtual keyboard at first but after 2-3 days I got used to it. In my opinion some Android phones look and feel a bit clunky. This is not one of them. I am somewhat of an Apple fanboy and was worried that I would have some buyer's remorse getting an Aria instead of the iPhone4. So far I am happy with the choice and have no regrets.

Updated on Jul 30, 2010

After 2 weeks with the Aria I like it even more. The battery life seems to be getting better. After heading to work at 7:00 a.m. and using the phone a lot during the day I still have over 80% battery at 5:30p.m.. I am getting better with the small keyboard. I did get a 16gb card to replace the stock 2gb card. The phone did not want to format the card. I formatted it with my Macbook Pro and copied the files from the old card and the phone found everything. I used Doubletwist to sync my iTunes music to the card. 8gb of music took over an hour to sync but all the DRM free music plays just fine. It occurred to me that Apple should just do iTunes for Android. That sounds silly but at one time iTunes for Windows sounded silly too. Not that Apple is hurting for sales but having the iTunes ecosystem on their most serious mobile OS competitor kind of makes sense. Don't fall for the big phone hype. The Aria is a great "little" phone.