HTC Rezound (Verizon Wireless)

Pros: 1.) The 720p display
2.) Clear call quality
3.) Large headset grill
4.) Loud and clear speakerphone
5.) XDA Development Supported
6.) Officially unlockable bootloader
7.) Easy to root
8.) Fast LTE Speeds
9.) Clear, fast Camera
10.) Great battery life

Cons: 1.) Pretty thick especially with extended battery you will notice it in your pocket if your pants are tight
2.) Heavy, there are much lighter phones available
3.) Hard to hold with one hand due to the screen size, thickness, and weight.

Summary: So this is my 5th Verizon 4G LTE phone in the last year and I finally have a phone that I can keep for a while.

I have had the following phones and I will compare them against this HTC Rezound.

1.) Samsung Droid Charge 4G
2.) Motorola Droid Bionic 4G
3.) Motorola Razr 4G
4.) LG Spectrum 4G
5.) Samsung Galaxy Nexus 4G

Lets start with the screen on the HTC Rezound two words absolutely stunning. I was a tad worried that after having all OLED screens (except for the Spectrum) that I would not like the color representation....I was wrong the colors look perfect on the Rezound and after having this phone I no longer like the super saturated colors of the OLED screens. The 720p screen on the rezound is so clear you can read the tiniest of words and a widescreen video fills the entire screen. All the other phones with the exception of the Spectrum and Nexus now look super blurry to me after having this phone. The screen compared to the Spectrum is about the same as they are both 720p displays but compared to the Nexus which is "720p" its night and day. I know technically the Nexus is a 720p display but the Pentile display matrix is uses is horrible its not as clear as it has far fewer sub pixels than the Rezound. All the Motorola phones I have had also had this same fuzzy Pentile display. Only the Droid Charge had a traditional RGB display on an OLED display.

So if I was rating the screens I would give the HTC Rezound and the LG Spectrum a 10, I would give the Droid Charge a 7, I would also give the Nexus a 7 as for the Motorola phones I would give then a 3 the Pentile screen is really bad when the resolution is low.

Call Quality, in this case all the phones were clear and I never had an issue making or keeping a call.

Headset Volume, The Rezound is the best I have had as far as headset volume goes no matter how I have the phone positioned against my ear I can hear the person clearly. My LG Spectrum required the phone to be in a certain "sweet" spot because the grill was so narrow. The two Samsung's and the two Motorola's were almost as good as the Rezound. If the rezound was a 10 then the samsung's and the motorola's would be 9's. The LG Spectrum would be a 5.

Speakerphone Volume, The Rezound has great speakerphone volume and clarity and is the best of the phones I have had. The others were similar but not as loud.

Camera-Still Image. The HTC Rezound takes very clear photos and the shutter speed is wicked fast. The image is very sharp even when zoomed in. I like all the options I have in the camera application and the f2.2 aperture is greatly appreciated. The LG Spectrum also took very good photos and its shutter was really fast as well. I would say the two are very similar with the HTC Rezound being a tad bit sharper and able to do low light better. The LG Spectrum also doesn't have as good of an aperture. The Motorola phones took very similar photo's the quality was ok but it wasn't amazing. It certainly looked like a cell phone photo. I did like the camera interface on the Motorola phones as they provided a lot of options. The Samsung Charge took decent photos definitely better than the Motorola phones but its shutter speed was slow and the photos were frequently blurry due to the slowness of the shutter. The galaxy nexus has a fast shutter but the 5 megapixels photos were not as clear as the Rezound especially if you cropped the photo you could easily see pixels due to the lower resolution.

Camera-Video, The HTC Rezound is hands down the best 1080p video camera on a phone that I have ever used. I like how I can zoom while recording, toggle the dual LED lights, and refocus the screen by taping. The videos when displayed on my 46" LCD TV are really clear and the audio is fantastic. My LG Spectrum even with 1080p were super compressed and very pixalated and were worse than my Samsung Charge which only recorded in 720p. The two Motorola phones looked fairly decent but there audio was not as good as the Rezound nor was their video I could frequently see artifacts. My charge did pretty good but its only 720p, the Nexus was a disappointment it didn't do very good with audio or video.

Battery Life, I must say HTC did a really good job in this department, yesterday I the phone just sitting on my desk the entire day doing nothing, when I left for work after being unplugged for 10 hours I still have 89% battery left and thats with WIFI on, 4G on and GPS on very impressive to say the least. My Samsung Charge was always be around 30% when I left for work. The Razr was around 60% when I would leave and the Bionic was around 45% when I would leave. The nexus would have 70% remaining when I would leave. I had an extended battery for the Spectrum so its not fair to compare. Now I will say this if your using the phone with the screen on it will drain the battery fast. The LCD technology in the Rezound is more power intensive than the OLED displays in the other phones(except the Spectrum) combine that with a highly graphic game like World of Goo and you got a battery buster. Yesterday I played World of Goo for two hours straight, when I started by battery was at 36% when I finished I was at 6% so in two hours I killed 30% of the battery. Just keep that in mind.


Rooting, Hacking and outside Roms, HTC wins hands down the XDA community is strong (been enjoying this ICS rom for a few weeks now) I had no issue rooting this phone and installing custom roms. Its nice that HTC allows you to unlock your bootloader without having to hack your phone. It would be nice to see motorola do the same thing. My Charge also had an unlocked bootloader which made custom roms and rooting easy as well. It also had a pretty good following on XDA. The nexus is easy to root a has a huge following on XDA so there are lots of custom roms and hacks you can load unto the phone. The motorola phones were easy enough to root but the custom rom developement is limited due to the locked bootloader. Not saying that its impossible I had ICS loaded on it for a longtime but they are not as polished and bug free as the Rezound roms.

GPS Signal Lock, The HTC Rezound locks into the GPS signal super fast as did the Motorola phones, the Spectrum took a tad longer but it wasn't too bad. But the two Samsung phones sucked bad especially my Charge. It would take sometimes 5-10 minutes to lock unto the GPS in order to navigate. I was able to load some root applications that helped it lock but it will sucked that I needed to do it. The nexus was a tad faster but it still needed help from that same root application to signal lock faster.

LTE Transfer speeds, The fastest average speeds I have had on each of the phones taken from my home office at my house (speedtest app)

1.) Samsung Charge, 28mb/12mb
2.) HTC Rezound, 18mb/8mb
3.) LG Spectrum, 6mb/5mb
4.) Sumsung Nexus, 6mb/5mb
5.) Motorola Droid, 6mb/5mb
6.) Motorola Razr, 6mb/5mb

Now I know that certain conditions affect the speed but there were taken at the same place and time of day at my home. The charge always had super fast download speeds regardless and its clear that Verizon updated the modems on the other phones to slow the speeds down. I just put my old sim card into my Charge and did a speed test, 27mb down/9mb up. After that I placed the sim card back into my HTC Rezound 16mb/6mb. Something is different in the charge that allows it to connect faster. That being said the Rezound is still much better than the other phones(aside from the charge) but in this case my Charge is king.

3G Data and Voice at the same time...Yes the HTC Rezound and the LG Spectrum support this so you can tell your friends at AT&T to shut the hell up about simultaneous voice and data. None of the other phones can do it and I must say that up at my camp we have no 4G LTE so its nice to be tethered to my laptop while I'm there and able to take a phone call as well.

I could say more but that is really it if you get this phone be sure to check out the XDA community there are some really cool mods you can do to the phone like uncompressed camera and video records. It makes a huge difference and puts the pictures and videos recorded on the phone in a class of there own.

Updated on Apr 27, 2012

I know people will ask how did you get some many phones in a short 1 year span...Easy I paid dearly cash wise.

I had bought the iPhone 4 in February for $199 as I was up for an upgrade after a few months I started getting bored with it so in July I bought the Droid Charge for full retail which cost $600 after tax. Thankfully iPhones really hold there value so I was able to sell my iPhone on Craigslist for $550 so selling the iPhone nearly covered the cost of the phone (if I ignore the $200 I initially spend on the iphone that is)

I still have my Samsung Charge because it wouldn't sell for very much on eBay given its age and single coreness. So I keep it as a spare in case I should need it. The Droid Bionic I got right when it came out I paid full retail for it somewhere around $630 after tax. I sold that on ebay for $500 4 weeks later (The Pentile screen sucked so bad and it was super buggy) so after I paid ebay and payal I ended up loosing $180.

Updated on Apr 27, 2012

I then went and purchased the Droid Razr when it came out on 11/11 (easy to remember) I should have just waited and never bought the Bionic since the Razr came out like a month later but I was foolish. I paid full retail again which came to $640 I liked this phone but again the Pentile Screen bothered me and the lack of an extended battery required me to carry around a charger at all times. I was super pissed when they released the Droid Razr Maxx shortly afterwords as I would have rather had that for the extended battery. That pushed me over the edge so right before christmas I decided to sell the Razr on eBay so that I could by the Razr Maxx. The phone sold on ebay for a measly $395 after I paid ebay fees and payal I ended up taking a huge $295 loss thank god my wife didn't know about that.

Updated on Apr 27, 2012

So I walked into the Verizon store on December 20th with the intention of buying a Droid Razr Maxx well instead I was introduced to the shinny new Samsung Galaxy Nexus after playing with Android 4.0 and seeing the 720p display I decided to buy that instead. Again I paid full retail and this was the most expensive one of the bunch I paid $700 to get this phone and finally I was like this will be a great phone. Again battery life wasn't all that great and the camera really sucked. With two young children I am always taking photos so I needed one that really worked. I also hated the on screen buttons and the slow GPS. So you guessed it in February I decided to once again list it on ebay it sold for only $350 even less than my Razr so after I paid all the ebay fees and paypal fees I ended up taking a loss of $400 my biggest loss to date. It was then that I got smarter about things I noticed that people were paying a lot loss on ebay for phones if you waited a month after a release

Updated on Apr 27, 2012

So in February I looked on eBay and saw the LG Spectrum 4G phone from a person listed at $225 I bought it since it was a 4G phone and I wanted to see what a true 720p screen looked like. I got the phone and it was pretty good but the LG skin overlay was really horrible and there was no XDA development for it so I was kinda stuck. I was able to root it but nothing more there were no custom roms available at the time but overall it was a good phone. The thing that annoyed me was no dedicated search button which I use alot. Also the headset was hard to ear unless you were in a certain sweet spot. I then saw a commercial for the Rezound and become curious. After looking on XDA and seeing that there were tons of ICS roms and that the phone also had a true 720p screen and beats audio I decided to sell the Spectrum, I was able to get $250 for it on ebay last month so I only took a $47 dollar loss this time around.

Updated on Apr 27, 2012

I was able to purchase the Rezound on ebay last month for $275 and that included a mint condition phone, extended battery, standard battery, case for standard battery, and a case for the exteneded battery as well as the iBeats headphones(lots of sells kept these and didn't include them)

So far this has been the best phone I have every had it works well and has not let me down.

So in total I have spend $1,397 over the past year to obtain the 5 Android phones, its been a hell of an experience I wish they held there value like the iPhone but that's another story all around.

My advice wait a month or so after a phone comes out then buy it on eBay or Craigslist if its an Android Device the price will have dropped by hundreds at that point

In total I spent

Updated on Sep 7, 2012

So its now September and the Rezound is still going strong. The official ICS update was much appreciated but I will say that my battery life is not nearly as good but that could be my battery ageing as well. I hear the battery life goes down by 20% a year and my battery is 2 months shy of a year old.