Motorola Triumph review (Virgin Mobile)

Given the large screen, we're happy to note that the Triumph supports HD video playback at 720p and that the device has an HDMI-out port so that you can watch your videos on a big-screen television if you like. The phone has the default Android music player built in, and supports an array of different formats that include AAC, AAC+, WMA, and MP3. The phone comes with a 2GB microSD card, but can work with cards of up to 32GB.

You can capture 720p HD with the Triumph's 5-megapixel camera. If you don't want such a high resolution, the camera also lets you record in D1, WVGA, VGA, CIF, QVGA, and QCIF resolutions. You can encode the video in MPEG4, H.263, or H.264 format, and in 30-second (for MMS), 10-minute, or 30-minute durations. You can even record video with the front-facing VGA camera if you like, but of course the quality won't be as good. Other video settings include color effects, which are also available with the still camera.

Indeed, the still camera has a whole lot of different settings. They include autofocus, several resolutions, three quality settings, ISO settings, center-weighted and spot metering, anti-banding, saturation, contrast, sharpness, brightness, white balance, up to 4x zoom, flash, and a shutter sound toggle.

Photo quality was pretty good. Images looked sharp, and colors were decent, if slightly dull. The camera was a bit slow to focus, and low-light photos were a little dimmer than we would like. Photos taken with flash looked a little better, but they do tend to be a little more washed-out. Video quality was quite good, but the audio was poor and had a rather tinny quality.

Performance
We tested the Motorola Triumph in San Francisco using Virgin Mobile. Call quality was decent but not without flaws. For example, we had to increase the volume to the max in order to hear what our callers were saying. Once we did, we could hear them pretty clearly, albeit with slightly muddy voice quality.

On their end, callers said we sounded good too, but reported a similar fuzzy voice-quality issue. Still, we managed to carry on a conversation without difficulty and there was very little static or background interference. Speakerphone calls were good, without much of an echo effect.

Motorola Triumph call quality sample Listen now:

Since Virgin Mobile uses Sprint's network for its EV-DO Rev. A connection, we experienced decent speeds in the city. We loaded the mobile CNET page in around 35 seconds while the full CNET site loaded in 1 minute and 16 seconds. It did experience a few seconds of buffering when streaming high-quality YouTube clips, but once they loaded, the videos played without hiccups.

The Triumph's 1GHz Snapdragon processor in combination with the phone's clean Android interface resulted in a very zippy navigation experience. Apps loaded very quickly and multitasking felt snappy. The Maps app launched instantly, as did the camera and browser. The Triumph is as quick as most dual-core phones we've tried.

The Motorola Triumph has a rated battery life of 8.3 hours of talk time and 12.5 days of standby time. According to FCC radiation tests, the Motorola Triumph has a digital SAR of 1.09 watts per kilogram.

Conclusions
While the Motorola Triumph may not be the best Android phone on the market, it's definitely the best prepaid Android handset we've ever seen. With its stunning 4.1-inch display, clean interface, fantastic multimedia feature set, and great performance, the Triumph is certainly the top smartphone of Virgin Mobile's current lineup. Yes, the Triumph is pricey at $299.99, but Virgin Mobile offers it without a contract along with plans that start as low as $25 a month for unlimited text and data plus 300 voice minutes. The low monthly plans make the Triumph well worth it, especially if you're keen on having a prepaid phone.

Editors' note: July 29, 2011: This review was updated with information about the Triumph's built-in music player.