Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “HTC Droid DNA: Revisited!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here – and this is that 1080p phone – it’s the droid dna now when it first came out a couple of months ago. Actually, i didn’t give it a whole lot of attention and i actually didn’t do any videos on it, because i was so enthralled in the galaxy note 2., but now that i’ve come back to it and i’ve spent a lot more time with it over the past Couple of weeks, i’ve gotten to know it a lot better and, to be honest, it’s really worth taking another look at so without any further ado. This is the droid dna revisited. So when it was announced, htc made a big deal about how this is not a phablet. Like the galaxy note 2 that i carried and to be honest, they feel completely totally separate, very different devices, so htc is totally right.
These are not competing for the same customers. These are not competing in the same form, factor space and having big hands. I tend to use the galaxy note 2 with one hand, but for most people this is a two-handed device with this. For me, it’s still a one-handed device, so again they’re very, very different, and they almost they just feel different in the hand as well.
Considering that the note 2 is made of all plastic and the galaxy note, 2 doesn’t feel anything like the droid dna, which is all a unibody feel polycarbonate back very, very well sealed in just if anything, the build quality is one of the most impressive reasons to Get this phone, so let’s talk about that build quality. Shall we this guy is a beast when it comes to build first of all, it’s made of all glass and metal and on the back it’s this polycarbonate, which is, i guess, a fancy word for hardened plastic, but it feels really good. It’S a soft touch back now on the front as you’ll see it’s a it’s sort of curved around the edges here, so it feels like the entire thing is one just sheet of glass and you never really encounter any seams and the entire device is sealed. In now that does mean you can’t upgrade the battery or swap out batteries or use external storage, and you can only access the micro sim by using that sim card ejector tool on the top, but other than that.
It’S all sealed in for good reason and that allows them to have this sort of a prism shaped, look where they stack the internals inside the phone in a sort of a pyramid, and that gives them extra space for a larger battery. A 2020 milliamp hour battery i’ll get to that in a second, and it also has you know a high-end camera. Eight megapixel camera has a qualcomm snapdragon s4 pro inside and all all kind of wrapped into a pretty uh compact package, but in terms of pure quality.
Everything about this is high-end from the power button on the top to the volume rocker on the side to the capacitive buttons to the red speaker, grille on the side, the metal ring around the camera on the back. All of this screams quality, except the beats logo. On the back that that does not scream quality at all, so overall i’d say i prefer the design and the build of this phone to the galaxy note.
2.. Now i do happen to like the screen size of the note 2 better, but i got ta say that this this next thing, i’m about to talk about the 1080p display, is the killer feature on this phone and we all expected that it’s the droid dna. It’S that 1080p phone in the united states. This was the first iteration and i got ta say this is the best display on any mobile device period better than the iphone better than the note 2. better than the galaxy s3 better than any other displays available. At least in the united states that you can get this happens to be on verizon, but if you want an international version, it’s called the j butterfly, it’s not red and black, but it’s also got that 1080p display.
Now it’s kind of started this first wave of other 1080p devices that we’re going to see, for example, the sony sperry z that i showed you guys from ces. That’S a 5 inch 1080p display the zte grand s. That’S a 5 inch 1080p display and i’m probably going to go ahead and put my money saying that the galaxy s4 is going to be a 5 inch 1080p display. So this is the first one in the united states that has that so with that resolution and that size that gives it a pixel density of 441 ppi and a lot of people like to say, oh you’ll, never see the difference between that and the iphones right.
In the display is this display all that it’s cracked up to be? Yes, it is all that is cracked up to be, and you absolutely can see the difference watching. Videos, gaming, the overall media experience the preview when taking pictures with the camera. Everything you see on the display is really really sharp and crisp, and also it happens to be extremely bright. I didn’t really realize how dim the amoled displays are in the galaxy s3 and the note 2 until i took this guy outside and pumped up the brightness and it looks like i’m indoors, you can see everything perfectly legibly, it’s very visible, so i got ta say The brightness was really impressive.
Viewing angles were also extremely impressive. If you check out the viewing angles, you can pretty much say uh that you can read anything from probably almost 90 degrees on this phone. So, overall, this is a great display and it makes this phone worth buying in almost every category. That being said, can this phone push all these pixels? Well, the also answer to that is yes, i didn’t really find any performance hiccups, especially with htc sense.
You know it’s not stock android, but it is android 4.1, but you know sense kind of does its thing. You know people like htc sense that have been using htc phones before this and uh you’ll be used to it. You’Ll find yourself right at home if you’ve used an htc phone before the performance is pretty smooth, especially the notification bar. I found that that was like extremely fast, really really responsive when i was pulling it down actually more so than the galaxy note 2. But i really did like that. The performance of this phone is pretty fast. It also has a qualcomm snapdragon s4 pro inside, so you would expect it to be pretty good. Performer you’d also expect it to have good battery life.
It doesn’t. The droid dna has a 2020 milliamp hour battery inside. To put that into perspective. The galaxy s3 has a 2100 milliamp hour battery and the galaxy note 2 has a 3 100 milliamp hour battery.
So a 2020 milliamp hour battery is a lot closer to the days of the one-year-old galaxy nexus, which had an 1800 milliamp hour. So it’s not the biggest battery in the world and you’re also pushing 1080p display and a snapdragon s4 pro quad-core, 1.5 gigahertz processor. I was charging it at 3 p.m.
Every day this is the the worst thing about this phone is the droid dna has a terrible battery life now that doesn’t matter for a lot of people who might find themselves near a charger all the time, but you got ta. I don’t want to recommend this phone just because the battery life is so bad. If you do have multiple chargers, you can bring them with you.
Also. This doesn’t support wireless charging, but it’s also sealed in so you can’t replace the battery. So you can’t carry a spare battery, so it really depends on having a plug and a charger wherever you go. That’S the killer feature on this phone in the bad way of killer. It’S got a terrible battery life other than that when i come from other phones like the note 2 and s3 to come to this phone, you notice a lot of the little things besides the incredibly great build quality. I noticed a lot of the software features that were different.
For example, the multitasking that they changed is just very bad. It takes up a whole entire full screen app. It has a notification bar, but you can only see one app at a time and you can only close one app at a time where, with regular android, you can see like five or six. So i don’t know why they did that.
I hope they can. At least adjust that so you can see more apps with htc senses, multi-app preview other than that uh beats audio is some kind of weird gimmick. Uh i had headphones plugged in and if i turn beats audio on it, just kind of turned up the volume. A little bit bumped up the bass a little bit kind of like an equalizer.
I also was using bluetooth headphones with these and i turned beats audio on and it did the same thing. So clearly, it’s not an internal hardware thing. It’S just changing an eq. It’S and they call it beats audio.
I don’t know in terms of optimized apps, that’s a pretty important thing which apps take advantage of a 1080p display. Well, obviously, not every app does but apps that use a lot of text and apps that show a lot of video and images are going to look awesome things like flipboard, your twitter apps, your browsers. They all look great. So i was using chrome beta and i use a falcon pro still for twitter and those look extremely sharp, especially with the text in the media previews. So i can definitely say that the apps that might not be optimized that just happen to use a lot of text and elements and things like that. Still look great icons.
Also look great. It doesn’t have the same problem as the nexus 10, where you know tablet. Apps are lacking, and it has a 2560 by 1600 display, but you’ll notice that it does look a lot sharper when using apps on the screen. But my conclusion on the droid dna is that this is a bit of a mixed bag.
It’S obviously got a bunch of great features. An awesome display a great build quality, but then it has that awful battery life, that kind of kills the entire package, and you can go ahead and add this phone to a long list of devices that have all. But awesome specs for just one thing on the list is bad, for example, the nexus 4.. A lot of people love that phone great budget great, build quality, great os, no lte! You know a lot of people will love the galaxy.
Note. 2 great. You know battery life great display, huge display, awesome, apps s, pen features, but it’s too big. So there are a lot of phones that kind of fall short on one particular thing this phone’s critical pad thing about it is the battery life, so just know that if you’re going to get into this, that’s where you’re gon na have to be wary of that.
Being said, i’ve got a video for you, guys that will probably blow you away coming up next, because it’s kind of the daddy of this phone so puts this phone to shame so stay tuned. For that make sure you subscribe, if you haven’t already and click that, like button below, if you enjoyed thank you for watching and i’ll catch, you guys in the next article peace you .