The ATRIX HD LTE, or the Atrix 3 to those averse to acronym-heavy names, equates to a list of firsts for Motorola: its first device with a 720p screen; its first with LTE connectivity; its first with on-screen buttons (besides the recently-released RAZR V); and its first with Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s also the company’s best smartphone by far, and one of my favourite devices of the year. What makes the ATRIX HD LTE so good? Read on to find out.

Specs:

- Android 4.0.4 with custom Motorola skin
- 4.5-inch 1280 x 720 pixel TFT LCD display with ColorBoost
- 1.5Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor
- 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage (5GB usable), microSD slot
- 8MP back camera with flash, 1.3MP front-facing camera
- WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, WiFi Direct
- 69.9 x 133.5 x 8.4 mm
- 140g
- EDGE/HSPA+/LTE
- 1780mAh battery

Design

The ATRIX HD LTE bears little resemblance to its namesake. Rather, it takes cues from the existing RAZR line and looks far more like the Rogers-released RAZR XT910 than the Bell-released MB860. We like this: the Atrix, which is 8.4mm at its thinnest point, is comfortable and well-constructed without being oversized.

It’s not a striking handset by any means — while there is a satisfying symmetry on the phone’s face, the bezel is larger than most modern handsets, reminding us once again that Motorola is focused more on function than form. The TFT screen, too, likely keeps the device a millimetre or so thicker than its AMOLED-festooned peers, but the vividness of its colours and sharpness of its text is something to behold.

The Atrix has rounder edges and less harsh angles than its Kevlar-equipped brethren which makes it, in my opinion, a more mature-looking device. High-quality components prevail throughout: the Atrix uses a much more rigid, higher-quality plastic than the recently-reviewed RAZR V, and the right-side power button is subtly textured for optimized sightless operation. On top the the HD has a mini HDMI port, microUSB port and 3.5mm headphone jack; the left side has a small latch that opens to reveal the microSD and microSIM slots. Yes, thankfully the Atrix HD uses a microSIM.

The advantage of being comparatively thicker than the RAZR is that the Atrix suffers less from “reverse chin disease.” While the camera module protrudes slightly and converges with the battery cover in a gentle curve, the transition is not stark, nor does it alter the balance of the device in the hand. This was one of my main complains about the RAZR, being thin for thinness sake. Unfortunately the Atrix is not equipped with a larger-than-average battery, but the 1780mAh non-removable cell is treated kindly by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 SoC with integrated LTE.

Display

Motorola’s first HD display, equipped with on-screen navigation buttons, is stunning. While not an OLED part, blacks are Super LCD-deep and text is some of the sharpest I’ve seen from a mobile display. At 4.5-inches, its pixel density is higher than the HTC One X and Galaxy S III, though by virtue of its TFT roots the screen is more recessed than those handsets. This is due to the LCD being separate from the glass; Super AMOLED and Super LCD screens fuse the LCD, digitizer and glass together for an impression much closer to the surface.

The digitizer on the Atrix is not quite as sensitive as I’m used to. Occasionally when scrolling down a webpage or an email, a slight brush of the screen would activate a link or fail to register my touch altogether; the screen must be acquitted more firmly. Viewing angles, too, fail to impress compared to the two aforementioned devices, but that’s where the downsides end.

Colours are vivid, making media a pleasure to view or watch on the device. Despite calls of oversaturation from other reviewers, I found the calibration to be close to perfect on our testing unit. Text is some of the sharpest I’ve seen from a mobile display and whites were accurate. Auto-brightness worked as expected, and levels adjusted smoothly as lighting changed in the room. While not the easiest device to use in sunlight, it blew past the Galaxy S III in our outdoor viewing tests.

It must also be noted that, aside from the Galaxy Nexus, this is the most powerful device released in Canada with on-screen buttons. While not for everyone — Samsung and HTC have ensured users won’t get too comfortable with the virtual menu button — as more developers add support for Android’s 4.0+ Holo guidelines, Motorola stands to benefit the most from this extra real estate. Having those virtual buttons, which disappear when watching video such as Bell Mobile TV, is a huge advantage over comparable devices, and proves that Google was in the right by changing the way we interact with our navigation buttons in Ice Cream Sandwich.

Performance & Software

The Atrix HD LTE is equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 SoC clocked at 1.5Ghz. This is the same chip used in the North American HTC One X and Galaxy S III and holds up extremely well to benchmarks and day-to-day performance. Due to the relative light-weight nature of Motorola’s skin — it’s as close to stock as any manufacturer is likely to offer without removing features — the Atrix’s build of ICS feels faster than any other device on the market, including the Galaxy S III.

As we move away from our emphasis on benchmarks which do not positively convey how a device feels in everyday use, I will emphasize that the Atrix can and does handle anything you throw at it. While it doesn’t have four cores, nor the fastest graphics processor on the market, there was never a time I found myself saying, ‘I wish this was faster’. The reason we’re moving away from using benchmarks as a gauge for smartphone performance? Despite blazing performance in all the apps and games we tested, its scores (for example Quadrant seen above) were 10-15% lower than the Galaxy S III and One X.

The new launcher embedded in Motorola’s build of Android 4.0.4 resembles stock Android in many ways, including the ability to easily create folders and swipe away notifications, but the company has gone a step further and integrated some pretty useful features that go far beyond what Android was built to do.

The launcher may look like stock ICS, but a few of Motorola’s first-party app icons — Phone, Email, Browser, Messages, Email — have a little arrow near the top right. Flicking up on the icon reveals a mini widget that overlays atop the screen, allowing you to scroll through missed calls, emails, text messages and browser bookmarks. It proved to be a handy and often-used feature, and proves just how versatile Android can be.

And the homescreen layout has been tweaked a bit: new pages are added to the far right, and Motorola has included some templates to accomodate new users. The four-icon dock is customizable, too, but you’re always welcome to install a custom launcher such as Nova or Apex if stock isn’t up to snuff.

There’s also SmartActions, which we spoke about in our RAZR V review. They do a good job at automating some of the most arduous tasks one would think to perform on a smartphone, such as time- and location-based silencing of your ringer, or turning off certain radios such as WiFi or GPS when not in use. This version goes further than last year’s sending suggestions at certain intervals which you can choose to activate or ignore. I found battery life improved significantly after turning on the Low Battery Saver option, though I wish the phone was NFC-enabled as Smart Actions would be great with SmartTags.

Overall, you’re unlikely to be disappointed with the version of Android Motorola has put together. It’s the closest to stock Ice Cream Sandwich we’ve ever seen on a shipping device and all alterations to the interface are improvements. The phone does have a few pieces of bloatware from Bell and Motorola, but they can be disabled by going into Settings/Apps. The HD screen is really great for Mobile TV, if your plan gives you access to it.

The one issue I had with the software is the constant ‘Bell’ logo in the notification bar. It’s a constant reminder that the Atrix is a Bell exclusive, and takes up much-needed space at the top of the screen.

Camera

Here’s where things get a bit muddled. While the Atrix takes decent photos, it’s not nearly up to the standards set by the iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S III. And we mean not even close. For some reason Motorola can’t quite get its stuff together when it comes to sourcing decent sensors and lenses, and while the user interface is positively overhauled, and the speed at which you can take photos is fantastic, the end results are often far less impressive.

The Snapdragon S4 chip allows for 5-shot burst mode and an instant shutter, so if it’s speed you’re worried about, don’t fret. Shots taken in good quality light tend to have a blueish tinge to them, as if the software can’t quite figure out the proper white balance. Detail is plentiful in those scenarios, with only a slight amount of grain or distortion. Move inside, or dim the lights, however, and you’re met with Mr. Grain in large doses, and he doesn’t taste very good.

The phone’s 1080p video quality is moderate at best, and suffers from softness and grain. Captured audio is good — better than on most smartphones — but is still not nearly usable for anything other than sharing the occasional clip on YouTube. We’re not at a point yet where, despite the purported “HD quality” of captured video, smartphones can be used for anything other than casual life journaling.

Battery Life

Again, decent. While we were hoping for a RAZR MAXX-style 3000+ mAh battery in the Atrix HD, the device had no trouble lasting through the day. LTE is still a considerable battery drain, but the Snapdragon S4 processor is one of the most efficient chips on the market and we rarely worried about the device dying on us.

That’s not to see we didn’t encounter some strange battery issues. On one particularly vexing streetcar ride, I yanked the device out of my pocket after discovering it had reached a temperature close enough to burning my skin. There were no open apps or processes that I could tell — some demon in the background was keeping the CPU at 100% utilization, knocking off around 1% of battery life per minute. A restart fixed the problem, but I still don’t know what caused the erratic behaviour. This happened several times over the course of a few days, despite a careful consideration of which third-party apps I had installed on the device.

Nonetheless, I was able to keep the device on and operating for around 16 hours on a regular day, surfing the web, answering emails, making phone calls, tweeting, ‘booking, and ‘gramming (that’s Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for those not in the know). With less intense use, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Atrix surviving nearly two days on a single charge, especially with assiduous use of Battery Saving features.

Note that in the Power Menu (when you hold down the power button for a second) there is an option to enter into Sleep mode, which is great for movies or other activities when you don’t want your phone to be on and using battery, but want quick access to it after the fact.

Network Speeds, Call Quality & More

As with most newer LTE devices, regardless of carrier, network speeds on the Atrix were astounding. We averaged around 30Mbps down and 23Mbps up, and achieved over 35/30 in some tests. Over HSPA+ the device was markedly slower but still blazing fast (and easier on the battery). Such speeds contributed to instant page loads, effortless app downloads and wait-free streaming on services such as Netflix, Bell Mobile TV and more.

Call quality, as with all Motorola devices, was excellent and above average compared to other OEMs. Some things never change, and in this case it’s a good thing. Audio quality from the headpiece and rear speakers were excellent and good, respectively, though maximum volume could have been higher on both.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the phone’s reception. Inside a room with thick walls in a small Ontario town, I laid a Galaxy S III (LTE), a new iPad and the Atrix HD LTE next to one another. The two former devices had 2-3 bars of HSPA+ — this was well outside LTE range — while the Motorola struggled to keep a signal at all. When in downtown Toronto, or a place with plentiful 1900Mhz signal, the Atrix maintained full bars of LTE or HSPA+, but keep this in mind if you live in a region of mediocre Bell service and plan to purchase this device.

Conclusions

The ATRIX HD LTE is one of my favourite Android devices of the moment, and speaks to how Motorola has been constantly listening to its customers. Not only has the company opened a bootloader unlock service for developers and custom ROM creators, but they have pared back many of the MOTOBLUR software quirks that irked Motorola loyalists since the original Milestone.

This particular phone is neither complicated nor prophetic. It sits comfortably in the realm of “near-the-top” Android devices with a three-year term price far below that of most of its competitors. Indeed, I prefer Motorola’s no-frills software to Samsung’s overwrought and garish TouchWIZ on the Galaxy S III. And while the latter’s software may have the edge in terms of design, battery life and camera quality, the Atrix has a denser, sharper screen, virtual navigation buttons and a competitive price. It achieves so much because it doesn’t come off as trying too hard.

The ATRIX HD LTE is available for $49.95 on a three-year term or $599.95 outright, exclusively from Bell.

Motorola hasn’t made too much noise since the release of the revamped Rogers-exclusive RAZR in November. Now, nine months later, the RAZR V hits the market on Bell and Virgin for a significantly more affordable price in a body that makes some concessions to achieve it. In many ways this is the same phone that Motorola released last year — internally and externally — but stands on its own with a great new build of Ice Cream Sandwich and a more compact design. Is it worth your time and money? Read on to find out.

Specs

- Android 4.0.4 with (slightly) custom Motorola skin
- 4.3-inch 960×540 TFT display with ColorBoost
- 1.2Ghz dual-core TI OMAP 4430 SoC
- 1GB RAM, 4GB internal storage, microSD slot
- 8MP back camera with flash, 0.3MP front-facing camera
- WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, FM Radio
- 65.8 x 128.5 x 8.35 mm
- 125g

Design & Display

The RAZR V definitely resembles the original with its angular face, sloping Kevlar backing and chrome accents, but Motorola has certainly toned down the quality of materials. While the RAZR V by no means feels cheap, there is a definite plasticky aspect to it that was absent on the premium-feeling RAZR.

The RAZR V is also some 5mm narrower than the sometimes-unwieldy RAZR, and it feels much more comfortable in the hand as a result. The screen, too, while on paper the same as the RAZR — a 4.3-inch display at 960×540 pixels — is somewhat sharper and less distracting than its predecessor. Instead of going the Super AMOLED route, Motorola opted for a traditional TFT LCD display, making text significantly sharper and whites much more accurate. While it loses the deep blacks and lovely colour saturation that comes with a Super AMOLED screen, we did not miss the RAZR’s moiré aberrations and distinct lack of sharpness.

While the device, at around 8.4mm thick, does not come close to the impossibly thin dimensions of its predecessor, we think Motorola made the right move for the end user. It’s more compact overall, which makes it feel like a smaller handset despite being 1.3mm thicker than the RAZR.

Note that the RAZR V uses a regular-sized SIM over a microSIM, and shares a latch door with the microSD slot on the left hand side. The volume rocker is nicely delineated on the right, and the power button, headset jack and microUSB port sit flush on the top.

Performance & Software

As the RAZR V uses largely the same internal hardware as the Rogers version released last year, we weren’t expecting any performance miracles. Motorola has done a lot with the software, however, and this is not your mother’s MOTOBLUR. The version we see on the RAZR V, which runs Android 4.0.4, resembles in many ways the stock Ice Cream Sandwich experience. While transitions between homescreens are not quite as smooth as those on the Galaxy Nexus, we felt right at home navigating around the menus.

The RAZR V uses Texas Instrument’s aging OMAP 4430 processor clocked at 1.2Ghz, with 1GB RAM and 4GB internal storage. It’s also limited to Bell’s HSPA+ network at 14.4Mbps, but many of these things are built into the price. Still, considering the ATRIX HD LTE is only $20 more on the same Bell network and offers a better array of internal hardware and software, we’d be inclined to recommend that one over the RAZR V. If you’re insistant on the smaller form factor, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the spritely app load times, total lack of lagginess when scrolling through the browser, and a stability that could only have come from Motorola.

The company’s SmartActions have been updated for ICS, and now provide recommendations based on usage patterns. For example, the device can keep track of your favourite locations or times of day and, based on your battery life, enable a Battery Saving mode. Similarly, if you tend to go to bed every night around midnight, you can have SmartActions enable Silent Mode and suppress the screen from turning on during the night if you receive a notification.

Motorola has also added a four-way lockscreen shortcut system that provides easy access to the camera, phone and messaging. But perhaps the most notable admission of Motorola’s integration into Google’s corporate culture is the inclusion of virtual buttons in place of capacitive ones. Both the RAZR V and ATRIX HD LTE sport the Galaxy Nexus-like on-screen navigation icons, and while they have been slightly altered from stock, they work identically. We couldn’t be happier.

Camera

The 8MP camera on the RAZR V does a decent job at capturing moments in good lighting, but suffers from Motorola’s reliable distortion and softness. That’s not to say the camera is bad — the interface is fantastic, with easy-to-reach granular controls, and the shutter is snappy for a piece of older tech — but it doesn’t reach the heights of other 8MP sensors on the market. With the bar being set so high by the iPhone 4S, Galaxy S III and HTC One X, it’s easy to dismiss the RAZR V as underperforming. But we have to take into account the handset’s price — $399 outright or $29.95 on a 3-year term — and cut it a bit of slack as a result.

The device can also shoot modestly smooth and detailed 1080p video, though again it lacks the sharpness and smoothness of its ATRIX HD LTE sibling. The VGA front-facing camera does a decent job at video chats and vanity shots, but we wouldn’t recommend using it for anything other than a mirror.

Battery Life

SmartActions is supposed to allow your battery to last up to 30% longer than an equivalent device, but we were happy to find that the RAZR V didn’t need it to last a full day. The 1750mAh battery was sufficiently large to see us through most of the day with regular calling, browsing, emailing, photo-ing and more. While the PowerVR SGX540 GPU is no longer the graphical beast it once was, we found it to be pretty light on the battery wallet when playing games or watching video.

We were a bit vexed that Motorola didn’t manage to squeeze in a larger battery — something like the 3300mAh cell of the RAZR MAXX would have been nice — considering all the extra proverbial legroom, but we’d imagine it would have raised the price of the handset considerably. Nevertheless, the juice, coupled with liberal application of battery-oriented SmartActions, should allow for one-day-plus usage from the RAZR V.

Call Quality, Network Speed & Miscellaneous

As with all Motorola phones, the RAZR V is solid as a phone. Call quality is unsurpassed in the industry, with a sharp, clear feed that never sounds muddled or sibilant. Call volume, too, is more than adequate for even the loudest of rooms, and Motorola’s background noise suppression works very well.

Because the RAZR V is a HSPA+ device, it’s network speeds are limited to Bell’s 3G network. We were able to achieve around 4-6Mbps download and 0.5-2Mbps upload depending on the location and time of day. Compared to the newest LTE devices this is nothing to write home about, but we were pretty pleased with the performance overall.

Bell and Motorola have bundled a number of apps on the RAZR V, including some business-oriented services such as Citrix GoToMeeting and Receiver. There’s also a full version of Gameloft’s Asphalt 6 and Bell’s Mobile TV app, among others. Because the platform has been upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, you can now disable unwanted apps, which is the next best thing to being able to uninstall them.

Conclusions

The Bell Motorola RAZR V is a good little smartphone at a decent price. Because its bigger brother, the ATRIX HD LTE, is priced so closely — just $20 more  than the RAZR’s $29.95 on a 3-year term — we can’t fully endorse it unless you’re buying it outright. At $399.95, it’s an excellent deal if you’re looking to go off-contract and want an all-round high-performing handset with a great screen, good battery life and a solid, close-to-stock operating system.

At $99.95 on a three-year term, the Bolt is not necessarily aimed at you or me. But for the truck driver, construction worker or basically any business that formerly relied on TELUS’ deprecated iDEN network, the Bolt is going to change lives. Let’s take a closer look.

A Rugged Design Philosophy

The Bolt is not a pretty phone, but it has its own sense of style. The fierce angles, yellow accents and messy symmetry scream “rugged,” which is exactly what the Bolt is going for.  Its incredibly thick chassis makes it one of the toughest phones in the world.

Like all Sonim products, the Bolt abides by the company’s Rugged Performance Standards qualifications, which means that it is practically indestructible. The video embedded above should provide sufficient proof of that, but there are some other aspects of the Bolt that makes it especially attractive as a workhorse phone.

First, it cannot be punctured; you can take an axe to the phone and it’s unlikely to make a dent. It’s impervious to extreme pressure and temperatures, making it perfect for mining work. For those who work outdoors, it is dust-, shock- and water-proof and scratch resistant. It will not be damaged by liquid or oil; it is incredibly loud, able to be heard above the din of sustained construction work. And, if you do break it for whatever reason, the company will replace it no-questions-asked in the first three years.

The phone’s layout is fairly simple: it has a standard number pad near the bottom of the phone, with a set of Call, End, Menu and directional buttons above. All these buttons are wonderfully responsive, and are guaranteed not to break for the life of the phone. On the left side is the dedicated push-to-talk button, and on the right is a camera button/flashlight; hold down the button to activate the flashlight, and press it once while the screen is on to open the camera app. There is a 2MP camera on the back side of the device.

Ports are interesting on the Bolt, since CEO Bob Plaschke claims that the traditional microUSB port is too difficult to ruggedize, opening the phone up to weakness. Instead, they opted to use a port similar in size to a 3.5mm headphone jack, which converts to a USB cord on the other end. This can be used to charge the phone or plug it into a computer for data transfer. The flashlight is incredibly bright, and can be used in place of a traditional torch in an emergency.

The screen measures 2-inches and has a relatively low 240×320 pixels, but its main advantage is a 2mm thick piece of Gorilla Glass that is all but impervious to breaks.

Push to Talk and Talk and…

One of the most attractive features of the Sonim Bolt is its one-touch deployment and activation of push-to-talk. Bell is rolling out a data-based service that provides sub-one second call initiations, and millisecond response times, all over its well-established HSPA+ network. This provides speeds up to 7.2Mbps (on this particular phone, 21Mbps in general) making the Bolt a far more versatile device than any iDEN product ever was.

The button on the left side of the device activates the push-to-talk function, connecting to Bell’s data network. The PTT list is separate from your main phone book, allowing IT departments to distribute number lists easily. You can easily see who is or is not online based on a green icon next to the person’s number. As opposed to traditional phones, there is no “ring” when calling someone; it beeps just like a walkie-talkie. I found call quality to be remarkably good, better than any VoIP call. It’s clear that Bell has prioritized the traffic here to ensure minimal latency with a very high quality audio codec.

The other aspect of the phone that allows for seamless calling mostly anywhere is that its relatively thick housing incorporates much larger antennas than most smartphones; I had five bars of Bell signal in areas that my various Android phones could only muster one or two.

Software — what software?

The Sonim Bolt is not a smartphone. Nor is it trying to be. Plaschke assured us that a rugged Android Sonim phone is coming soon, but in the meantime the Bolt is powered by a lightweight, responsive Java-based operating system that does the basics and not much more.

It comes with “apps” such as Bell’s Telenav-powered GPS Navigator (separate monthly charge) as well as a rudimentary WAP browser that we’d recommend staying away from unless you have a very high tolerance for frustration. It has a music player, calendar, calculator and a number of other “tools” you’d find on most low-cost phones today.

Battery Lifesaver & Superhero Call Quality

The Bolt comes with a huge 2000mAh battery that promises nearly over a month of standby time. Talk time is a massive 12 hours, and PTT uptime is even longer. It’s unlikely you’ll be charging the Bolt every day, nor every second day. If you end up using it as a “regular” phone, barring hours-long conversations it will probably last a week before having to be recharged.

Call quality on the Bolt, through either the incredibly loud speaker or the headpiece, is about as crisp as I’ve ever heard on a phone. Perhaps it’s because Sonim focused on making the Bolt a phone first but it speaks, ahem, volumes about how far down the list call quality has become to smartphone vendors.

World Record

Last year, the Sonim XP3300 Force was declared the “Toughest Phone in the World” by the Guiness Book of Records, a feat that was accomplished by dropping the phone 25 metres/82 feet onto concrete with no operational damage whatsoever.

It has also been submerged in an antifreeze mixture, embedded in concrete and, most impressively, almost blended.

Conclusions

The Sonim Bolt is not for everyone, nor is it for most people. But there is a huge unspoken subset of Canadians that work in dangerous environments that could benefit from the Sonim Bolt, and from Bell’s new Push-To-Talk network.

For more information, check out the Sonim Bolt at Bell Mobile Business.

Since then, three things have happened: 1) It received an upgrade to Gingerbread, which completely overhauled its software and gave it a huge performance boost. 2) Its bootloader was unlocked, allowing for custom ROMs, kernels and recoveries. 3) It’s been surpassed time and time again by its competitors, including some more recent Motorola devices.

But to its credit the Atrix, with its 4″ qHD display, 1Ghz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage and huge 1930mAh battery, has survived the onslaught of time pretty well.

First, let’s go over what has held up well. Since its launch every major ARM-based manufacturer, from Qualcomm to Texas Instruments to Samsung, has released a dual-core solution. And even NVIDIA’s own Tegra 2, with which the Atrix was the first to launch in phone form, is about to be supplanted by the quad-core Tegra 3. But dual-core 1Ghz still feels fast, and using the Atrix now is not a significant step down from the latest Snapdragon or OMAP.

This is aided by the fact that the Atrix included 1GB of RAM when the rest of the industry was pumping out phones with half that number. Multitasking still feels effortless and fluid. The included 16GB storage has also aged well: there isn’t a single Android phone on the market that ships with more than that.

The Atrix’s speed practically doubled overnight when Bell released the Gingerbread update in August. In truth, though, I installed Android 2.3 long before that, when enterprising hackers unlocked the device’s bootloader and discovered, hidden in plain sight on Motorola’s servers, early builds of the eventual upgrade. Not only was it a big aesthetic change — they did away with most of Froyo’s ugly, blocky design choices — but Motorola injected some magic into the kernel, as the device just flew.

Then came CyanogenMOD7. From being one of the most locked-down devices on the market emerged a piece of versatile hardware that now has a vibrant development community. CM7 changed the way I used the Atrix, giving it the same enormous feature set as the other 50+ handsets supported by the custom ROM.

And, whether you’re running a custom stock-based ROM or CM7, various kernel improvements have helped developers push the capabilities of the 1930mAh battery to unbelievable levels. The Atrix is still, by far, the longest-lasting Android device I’ve ever used. I can easily get two days of use from it.

Physically, the Atrix hasn’t aged so well. Stout even at its release, it feels practically bloated now. We know now the extra girth was needed to accomodate the huge battery, but its plastic body and flimsy battery cover have since been condemned to the “2010 design faux pas” category.

I still think that its 4″ screen size makes for a very comfortable experience —  far better than the 4.3″ – 4.6″ variety. The qHD screen is a slim 16:9 ratio, so the Atrix is easy to hold between two fingers. The quality of the screen, however, leaves a LOT to be desired. This is the area in which Motorola has fallen the farthest behind — even on their latest handset — and after using the Galaxy Nexus and Optimus LTE extensively, the PenTile-inclined Atrix looks practically terrible. With inaccurate colours and poor viewing angles, not to mention practically unreadable text at its furthest zoom, we’re happy these days are behind us.

Moving on, the Atrix is a great phone. No, I mean an actual phone: sound quality from the earpiece and speaker is still best-in-class. Fundamentally, this makes it a mean business phone. It’s got all those great Motorola business features such as built-in certificates and extensive vendor VPN support. And remember, it has that unique fingerprint scanner that has yet to make it, for better or worse, to any other smartphone.

The camera on the Atrix still sucks. That won’t change, and as other manufacturers make improvements to their optics the Atrix will begin looking even worse in comparison. Focus is slow, low-light quality atrocious and photos overall lack detail and colour.

But with the Gingerbread update came a nice bonus: 1080p video recording. Though it took a third-party app to actually capture video at such a high resolution, today we have a phone that captures decent true HD at 24fps.

The Atrix was one of the first Android handsets to come with an HDMI-out port, capable of transmitting a 1080p signal to your home theatre system. And while it came with a Webtop and HDMI dock, sold separately, its built-in HDMI mirroring feature was enough for most people.

The Atrix, nearly a year later, is still going strong. Countless Android handsets have been released since March, boasting improved internal specs, sharper screens and better build quality. But then, as now, Bell’s first superphone still retains many of the qualities that made it such a compelling device to begin with.

There is no masking the truth: lower-end Android phones tend come with lacklustre specs. So when a company releases an affordable, well-made Android phone that has decent specs, people tend to sit up and listen. The LG Optimus One was the first such device, and its follow-up, the LG Optimus Net, continues that tradition.

At $199.95 outright, both post and pre-paid, the Optimus Net takes what made the Optimus One such a popular device and tweaks it just a little. From a 600Mhz processor we move to 800Mhz, from Froyo we move to Gingerbread, while everything else stays the same — 512MB RAM, 3MP camera, 150MB internal storage, 480×320 resolution — keeping the price low.

Obviously the market for this device isn’t the same as someone looking for an iPhone 4S or Galaxy Nexus, but for $200 the Optimus Net is a compelling deal. Read on to find out if it’s right for you.

Specs:

- Android 2.3.4 w/ custom LG skin
- 3.2″ 480×320 pixel screen, 256k colours
- 800Mhz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7227T processor
- 512MB RAM, 120MB internal storage
- 3.2MP camera
- WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth
-  113.5 x 59 x 11.7 mm
- 122g

The Phone

LG has created one of the hardiest entry-level Android devices to date. The Optimus Net is robust and heavy, and at 122g it matches some devices twice the size. Instead of feeling cumbersome it feels secure; this is a device you can easily drop onto concrete, toss in your bag or let your kid play with and not worry about it breaking. That being said there are some areas of the phone, such as the placement of the glass over the camera, that feel haphazardly slapped together.

The phone is also slimmed down quite a bit compared to the rotund profile of the original Optimus One. At 11.7mm the Net can’t be considered thin in today’s world of smartphones, but no one is going to make fun of it for being unsightly.

At 3.2″ and 480×320 pixels, the screen on the Optimus Net is decent. While it only displays 256,000 colours — most modern devices can display millions — for practical use the limitation is only a small hindrance. It does make photos and video appear washed out, though, with sloppy transitions between colours, but you get what you pay for in this regard. More worrisome is the low pixel density. Text suffers greatly from jagged edges and photos from softness.

Screen response, however, seems to be smooth enough. We had problems with keyboard responsiveness, but switching to a third-party keyboard solved the matter. App response was uniformly adequate, with only a slight delay when opening and exiting. Scrolling through web pages was a little more tiresome, as we had to wait often twice as long for it to load than we would on a high-end Android device. Once loaded performance was choppy but manageable; we’d recommend sticking to mobile versions of your favourite sites if possible.

The Optimus Net uses four hardware buttons below the screen for the standard Android functions, and they provide a mix of relief and frustration. It’s nice to have physical feedback to an often-pressed button such as Home or Back; it’s also much harder to accidentally press them if in landscape mode, for example. But the keys are not set precisely, often wobbling in place if hit from the side.

Inside the phone we have around 120MB of internal storage, and Bell bundles a 2GB microSD card for photo and video storage. Note that without such a card you cannot use the camera at all.

Performance

The 800Mhz processor inside the Optimus Net is only a slight speed improvement over the original Optimus One. A versatile and efficient chip, it’s also quite sluggish compared to most modern smartphones, and the only thing it really has going is that it’s inexpensive. That being said, we were not wholly disappointed with the performance of the Optimus Net. Other than an incredibly slow keyboard which could not, under any circumstance, keep up with our key presses, the device took what we threw at it with relative aplomb. Because of the low screen resolution, games like Angry Birds didn’t have to try very hard to run smoothly, while others like Wind-up Knight weren’t even available to download due to the underpowered GPU. Most apps do a fine job scaling down to the 480×320 resolution, but they tend to be squashed together and require a fair amount of scrolling.

Overall performance is what one would expect from a $200 phone. It’s nowhere near the experience of even, say, an original Samsung Galaxy S; its competitors are more like the HTC Wildfire and Samsung Galaxy Gio. While you may be able to do most of the things you would do on a more expensive device, they won’t be done quickly or vividly. If you’re looking for a bare-bones calling/texting/emailing/minimal browsing/seldom gaming device, the Optimus Net is a good option.

From the call quality and speed side of things, the Optimus Net supports 7.2Mbps in the downlink and 5.76Mbps in the uplink, and we netted a cool 2Mbps on average in both directions. Calls sounded quite good and we experienced no dropped calls on Bell’s network.

Camera

The LG Optimus Net has a 3.2MP camera, and in the right setting shots can turn out decently well. We’re not talking high-end optics here — think BlackBerry 9700 circa 2009 — but in the right lighting results are surprising. That being said, these are not pictures you’re likely going to blow up and display on a billboard, and without a flash the Optimus Net suffers from what most similar phones do: a paucity of low-light performance. Colours are washed-out and white balance is completely off: we found the auto-white balance sensor unpredictable, changing from outdoor to tungsten to incandescent without warning. As you can see from the sample photos, results are mixed.

Like on higher-end LG devices, the interface is clean and usable, with easy two-touch navigation for most options. You can adjust ISO and white balance, and add colour effects to suit the mood. Most of the images we took indoors turned out grainy and dark, but the results are to be expected from such an inexpensive device.

On the video side, the Optimus Net can film 640×480 at 30fps, a resolution we wish would die sooner. It suits cat videos on YouTube and very little else, and as processors get quicker we expect 720p to be the minimum resolution, even on low-end devices, before the end of 2012. At least we hope that’s the case.

Battery Life

The Optimus Net, ahem, netted us very good battery life. With a spacious 1500mAh battery doing work much less taxing than similar-sized batteries have to do on high-end Android phones, it wasn’t uncommon to see the three or more days of moderate use from the device. In our standard cat video loop test, we eeked out 12 hours and 14 minutes from the phone, one of the best numbers we’ve seen on Android.

Software

The Optimus Net is dressed up like someone ready for the party, and though it doesn’t quite make the same impression as its big brother, the Optimus 4G LTE it comes with all the same clothes.

Running Android 2.3.4 with a minor-tweaked skin, we device comes with RemoteCall, SmartShare and LG World, along with some Bell additions. The three aforementioned apps are provided by LG and allow for remote technical support, DLNA content sharing, and third-party app downloads, respectively. None of them are essential, and the Bell stuff is pretty fluffy — TV&Radio is the only one of note — but they’re not intrusive.

Moreover, you have access to the Android Marketplace, of which most apps are available for the Optimus Net. Any that aren’t, like most 3D games, have been filtered for the device due to its weak processor, but we had no problems finding 95% of our regular suite of apps.

Conclusions

The Optimus Net is one of the best entry-level Android devices currently available, and should be an easy justification for parents looking to get their kids a smartphone without breaking the bank. For anyone looking at a first-time smartphone, the Optimus Net is a decent choice. However, unless you’re really, really desperate to save money, we’d recommend spending an extra few dollars on a 3-year term, or an extra $100 outright. The performance, app compatibility and additional features and overall experience will be enhanced, something that you’ll dramatically enjoy long term.

The LG Optimus Net is available for $0 on a 3-year term and $199.95 on Bell prepaid, or bought outright. It is also available at Best Buy and Future Shop.

Entry-level Smartphone Rating: 6.5/10

Pros:
- Robust plastic build quality
- Decent speed for the price
- Unobtrusive Android skin
- Runs Gingerbread
- Good battery life

Cons:
- Poor screen resolution and colour quality
- There are faster devices for very little more money
- Underwhelming camera and video quality
- Front plastic buttons feel loose and breakable

The market for BlackBerry clones isn’t as brisk as it once was. Companies like Samsung, Motorola and HTC have, over the years, dabbled in the portrait QWERTY space, outfitting Android with various incarnations of keyboard-specific support. It is no wonder, then, that as BlackBerry releases their own hardware and software update, culminating in the Bold 9900 and BlackBerry 7, these companies would update accordingly.

The Motorola Pro+ runs Android 2.3.5 in an attractive and functional form factor at a price comprable to most BlackBerry Curves. Despite its modest hardware specifications, the Pro+ manages to provide a fully-formed smartphone experience that is at once both business-functional and consumer-friendly. While it won’t give you BBM, it may just be your, or your IT department’s, new phone. Read on to find out why.

Specs 

- Android 2.3.5 w/ custom Motorola skin
- 3.1″ 640×480 pixel capacitive touch display with Gorilla Glass
- 1Ghz single-core processor
- 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage
- 5MP camera / 720p video capture
- WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth, A-GPS
-  119.5 x 62 x 11.7 mm
- 113g

The Phone

The Pro+ resembles a BlackBerry insomuch as it has a portrait hardware keyboard, but the resemblances end there. It has a curved top and bottom, and a sizeable 3.1-inch screen that is extremely clear and sharp. While not the thinnest candybar phone out there, at 11.7mm it’s comfortable and pocketable, with a strong Gorilla Glass-covered screen for added protection. The rest of the build is plasticky, but overall the device feels extremely solid.

Its stand-out feature, the keyboard, is relatively easy to type on, but anyone coming from a BlackBerry might have some trouble understanding why the keys don’t click as effortlessly as their old Bold. It’s a subtle distinction, but the one thing RIM has perfected in its suite of smartphones is the hardware keyboard, and Motorola seems to miss the mark ever so slightly. While possibly the best keyboard we’ve used on an Android device, it will certainly be an adjustment.

A couple of keys have been moved around, too: unlike on a standard BlackBerry keyboard, there is only one ALT key, which, on the Pro+, is below instead of on top of the SHIFT key . There is also a dedicated Voice Command button where the other ALT button would be: press this and the standard Android dictation prompt pops up. There is also a dedicated “@” button next to the space bar, which is sufficiently sized and easy to hit. Unfortunately many of the BlackBerry shortcuts such as “double-tap for period” have not been ported over, which is more likely an Android limitation than a Motorola omission. Gone too is the useful “hold down key for capital letter” option, replaced by the standard alternate character screen. The number pad is also across the top of the four-row keyboard, rather than conveniently bunched together near the left side. All these changes, while understandable, detract from the overall experience, but this isn’t a BlackBerry, and better suit the Android operating system.

The screen is clear and colourful, and at 640×480, sufficiently sharp. Finger response was excellent as we moved around the various home screens, or when surfing the web, and because it has an extra .3″ on the Bold 9900, feels much more like a true smartphone touchscreen. If you’ve ever seen the Bold 9810, you have a pretty good idea of what the screen on the Pro+ looks and feels like.

There is a tactile plastic feeling to the rest of the body that the front manages to avoid: the battery cover, while a nice rubber texture, feels of low quality, as do the power button and volume rocker. We can’t really fault Motorola for not adorning it with Kevlar and aluminum considering its price, but to further the BlackBerry allusion, for all its “Bold” elements it feels more like a Curve in the hand.

Performance

The Motorola Pro+ runs Android 2.3.5 with the same skin as that of the RAZR and updated Atrix. Despite its smaller real estate, there is plenty of room to work with on the various home screens, which can be seen at a glance by pressing the Home button at any time. The Pro+ comes with a 1Ghz processor and 512MB RAM, we never felt like it lacked power: it scrolled through menus quickly, opened apps effortlessly, and even scored quite well on the various benchmarks we put our flagship devices through. In fact in two of the three benchmarks the TI OMAP single-core processor scored better than some dual-core beasts: look at the Sunspider score and compare it to, say, the 1.2Ghz dual-core chip in the RAZR.

CF-Bench: 3043 (RAZR: 6521)
Vellamo:  885 (RAZR: 824)
Sunspider Javascript: 3166.4ms (RAZR: 3274ms)

In two of the three benchmarks, the Pro+ was faster than the RAZR, which has a significantly more capable processor. Sure, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison because of the different screen resolutions, but Sunspider is not GPU-dependant, so it’s the CPU that’s doing the work there. Suffice it to say, the Pro+ keeps up and then some.

The only thing the Motorola Pro+ couldn’t do was stream HD content smoothly, nor watch high-bitrate video files. Due to its processing constraints, any movie higher than 540p stuttered quite badly, regardless of what media player we threw at it. At the same time, because of the phone’s relatively low resolution, most games ran extremely well; we played Angry Birds ’til the pigs came home. Yes, landscape-based games feel a bit awkward, as one of your thumbs has to reach across the keyboard to reach the screen, but considering most people will be using this as a business phone, even having access to the quarter million-strong Android Marketplace will be a huge advantage (or disadvantage depending on your work ethic).

A quick note about the screen: because it uses a non-standard Android resolution, many apps were not specifically designed for VGA consumption. As a result, when an app opens for the first time it will ask whether you want to open it in full-screen, or in a “Zoom to fill screen” option.

Camera

The 5MP camera on the Motorola Pro+ is average, pumping out soft, fuzzy photos. While daylight photos, and indoors with sufficient light, held up quite well, any other situation posed a problem. The sensor had trouble focusing on one thing in particular despite its ability to do so, lending photos a grainy, grey palette.

As you can see from the well-lit shots, photos can turn out quite well — as long as your IT department lets you use your camera (more on that later). Like most lower-end phone cameras, it will do in a pinch or worse, but don’t leave your point-and-shoot at home for the Pro+.

Video bares a similar fate: though the device can theoretically record at 720p, results were soft, grainy and, at times, out of focus. We’ll give a nod to Motorola for fitting a decent camera sensor into such a small device, but it won’t win any awards.

Software

The Pro+ comes with a slightly modified version of Motorola’s traditional skin. Think MOTOBLUR toned down. The aesthetic, which by default is a soft blue and easy on the eyes, is intuitive and quick; as we said in our RAZR review, this is one of the nicest non-stock skins for Android phones. Motorola also includes some interesting shortcuts to make use of the keyboard: holding down the Menu button and pressing certain keys will pull up things like Search and Notifications from inside any app.

Although Smart Actions, which we liked the most of any inclusion on the RAZR, is not bundled, we still get business-focused apps like MOTOPRINT, QuickOffice, Citrix and GoToMeeting. Because this is mainly aimed at the IT Crowd, advanced IPSEC VPN certificates are pre-installed, in addition to authentication certs from vendors like VeriSign and Microsoft. Administrators can shut off certain features of the phone like camera access, ensuring compliance with corporate IT policies. It is possible to remotely disable features based on the phone’s location, too, allowing for more granular management than any BlackBerry device.

Motorola has also included a Battery & Data Manager to limit overall bandwidth, and to cut down on battery use if it goes below a certain number. This “data saver” feature can be tuned for specific native apps such as the Browser, Gmail, Gallery and Marketplace, though it doesn’t look like the API is open to the public. This mimics a feature available to all devices in Ice Cream Sandwich and is an excellent way to cut down on excess data use.

Keeping with the corporate tradition, we found Motorola’s email client to be by far the most robust and compliant when it comes to Enterprise access and since email is the bread and butter of a good corporate drone, the Pro+ is tailor-made for the job. So too is it capable in the social communications category: Motorola’s built-in Social Networking app connects to, and consolidates, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, among others.

Battery Life

The 1550mAh battery in the Pro+ did an excellent job keeping things running for many, many hours. We counted 16 hours of almost twitch-constant use, and 48 hours of minor tapping. We looped a video (of a cat) and managed to eek out 10 hours and 14 minutes from the device, a laudable number in the Android business.

More importantly, the Battery Saver function located in the Settings menu can shut off auto-sync if battery percentage drops below a particular number, allowing you to eek out that extra conference call when you’re on the road, or just finish that game of Wind-up Knight without too much anxiety.

Call Quality & Network Speeds

It wouldn’t be a Motorola device without impeccable voice quality from the earpiece and speaker, and the Pro+ is no exception. Calls were clear and extremely, unequivocally loud. In fact the Pro+ was one of the loudest handsets we’ve ever used, in any capacity. Changing over to the speaker, which is twice as large as on most smartphones, could be mistaken for a portable speaker, perhaps not in its dynamic range — this is a phone we’re talking about — but in its room-filling intensity.

Network speeds were also decently fast, as the Pro+ support up to 14.4Mbps in the downlink and 5.76Mbps in the uplink. We averaged speeds of around 3-4Mbps down and 1-2Mbps up, which is about average for HSPA+.

Conclusions
The Motorola Pro+ is one of those devices that an IT team could potentially replace its entire BlackBerry fleet with, while saving money in the long-term. It supports many of the same Enterprise features as BES, including remote administration and VPN access, while maintaining its pedigree as a versatile, powerful, capable Android device.

At $350 outright, and for free on a 3-year term, the Pro+ is one of the better deals currently available, especially for those looking to move away from the BlackBerry ecosystem without sacrificing too much in way of input speed. While the device caters to the Enterprise market, it fills a nice spot in the Android lineup for anyone looking to text, email or tweet. A lot.

The Motorola Pro+ is available now at Bell, or at Best Buy and Future Shop.

Entry-Level Smartphone Rating: 7.5/10

Pros:

-     Excellent price-to-performance ratio
-     Nice screen quality
-     Great keyboard
-     Fulfills most of the “BlackBerry” requirements in an Android shell
-     Excellent battery life
-     Extensive Enterprise options for IT managers
-     Good overall performance
-     Well-built, with Gorilla Glass screen
-     Fantastic sound quality

Cons:

-     Underwhelming camera and video quality
-     Awkward for landscape use
-     Screen resolution non-standard, lower than most Android phones
-     Keyboard is not as good as that of the BlackBerry Bold line
-     Shortcuts are not as useful as they should be, not editable

There is something wonderful about a company breaking new ground. Of the myriad Android reviews over the past few weeks, the LG Optimus LTE is probably the biggest wildcard. On paper the phone has everything: a dual-core processor, HD screen, LTE connectivity. In fact it’s the only device outside the US to have both a 720p screen and LTE support. There is intense competition for the high-end Android space right now, and LG is coming in hot, guns blazing.

With the Galaxy Nexus nipping at its heels, can the Optimus LTE deliver? And where does it fit in Bell’s lineup of superphones? Read on to find out.

Specs:

- Android 2.3.5 (upgradeable to 4.0 upon release)
- 1280×720 TrueHD IPS display
- 1.5Ghz dual-core Snapdragon processor
- 1GB RAM, 2GB internal storage, 8GB microSD card included
- 8MP camera with flash / 1.3MP front camera
- 1080p video capture
- WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 3.0 w/ A2DP, A-GPS, WiFi Direct, MHL(HDMI) out, DLNA support
- LTE 75Mbps 700/1700Mhz, HSPA/UMTS 21Mbps 850/1900/2100 MHz
- 133.9 x 67.9 x 10.48 mm, 135g
- 1830mAh battery

The Phone

The Optimus LTE gives a very good first impression. It straddles the border between comfortable and bulky, but manages to slip into the former. At 10.5mm thick and 135g it fits right in with the latest Galaxy S II devices though it is slightly thicker. That thickness gives the impression of sturdiness, something this symmetrical monolith can boast assuredly. In the hand, despite its plastic construction, there isn’t a creak or seam; the body is crafted from premium polycarbonate plastic, and the battery cover a nice machine-cut overlay that wraps around the side of the phone. The left side volume rocker is nicely delineated with plenty of travel. The top portion of the device is the busiest, with a headphone jack, a microphone, microUSB/MHL port under a plastic door, and a power button on the right side.

It seems that all the devices we’ve reviewed recently, from the Motorola Razr to the Galaxy S II LTE, have a small chin at either the top or bottom, throwing off its symmetry and balance to some extent. Despite its relative thickness it’s nice to use a device again that feels uniform in the hand, regardless of how you hold it. The textured backing has a diagonal pattern that is conducive for gripping in even the sweatiest hands; the grooves are wide and attractive.

Along with the power button, the only metal present on the device is on a little vertical stripe housing the camera optics. Like the Optimus 2X, LG has opted for small flourishes that save money but ultimately delight their customers. Underneath is a 1830mAh battery, an 8GB microSD card and a SIM card slot.

Around the front LG has wisely consolidated the menu and search buttons into one superbutton, allowing for large spaces between it, the home and back buttons. In order to activate the search portion, just hold down the button for a second.

Overall the Optimus LTE isn’t a striking or beautiful device, nor is it plain and utilitarian. There is a pleasant symmetry to its curved top and bottom, an austere and familiar consistently with previous LG devices and, most importantly, a nice balance between form and function.

The Display

Of course this needs its own section. The Optimus LTE is the second device we’ve used with a 720p display after the Galaxy Nexus, but in many ways the True HD here is a different beast altogether. LG has wisely spent the extra money on an IPS panel, so viewing angles are practically endless. Colours are accurate and clean: no Super AMOLED oversaturation here. Text is dead-sharp, arguably more so than the Galaxy Nexus, with bright, accurate white levels. Blacks, and by virtue contrast, vary with brightness but for the most part fare quite well. Coming from the perfect black levels of the Galaxy Nexus it’s nice to know that the Optimus LTE holds its own in that regard, though obviously contrast is not quite up to par. The backlight is very strong, and we’re happy to report that Optimus LTE didn’t have any of the light bleeding issues that plagued the Optimus 2X.

Our one concern is that there is a fair amount of dithering on colour gradients, interrupting the generally-smooth flow of images and icons. While it’s not immediately noticeable and depends highly on the quality of the image’s texture, it is present throughout the OS. One of the most egregious examples of this are the jagged line transitions present on the first screen of the Marketplace (see photo).

One boon for the IPS display is that it is bright enough to be seen in relatively direct sunlight. Though we haven’t seen a single backlit device that fares particularly well in the sun, LG had the presence of mind to beef up the maximum brightness on this display; at auto brightness it is even a bit too high. We wouldn’t complain except our battery life suffered as a result: we’d recommend manually setting the screen brightness to around 30%.

A lot of people are going to ask if the display is as good or better than that of the Galaxy Nexus. There are a couple reasons it is, and a couple it is not. Firstly, having perfect blacks on a display changes everything, including the colours that aren’t black: colours are punchier and more vivid. But with such great contrast comes a trade-off: whites, especially at lower brightness levels, have an icy blue tint to them. As you move up the gamut it becomes less pronounced, but because the Galaxy Nexus has a very sensitive auto-brightness mechanism, the majority of the white you see will have that bluish hue. The Optimus LTE suffers no such fate: whites are some of the cleanest, most accurate out there. Colours are great but for the dithering problems I mentioned, and maximum brightness is significantly higher. Both have comparable viewing angles.

Overall, both displays are tightly matched but I’ve give an edge to the Galaxy Nexus in terms of overall vividness, contrast and viewing angles.

Performance

LG is sticking with what works here, and like HTC and Samsung, have chosen the 1.5Ghz dual-core Snapdragon S3 SoC to power their mighty beast. It’s clear that LG has worked some voodoo magic here, since the LG flew through all its synthetic and real-world benchmarks, and never seemed to skip a beat in our browsing tests. Apps loaded quickly, 720p video streamed effortlessly and the whole experience shone.

Despite the high native resolution the graphics chip kept up remarkably well: take a look at the benchmark results next to the Galaxy Nexus, which runs a slightly slower CPU but faster GPU. The LG kept up in most regards, with a few of the more graphics-intensive tests being taken by the pure Google device. We can also say with confidence that once the Optimus LTE gets Android 4.0 it will only get faster.

It’s very difficult to judge, however, which Android device is the smoothest these days. Android 2.3.5 does not have the same dual-core optimizations that debuted in Ice Cream Sandwich, so any hardware acceleration is implemented by the OEM. It’s clear LG has done some work to speed up the browser which matches the lower-resolution Samsung Galaxy S II blow-for-blow. But when you get to these speeds, it’s hard not to find fault in even the most minor stutter or delay. At times we found the keyboard to fall behind our flurry of presses, or the browser would stall for 10-15 seconds before resuming its page rendering. Before Ice Cream Sandwich we’d say, oh it’s typical for Android, but now we that know these issues have been largely resolved it’s hard taking a step backwards.

Software

The Optimus LTE follows the same path as the Optimus 2X, though it ships with a newer version of Android in 2.3.5. It arrays Gingerbread in colourful icons, garishly outlined in a sort of protective bubble we wish was absent. There are seven home screens, though they can be removed by pinching your fingers together and dragging one to the trash can. In fact, LG has affectionately borrowed much of Android’s customization from HTC and Samsung, though in truth every manufacturer shares a subset of features. What’s important is how well implemented those features are, and I can happily say LG hasn’t let us down.

There is a permanent four-icon dock at the bottom of the home screen, though the default icons can be moved around or removed. The app drawer, when opened, is pretty intuitive, dividing its wares into categories. Apps preloaded onto the device are stored in the Applications column; these cannot be removed or deleted, just relocated. Below that is the Downloaded category which stores all your Marketplace apps. Apps can be sorted by category, listed alphabetically or, more traditionally, scrolled through page by page.

LG bundles some of its well-worn Android offerings here, including the rather helpful RemoteCall which allows a representative from the company to remotely log in to your device to troubleshoot. Extensive DLNA supports comes by virtue of SmartShare, which streams your video, photos and music to any connected device.

LG’s SmartWorld is an Android app store. If you take the time to register an account, you are free to download certain “paid” apps for the low, low price of nothing. While most of the top apps are the same ones present in the Android Marketplace (really, Angry Birds?) there are a few interesting inclusions that should keep your app discovery pangs at bay. I just question the need for another proprietary app store, especially one with significantly fewer apps than the official one.

Taking a page from Samsung, LG has integrated gestures into the OS. Tilt your phone when moving an icon around the home screen and it uses your accelerometer to fly from side to side. Flip your device over to silence an incoming call or alarm, or to pause a movie clip. Though non-essential to one’s enjoyment of the phone, their inclusion is genuinely useful — if you can remember to use them.

One of the cooler features I wish more vendors would implement is WiFi Sharing. This allows two users connected to the same WiFi network to transfer image, video and music files from device to device without having to go through a central access point like a PC. The capabilities have been in the WiFi spec for years, it just took an enterprising mobile company to implement it. Not limited to just LG devices, most modern Samsung devices support WiFi Sharing, too.

Lastly, LG has licensed Nuance’s excellent voice recognition engine for its Voice Control app. I found it to be much more accurate than Samsung’s implementation of Vlingo — it actually knew who “Mom” was, someone the Galaxy S II insisted was called “Mark” — though it wasn’t possible to map it to a specific key like you can on the Samsung.

Oh, and screenshots can be taken by holding down the Home button and quickly pressing Power.

Connectivity

I’m just going to come out and say it: LTE is ridiculously, mind-blowingly fast. Bell and Rogers keep trading crowns as the speediest mobile carrier, and with the Optimus LTE tests it takes back the crown (though not by much). We were able to consistently get over 45Mbps download speeds and 15Mbps upload speeds. Think about that for a second. In the downstream that is equal or faster than many top-tier cable and fiber connections. In the upstream it is up to 15x faster than home broadband.

Not only do the results speak for themselves in speed tests, but they translate nicely into real-world performance. Over LTE, web pages load instantly. High-bandwidth sites that typically take minutes to render are complete in seconds. Think 500px.com; think Flickr. This is the first time in history that a device bottleneck is the CPU, not network speeds. Forget checkboards or spinning wheels, the only time you’ll be waiting for a page to load is when there is an excess of Javascript or Flash content.

Let me put it another way: I used this phone’s LTE connection to upload the YouTube video you see above. At 1.16GB it usually takes nearly 4 hours on my 1Mbps home connection. I completed the upload in less than fifteen minutes.

Battery Life

In truth, we expected battery life to be negatively affected by the high-resolution screen, powerful backlight and LTE chip. We just didn’t expect it to deplete this quickly. If you take a look at the screenshot of battery use, you’ll see that for most of the day the battery life decreased fairly slowly. This was because I was using the phone sparingly in an area with no LTE.

After coming downtown I began using the device as I would any other: downloading apps, surfing the web, streaming music and playing half an hour of games. Doing so took the battery from 70% to around 10% in less than two hours. In fact, LG claims only three hours of talk time on the device, even with its prodigious 1830mAh battery. Suffice it to say, if you’re going to be using the Optimus LTE to its fullest computational, graphical and connectable extent, I’d recommend investing in a second (or third) battery.

Luckily there is a toggle in the Mobile Network section of the Settings app to disable LTE. In that case the phone will fall back to Bell’s still-fast 21Mbps connection

Camera

We tried well-lit, low-lit, indoor-lit and sunny-lit, and only in the last scenario could we get a photo that wasn’t unreasonably blurry. Though possessed with fantastic macro abilities and a capable, fast autofocus lens, I was not happy with the majority of the results. While there were a few gems among the rough, with accurate colours and excellent dynamic range, images suffer from a softness that I couldn’t abide.

Individual settings such as white balance and exposure are editable, and there are various scenes to select from. None of these improve the quality of the camera sensor which continues the tradition of inferior photography offerings from LG . This is unfortunate and a mar again an otherwise fantastic product. In 2011, having a capable camera on a phone is bare minimum; having a bad camera is untenable. While it’s better than the average camera from a couple years ago — think iPhone 3GS plus a few million pixels — it can’t compete with the iPhone 4S’ and HTC Amaze’s of the world. That said it takes photos quickly, and when they turn out well they’re pretty nice to look at.

Luckily the front-facing camera isn’t as objectionable as the rear, owed to the fact that expectations are much lower. I am happy to report the 1.3MP camera is clear and capable, though there is plenty of noise in lower-light scenarios.

Video quality fares slightly better than stills: 1080p video, while soft, is smooth and artifact-free. For general use the quality is good enough to capture a kid’s birthday party or film your dog playing in the park, but if there’s anything important you need filmed I’d bring the point-and-shoot (or the iPhone 4S/HTC Amaze).

Sound Quality, Miscellany and Misgivings

There isn’t much else to say about the Optimus LTE, which comes in around the middle of the pack for sound quality and speaker volume. Making calls on Bell’s network resulted in clear, sharp dialogue and a distinct lack of background noise or hiss. The second microphone at the top adequately cancels ambient noise, though we were told our voices sounded rather tinny at times, like it was being wrung through a metal can. On our end, voices sounded normal and robust, so we’ll chalk it up to network conditions rather than a fault with the phone.

We tested our Bluetooth stereo headset with the Optimus LTE to great success; range was good and quality superb. Connecting our headphones also resulted in accurate, punchy music, though maximum volume levels seemed a tad low. The mono speaker on the back, on the other hand, produced excellent quality sound that was good enough to fill a whole room with a conference call. Recipients on the other end heard me loud and clear.

Bell bundles their standard suite of, ahem, bloatware, though as I’ve stated before there are a couple of great apps thrown in there. In particular their TV&Radio app shines, facilitating a wonderful mobile television experience for not all that much money. For those cord-cutters who still want a piece of the live TV action, this is definitely your best bet.

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One note on LTE reception: due to the fact that Bell currently only uses the 1700Mhz frequency for LTE connectivity, reception will be less robust than a regular HSPA+ network which falls back to 850Mhz in times of multipath or signal fade. As a result, unless I was right downtown in the open air I rarely saw more than three bars of LTE. If I happened to fall back to HSPA+ I consistently had five bars. Keep that in mind if you live in a basement or in a place with thick concrete walls.

Another qualm we had with the device was its lack of internal storage. At 2GB is undercuts the industry by several times, opting instead to bundle an 8GB microSD card. The entire 2GB is given over to app storage, making it necessary to always have a card in the device. If you wish to upgrade to a larger size, you must be sure to copy the content over to the new one or risk losing essential app data.

Development and Upgrades

LG devices have always been pretty friendly to the developer community. The Optimus 2X received a CyanogenMOD 7 port fairly soon after it was rooted, and the community continues to thrive today. While I am not certain whether the bootloader is unlocked on the Optimus LTE there is no reason to believe the company would start now.

As for Ice Cream Sandwich, Bell’s own website states that it will be upgraded as soon as it is released. Without reading too much into that, we’re thinking they mean when LG releases it, not Google. Be that as it may, it’s a good sign when a carrier posts a message like that on their site before a device’s actual release. They know what people want, and people want ICS.

Final Thoughts

For all its virtues the Optimus LTE falls well short of greatness. For every high there is an equal low; for the wonderful screen there is a distracting dithering issue; for the ridiculous LTE speeds there is disappointing battery life; for the unparalleled performance, a poor camera.

I admit that I am a hardened critic trained and conditioned to see the worst in devices. In this sense I can forgive the screen issue as it will likely not be noticed by the vast majority of potential buyers. The camera and insipid battery life I’m not so sure about. LG had time to think whether they wanted to implement LTE in their flagship device, and it was a choice I’m sure they grappled with. Every manufacturer releasing a LTE device knows of the battery hit and not a single one decided to wait until the next generation, which will likely bring usage to parity with current HSPA+ solutions. And by bringing it to market they are banking on users understanding the shortcomings: with every first-generation technology there are sacrifices.

In other ways the Optimus LTE is the full package. It is fast, well-constructed with a beautiful screen and an OS as close to stock Gingerbread as you’re going to get. The 720p display and LTE connectivity are going to be more than enough to get people talking.

The LG Optimus 4G LTE is available from Bell for $149.95 on a 3-year term and $629.95 outright.

In addition, you can get this at Best Buy and Future Shop.

Rating: 7/10

Pros:

-     Stunning 720p display has accurate colours, high brightness and endless viewing angles
-     LTE speeds are the fastest we’ve ever seen
-     Phone is blazing fast, beats most devices with the same chipset
-     Nicely-constructed
-     Comfortable to hold
-     Subtle additions to OS like gestures are genuinely useful
-     Nuance-powered Voice Control is accurate and fast
-     Excellent reception and voice quality

Cons:

-     Poor camera quality
-     Dithering problems with screen
-     LTE battery life drains fast
-     No internal storage, only 2GB app storage

Let’s start from the beginning.

Take the phone out of your pocket. It’s clean, black, unassuming. A soft white LED pulses at you. You grip the phone firmly in your right hand — it is comfortable, secure. Slide your thumb to the power button, its tension satisfying, just the right amount of feedback. The black screen alights, a crisp image of a city at dusk stares back at you, makes you long for a room with a view. Text is like ink on paper, in a font you’ve seen somewhere before but different, new. You unlock, a comforting fade to black as a home screen appears: icons floating in air, a small analog clock ticking away.

This is Android. More so, this is function. No more scraping for context — where is the menu? why does the back button exit the app? why is everything so hard? — this is consistency.

Welcome to Ice Cream Sandwich. Have a taste.

(Check out Part One of our review for an in-depth hardware overview. Part Two covers mainly the Ice Cream Sandwich software)

Performance

As we teased in Part 1, the Galaxy Nexus is a beast. Despite having some 40% more pixels to process, it holds up extremely well in most of the real-world and synthetic benchmarks we use in our suite. More importantly the device feels faster than perhaps any other Android phone on the market. The real test will be if and when Samsung brings its Exynos processor to a Galaxy device with a 720p screen.

We’d say the experience of moving from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich is comparable to how much faster the Nexus One felt moving from Eclair to Froyo (2.1 to 2.2). When you take a look at the benchmark results, keep in mind that for any graphical test the Galaxy Nexus is running at its native 1280×720 resolution; the GPU is pushing some 40% more pixels than a qHD display, so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. That being said, the device holds up extremely well — superbly even — given the circumstances. The one non-graphical benchmark, Sunspider Javacript test, scores higher than any other device to date, including the venerable Bell Galaxy S II.

The Home Screen

Google has wisely kept things fairly unchanged from Gingerbread, except in the areas that count. There is a permanent four-icon dock at the bottom of the screen, two icons on either side of the new app drawer. The dock is customizable, fluid; you can put individual apps or folders on it, or leave it blank. Mimicking iOS it is possible to create a folder by dragging an icon atop another, though in many ways we prefer this implementation. Once a folder is created, it doesn’t open and force you to interact with it; you can leave it unnamed if you wish as Google doesn’t presume to know what you’re thinking.

When moving an app or widget around the screen, a subtle grid appears, showing you the allowable space. Much of the aesthetic has been taken from Honeycomb; certain widgets are now resizable, according to whether they adhere to the new Ice Cream Sandwich APIs.

One of the more contentious changes made in ICS is the permanent Google Search bar that floats below the notification area. Supplanting an optional search widget from previous Android versions, the bar serves as both local and web-based search. You can choose what local content to index, but we found that at its default setting (which indexes apps, contacts, bookmarks and music, among others) results were almost instantaneous. We suppose you could put a Bing or Yahoo widget below it if you really wanted to, but we really got used to using the bar as a Google Instant replacement. It also supports the new instant voice transcription feature which we use in the car all the time: “Call Dad home” for example.

The notification area has been tweaked to allow for swiping away seen or unwanted messages. In fact much of the OS has been overhauled for gesture and swipe support — we’ll see this later in Gmail and Calendar, among others.

Once in the app drawer, you can hold down an app to bring it to one of the home screens, or drag atop to uninstall. This is a feature we graciously used in ADW Launcher, and are pleased it made its way into ICS. (We have to note that the notification swipe-to-disappear debuted in CyanogenMOD 7 — Google owes a lot to the open-source modding community for some of ICS’ best features). Widgets, instead of holding down on the home screen, are now accessible in a separate tab of the app drawer. This allows for a larger area in which to seek out the appropriate choice, but can get cluttered and frustrating having to swipe horizontally page after page to find the right one.

We love the new look of the home screen, and although it is not a drastic overhaul in functionality, we believe most of the changes are for the better. While we’d like to see an option to scroll vertically through the list of apps, we understand Google wanting to adhere to consistent swipe-based navigation throughout the OS.

First-party apps

As we showed you in our short hands-on video, Gmail, Calendar, Contacts (now known as People) and a few other first-party apps have received upgrades. The simple description would be that each has been modified to support swipe gestures and pinch-to-zoom (though for some reason Gmail still does not support pinch-to-zoom in the email body) but that’s too simple.

Gmail looks fantastic, with a minimalist interface that opens up only if you want it to: most of the more advanced options are hidden in the multiple deep context menus, but the majority are within one-touch reach. You have complete control over your labels and the new Priority Inbox, and the sender has a dedicated blue banner just above the message that links up with the People app.

People is the new Contacts and brings a magazine-like aesthetic to the interface. Google wants your friends to be presented in big, bold photos and easy to read text. You can swipe between views (you even have your Google+ circles in the Groups tab) and your favourites are presented as large photos pulled down from their Google account.

Calendar now supports pinch-to-zoom to expand or contract the selected view, though it doesn’t switch between day/week/month automatically. The Gallery app has thankfully eschewed its accelerometer-sensitive 3D proclivities in favour of a more touch- and swipe-friendly horizontal overview. You can edit photos directly from the app with built-in filters (hello, Lomo), auto-fix, crop, rotate et al. This is really a full-blown editing solution, though it won’t replace your copy of Picasa.

Messaging and Email have received aesthetic overhauls, too, and support the new instant transcription feature present on the greatly improved keyboard. Seriously, this keyboard is amazing. We won’t claim the third-party keyboard market dead, but it’s certainly no longer necessary, and that’s good news.

Camera

The camera interface, like the gallery app, has been completely redone, though Google insists on using a shade of grey on the right-hand bar that should be relegated to wool dress pants. Nevertheless, most options can be enabled or disabled with two touches, though we wish it took less time to enable or disable the flash. This has been a point of contention for us that only HTC seems to understand: instead of having three separate buttons for Auto/Flash/No Flash, have a permanent icon on the settings bar that cycles through the options.

The quality of the sensor depends completely on the available light; unlike the iPhone 4S or HTC Amaze the Galaxy Nexus does not perform well in poor lighting conditions. Outside in the sun we were able to take beautiful, dynamic shots that focused quickly and accurately; indoors, or in shadow, the lens seemed to have trouble focusing on a foreground subject, often resulting in the whole image being blurry.

The sensor seemed to adjust to changes in the environment very well, seemingly the result of a well-tuned white balance algorithm. Autofocus generally excels, though the aperture doesn’t appear to be high enough to achieve true depth of field. ICS also includes a cool face detection feature that automatically adjusts exposure according to the foreground subject (and allows for real-time face morphing in videos). You can touch the screen to focus at any time, and when you’re done taking photos there are a number of filters and settings to play with, adding up to a powerful still shot experience.

Ultimately, though, Samsung and Google made too high an image quality sacrifice in order to achieve an instant shutter. While 90% of photos turn out great, it’s the blurry 10 percent that ruin the fun for everyone. The shutter is indeed instant, so you may be able to take that candid action shot your other phone wouldn’t have been able to. It’s a tough trade-off, and will be the obvious choice for most people.

Google has implemented a very cool and usable Panorama feature. We enjoyed being able to pan across a room and have the phone do the work of keeping us steady and straight. It may be a little-used feature but it shows off how powerful the processor is in the Galaxy Nexus: results were available in seconds.

Video looks good at 1080p, though overall quality doesn’t remind us enough of the excellent sensor from the Galaxy S II family. There is a noticeable softness to what is captured, though frame rates maintained fluid even in difficult conditions. Our main issue with the end product, however, was not the quality but the smoothness. If you look at the video sample above you can see that while the sensor handles light changes with aplomb there is a noticeable shakiness to the camera movement that the Galaxy S II was able to overcome. And while continuous autofocus is a fantastic feature to have, it created a woozy judder to a simple outdoor scene.

Overall the camera experience is much better than the camera quality on the Galaxy Nexus. While most of the photos and video exhibited ample detail and accurate colour we can’t wait until other OEMs integrate their higher-quality sensors into the existing ICS architecture.

Keyboard & Typography

We feel like this deserves its own section for a couple reasons. First, because Gingerbread’s keyboard was terrible, and second, because Google finally got it right.

Let us put it another way: the delta between the Gingerbread keyboard and this one is enormous — entire cities could fall into the gap. Even though they share more than a close resemblance, we can trust the ICS keyboard in a way that was never possible before. Not only is autocorrect good but it’s smart. Any word that the software is confident enough to change is underlined in a light grey: you can always tap on it to change back to the original. If deemed misspelled, a word is underlined in red and will bring up a list of alternatives.

Perhaps a combination of a stellar touchscreen digitizer and software optimization but this is the first time we can confidently just type without checking every few words for the inevitable double-letter or, worse, a missed space. Gingerbread was notorious for inserting the first letter of a word twice, and even more for missing spaces. Nor did we notice any slowdown, another common trait of the Gingerbread keyboard: however fast we typed our presses were picked up.

Dictation has been improved and localized, meaning it is no longer necessary to be connected to the internet to speak a note to your phone. Transcription is almost instantaneous, too, and only seldom got the input wrong. The worst offenders were words like ‘Nexus’ which got turned in ‘Texas’, but generally we were pleased with the results, especially for the speed.

Google has changed up the traditional Droid font in ICS, opting to create their own dubbed Roboto. While it adheres pretty closely to Helvetica and a few san serif iterations, it is a pleasure to read on the Galaxy Nexus’ crisp 720p screen and a drastic improvement over previous Android versions. Read more about Roboto on Google+.

Browser

In a word, blazing. Not only can you request the desktop version of a web page, but when loaded those desktop pages scroll like the wind. Pinching to zoom is effortless, though we noticed the occasional stutter when loading a graphics-intensive page. Thankfully the ICS browser can sync with your Google account for bookmarks, and all the settings are located conveniently on the top right corner Action Bar.

One thing we noticed was that, occasionally, the request desktop feature would not work, relegating us to a lifetime of mobile simplicity. We also found no apparent way of getting into the Downloads app from the browser itself — if you accidentally remove the Download Compete notification you have to exit the browser and open the Downloads app separately. The tabs menu, like the new multitasking paradigm, utilizes big static pictures of a web page which can be swiped to the left to dismiss. It’s these small functional flourishes that help cement a consistent and enjoyable user experience throughout ICS.

In terms of overall performance, we achieve a ridiculously fast 2023.2ms result on the Sunspider Javascript benchmark. HTML5Test.com scores a 230+3, some 50 points better than the stock Gingerbread browser. Unfortunately ICS does not comply quite as well as Mobile Safari in iOS5: our iPhone 4S achieved a 296+9.

This is clearly the Honeycomb browser ported to phones, as the Labs feature with its awesome Quick Controls is present. This hides by default the address and top action bars, which are then activated by sliding your finger from either the left or right side of the screen. This was one of our favourite features of the Honeycomb browser, and we’re thankful for its presence here.

Diving Deep & Tidbits

There is a lot more going on in ICS under the new veneer and updated apps. It’s a fundamental change in how we interact with our Android phone. Here are a few snippets of some of the more miscellaneous improvements.

- Google has implemented per-app data administration to prevent specific programs from using too much bandwidth. It’s nice to know that you can natively restrict a data-hungry app’s ability to max out your monthly allotment. For example, due to Google+’s auto photo upload feature, it used 104MB of data in less than two hours. Many apps, like the browser, have their own bandwidth management settings, bringing a level of granularity to an OS that was notorious for errant background bandwidth usage.

- Google has also included a number of APIs to aide developers make more beautiful, functional apps. While few third-party apps have been updated to take advantage of ICS’ features, we’re excited to see many of the swipe-and-gesture elements implemented into phone apps.

- We must talk about the fact that SD card storage is now available to apps, meaning that OEMs no longer need to set aside a portion of the internal memory for app storage. This is also brought over from Honeycomb, and essentially eliminates the issue of low app storage space.

- Android 4.0 introduces Android Beam, the NFC-enabled API that allows two ICS-powered devices to touch, back-to-back, and share content. While we haven’t had a chance to test it out, the possibilities are pretty much endless as Google has opened up the API to third-party developers. Also present is WiFi-Direct, which allows two devices connected to the same SSID to share content directly without explicit routing paths. We first saw this on the Galaxy S II and are pleased it’s been brought over natively to ICS.

- Because there is no longer a dedicated menu button, it is not possible to access the Settings app with that method any longer. Instead, swipe down the notification bar and there is a small icon that quickly enters the Settings.

- Visual voicemail is now standard within the People app, so if your carrier supports it and you subscribe to it a transcription of that person’s message is available.

- If you get a phone call and want to ignore it without being too impolite, swiping upwards reveals a list of pre-canned text messages that can automatically be sent to the despondent respondent.

- To kill an app, open the multitasking menu and swipe it away. The gesture kills the process. You can also do this for tabs in the browser, though only a left-hand swipe works in that case.

- There is no explicit USB Mass Storage Mode in ICS (or, at least, on the Galaxy Nexus). Instead there is a Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) and a Camera Transfer Protocol (PTP). This allows for greater compatibility across systems, but is ultimately much less flexible than a generic Mass Storage Mode. You also, by default, don’t have access to the SD card contents (which is likely why apps are allowed to share the same partition as SD storage).

- There is a special Developer Options section on the Galaxy Nexus that allows you to enable debugging features such as Show FPS and, for apps, Don’t Keep Activities which explicitly kills an app process whenever the app leaves the foreground. You can also limit the number of background processes to 1, 2, 3, 4 or none.

- The Music and Video apps have been separated, allowing for easy consolidation of your Google purchases from the Marketplace. Though Canadians do not have access to the new Music Store, we are able to rent movies which will be stored in the Videos app. The music player has received a nice boost in functionality, too.

- Finally, Google have taken the Movie Studio app from Honeycomb and shrunk it down for phones. While it is fairly simplistic, we achieved good results piecing and editing brief video clips for home use. Unfortunately the Galaxy Nexus does not have an HDMI-out for HDTV mirroring.

Battery Life, Redux

We hate to admit to being wrong, but perhaps we were a little bit hasty heaping praise on the Galaxy Nexus’ battery life. While not bad per se, it by no means impressed us. After 9 hours of admittedly thorough use we were left with 19% of the 1750mAh battery remaining.

While it is possible to prevent background data from eating up too much battery, we suspect that anyone looking for the Galaxy Nexus and ICS to dramatically change their perception on Android’s traditionally poor battery life will be sorely disappointed. We understand that three days is not ample time to judge a phone battery long-term, so we’ll monitor it over the coming weeks and report back.

Further issues

After using the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich non-stop for a couple days we can safely say there are some problems that need to be resolved.

First, on the phone itself. We found that noise cancellation, depending on the type of ambient noise, is not cut as much as on, say, the Motorola RAZR. While wind seems to be at the right frequency for the algorithm to suppress much of the ‘whoosh’, walking around a mall with its more varied din of screaming children and hushed talking caused our friend to ask whether we were sitting next to a loud family.

We also found maximum call volume to be low — equal to the Galaxy S II line, which we also faulted for the same thing — and we found it hard to hear the person on the other end of the call in certain circumstances. The same thing can be said for the speaker which, paired with a default ringtone that would put a symphony orchestra to sleep, caused us to miss several important calls throughout the day. By default call vibration is turned off, so that’s something you will need to set manually in the settings.

Auto-brightness is a little too sensitive for our tastes. While we understand the need to save battery life at times we could barely read what was on the screen.

We continue to have issues with the Android Marketplace. While we like the new design the software itself is flaky, prone to crashes and unresponsiveness. Occasionally when downloading an app it will not proceed past the initial “Downloading” prompt, forcing us to exit the app and start again. We saw this on previous versions of Android, but it is high time Google fixes whatever outstanding bugs remain; apps are the gateway to user adoption.

Development

Of course the Galaxy Nexus is going to have an extremely lively developer community — it’s the name of the game. Being an unlocked pentaband device brings it into a whole new market, one that need not trouble itself with contracts and subsidies.

The CyanogenMOD team has recently announced it has begun work on CM9, the follow-up to CM7 (they’re skipping 8 because Honeycomb was not open sourced) and for anyone who wants to dip his or her feet into the community, XDA-Developers already has a lively forum for the Galaxy Nexus.

The Upgrade Dilemma

Let’s break this down into three groups: those who already have a developer phone such as the Nexus One or Nexus S, those who already have Android devices less than, say 18 months old, and finally those who don’t have an Android device or have one pre-2010.

To the first group: by all means upgrade your device as this is Google’s new testing platform. Nexus One users should note that they will never officially get upgraded to ICS, while Nexus S owners should begin receiving the OTA update in the coming weeks. Though significantly sleeker, faster and more capable than the Nexus S, the Galaxy Nexus is not a home run and, considering its predecessor was released just under a year ago we wouldn’t push you to upgrade unless you’re dying for that 720p screen. With the ICS upgrade the Nexus S should get the majority of hardware-accelerated software enhancements that are present on the Galaxy Nexus, and a speed boost as a result.

To the second group: ask yourself why you would want to break a contract for the Galaxy Nexus. Is it the fastest phone on the market? No. Does it have the best camera? Nope. The best build quality? Uh-uh. What is currently has is a piece of software that, unless you’re using a cheap Asian knockoff, your device will eventually get in some form. HTC, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have already committed to updating their latest fleet of devices to ICS in 2012; whether that means in two months or twelve months remains to be seen, but you will get it. Unless you are particularly unhappy with your device, or again, looking for that gorgeous screen upgrade, hold onto your device.

To the third group: buy the Galaxy Nexus. You won’t regret it.

Final Thoughts

The Galaxy Nexus is the best Android device ever because it’s the best all-round Android phone. Not only is the design almost flawless but the screen is sharp, the camera capable and the software  a huge leap forward. Considering it will have a software lead of at least three to four months on any new device being released with ICS, for many people it is reason enough to upgrade. Ice Cream Sandwich is the biggest leap in smartphone operating systems since perhaps iOS 2 to iOS 3 (or maybe iOS 4 to iOS 5, we can’t decide) but it fundamentally alters the way Android users interact with their phones.

Gone are the hardware-dependent capacitive touch buttons. Out are the design inconsistencies, ugly context menus and frustrating, stuttering performance. Google has proven that without embossing the Galaxy Nexus with the fastest everything it can easily compete, both in performance and enjoyment, with any device currently on the market. The Galaxy Nexus is fast because the hardware and software were designed to complement one another. We believe that it competes with, and bests, iOS 5 in many areas, though it cannot quite pull out the flawless victory card just yet. There are some lingering hardware and software issues that mar an otherwise perfect experience.

Be that as it may, Android will never be the same, and we’re so, so happy to be saying that.

Hardware Rating: 9/10

Pros:

-     Stunning 720p screen makes graphics, text and media a pleasure
-     Excellent performance throughout the OS
-     Very good still camera quality, instant shutter a real boon to candid photography
-     Build quality greatly improved over previous Samsung devices
-     Design is perfect marriage between Galaxy S II and Nexus S
-     Excellent sound quality from earpiece and headphone jack

Cons:

-     Earpiece and speaker volume very low
-     Video produces soft results; stills often out of focus
-     Low-light shots quite grainy
-     Battery cover quite thin and flimsy
-     Disappointing battery life
-     Lack of LTE will disappoint some users
-     Auto-brightness too sensitive

Software Rating: 9.5/10

Pros:

-     Incredible new design changes everything about Android
-     First-party app improvements dramatically increase productivity
-     New camera software makes Android photography fun
-     Honeycomb features like re-sizable widgets and virtual many buttons implemented well
-     Noticeable performance improvement in apps, games and general UI throughout OS
-     Lock screen features legitimately useful
-     New APIs such as People and Android Beam open doors to third-party devs
-     Browser much faster than previous versions
-     Unique style complemented by Roboto font
-     Multitasking dramatically improved
-     Data usage caps a potential money-saver
-     Many more subtle changes, mostly for the better

Cons:

-     Still buggy in places
-     Overall “smoothness” can’t quite match iOS (though smoothness is highly subjective)
-     Android Marketplace still unreliable
-     App drawer cannot be set vertically
-     Permanent Google search bar should be removable

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If there are any questions or comments, or requests for future articles please email me at daniel [at] mobilesyrup.com or find me on Twitter @journeydan 

Good things come to those who wait, and we’ve been waiting a very long time.

The Galaxy Nexus is not only the most anticipated Android device of 2011, but perhaps the most desired smartphone of any kind this year. Google and Samsung have created a blank slate on which to showcase Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich — a form-fitting, high-resolution dual-core powerhouse blank slate, mind you — and care shows in every pore. The interface has been completely overhauled, hardware-accelerated and beautified. This is the first Android version we can confidently say is pretty.

Like the Nexus S before it, the Galaxy Nexus is not the most powerful device on the market, but it doesn’t matter. From our time with the device, we can safely say there is no going back. Every piece of Android hardware from this day on will be judged not on the speed of its processor or its pixel density but on whether it is running Ice Cream Sandwich. The Galaxy Nexus has a market lead so vast as to be a chasm; the experience is just that much better. While there are minor aspects of the hardware we’d love to see improved, Samsung has wisely taken the best design aspects of the Nexus S and Galaxy S II variants and created the first best Android device ever.

Specs:
- Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
- 4.65″ 720×1280 pixel Super AMOLED display
- 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage (no microSD slot)
- 5MP camera back camera / 1.3MP front camera
- 1080p video capture
- WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 3.0, A-GPS, NFC
- 1750mAh battery
- 135.5 x 67.9 x 8.9 mm
- 135g
- HSDPA 21Mbps HSUPA 5.76Mbps (850 / 900 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100)

There is something immediately friendly about the Galaxy Nexus, as if you’ve seen it  somewhere before. In spite of its curved silhouette, the design owes a lot to two previous Samsung devices: the Nexus S and, more effusively, the Galaxy S II. It retains the slight bottom hump, though less marked, and the pitch-black Super AMOLED display. The front is remarkable in its austerity; there are no capacitive touch buttons to interrupt the bezel and its symmetry. It’s as if you’re staring into a black hole.

Turn the device onto either side and you’ll a brushed metallic plastic rim, sturdily made as ever, but not rugged. At only 135g it feels extremely light due to even weight distribution, but it’s missing the satisfying heft of the iPhone 4S or HTC Amaze. It does, however, help the device disappear in the hand and lends it that blank slate effect Google is aspiring to.

Like all Samsung devices, the volume rocker is on the left and the power button on the right; the plastic buttons do a fine job and feel sturdy and strong. The bottom chin houses the microUSB port and headphone jack, an odd placement to be sure but likely necessitated by the 8.94mm thin top portion. We’ve actually come to prefer a bottom headphone placement, as it’s easier to jump right into using the device when taking it out of a pocket or bag, top down.

The battery portion almost exactly emulates the Galaxy S II 9100 with its textured plastic tab design. Samsung has wisely used a flexible matte plastic that bends easily but does not break. Underneath the housing is a 1750mAh battery, SIM card slot and, alas, no microSD slot.

The Galaxy Nexus takes on a teardrop design, elongated and stretched over the dimensions of the Nexus S but clearly its kin. It is a pleasure to hold, and despite a 4.65″ screen size, pocketable and comfortable. The curved glass is even more pronounced than its predecessor, and aides in visual acuity and overall touch accuracy. There is a white pulse light below the screen, reminding you of forgotten emails or unseen texts.

The Display

Stop worrying about PenTile.

The Galaxy Nexus has one of the most stunning screens we’ve ever seen. The pixels are so small as to be microscopic, and unless you utilize one you’re not going to see a PenTile grid. What you will see is sharp text, incredible viewing angles, perfect blacks and outstanding clarity. If this is the future of mobile displays we can only say, “It’s about time.”

Let’s start with colours. Reds, greens and blues are accurate; this isn’t your mother’s oversaturated Super AMOLED display. Either Google has done something with the colour temperature or Samsung has finely calibrated its parts but for the first time we can say that colour accuracy is equal to a Super LCD display. At full brightness whites are evenly toned, though they take on a slight yellow tinge at half brightness. Blacks stay true throughout owing to the AMOLED technology, and viewing angles are 180 degrees in all directions.

In sunlight the Galaxy Nexus fares pretty well, though most of the detail gets washed out. We wouldn’t recommend reading Anna Karenina on a hot June day, but it does about as well as other AMOLED displays, which unfortunately is less so than most LCDs. Maximum brightness is phenomenal, though we don’t have the correct equipment to measure it.

The most significant improvement over previous Super AMOLED displays is in the clarity of text. Reading an article or a desktop-formatted web page is not only attainable but enjoyable. With Android 4.0′s new Roboto font much of the interface is a pleasure to read, and it’s nice seeing Google taking an interest in typographic fundamentals.

Performance

Our full benchmark results will be in our Software Overview, but from hours of subjective usage there is no need to worry about occasional stuttering and slowdown. We are using the production build (ITL41D) and the operating system took everything we threw at it and then some.

The dual-core TI OMAP 4460 SoC runs at 1.2Ghz, 300Mhz lower than the chip is traditionally clocked at, but it seems like Google has taken a page from iOS and is finally utilizing hardware acceleration throughout the UI. Unlike a custom skin which has taxing animations and garish flourishes, ICS pares down excess, exciting us with mature design decisions. Press down on the new software home button and a blue glow emanates from where your skin touched the display. It’s organic and friendly. Meander through your list of apps and the new page pops up like an old friend. We have noticed no slowdown or app instability.

Before we received the device, what troubled us was the idea of a last-generation GPU pushing 1280×720 pixels of the Galaxy Nexus’ screen — we can now say that fear is unfounded. We picked up and played a few games of Wind-up Knight and found it performed better in its native resolution than did the Motorola RAZR at 960×540. The RAZR uses the same GPU at a slightly slower speed, but has 40% fewer pixels. Google has done some serious tweaking to the graphics drivers to achieve such amazing results.

Battery Life

So far, so good. While we’ve only had the device with official software for a day, the Galaxy Nexus has held up remarkably well. It doesn’t hurt that the majority of Ice Cream Sandwich is dark, which means fewer pixels are actually turned on at any time, but Google and Samsung were wise to choose the TI OMAP 4460 chipset for the job; it has proven to be one of the most power-efficient on the market.

We will do a complete battery run-down test in a future post.

Connectivity

Unlike the Nexus S which was released in multiple versions, the Galaxy Nexus has a 21Mbps pentaband UMTS radio inside. This means that out of the box it is 4G-compatible with every major carrier in Canada, including the new entrants. And, yes, the phone is unlocked by default so carrier portability shouldn’t be an issue.

We had great results making phone calls and downloading files using Bell’s HSPA+ network. While some users may be upset at lack of LTE support, the nascent technology is still too battery-hungry for long-term usage and most Canadians still don’t have access to it. Instead Google and Samsung Canada made the right decision to launch the HSPA+ model, on which we found download speeds consistently exceeded 5Mbps. Ping times were usually under 100ms, though occasionally they jumped over 150ms.

Call quality through the earpiece and speaker left us impressed: our recipients heard us loudly and clearly even while walking outside on a blustery fall day. Similarly the mono speaker on the back delivered loud, punchy audio in line with most of its Samsung kin.

A quick word on GPS: we used the free turn-by-turn navigation for over an hour with no signal jumps or losses. We obtained a signal in around eight seconds, and it never wavered.

What’s Next

In the coming days we will do a full in-depth review of the Android 4.0 software and its myriad improvements. Our initial impressions are good: this is the first time Android is visually contiguous throughout the OS, consistently fast and stable. Existing apps that haven’t been explicitly updated for ICS will see performance improvements and design changes; the menu is now at the top of the screen, dubbed the Action Bar.

The 5MP camera seems to take fantastic shots, and the speed at which they are taken is remarkable. It has been explained to us that Google and Samsung didn’t want to sacrifice shutter speed in place of a more capacious sensor, but five million pixels should suffice for most point-and-shooters. We’re going to take a look at the camera and video quality, and the new panorama mode.

From what little we’ve used of it, the keyboard has graciously been overhauled for the better. We really disliked the Gingerbread keyboard and so far have found this one not only extremely responsive but accurate and smart. Google has also revamped the copy-paste menu, so it’s no longer hold down-tap-hold down to perform a simple function.

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We understand how excited you are to get a glimpse of the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich and we look forward to taking you on that journey with us. There is lots more to come in the next few days, so stay tuned.

The Quantum comes with 1GHz SnapDragon processor, a 3.8 inch 800×400 screen that supports 262K colours. It weighs in at 180 grams, and measures 119.5 x 59.5 x 15.22mm. The Quantum supports Quad-band GMS / EDGE networks using 850/900/1800/1900MHz and Tri-band UMTS/HSPA using 850/1900/2100MHz. Other features include wireless b/g support, 16GB internal storage with no external MicroSD slot for expansion, a 5 MegaPixel camera with LED flash capable of taking a 720p HD video, 1500mAh battery, FM Radio, and Bluetooth. The Quantum also supports DLNA-DMR for streaming your media from the phone to any DLNA enabled monitor.

Two things hit me when I first received this phone. One of those is weight – the Quantum weighs in at 180 grams. If you compare that to it’s brother – the LG Optimus 7 at 157 grams, or the Samsung Focus at just 121 grams, and lastly, the HTC Surround at 165 grams – it’s obvious that the Quantum is the heavy one on the Windows Phone block. For reference, the iPhone 4 weighs in at 137 grams. But you don’t need to compare the numbers, just pick it up and you’ll notice right away; This is one of the heaviest phones you’ve held in your hand in recent years. I understand that this phone has a keyboard so it may not be fair to compare it to these phones. I wanted to show the weight compared to other Windows Phone 7 devices, and of course, the iPhone is popular so that reference is understandable. For those that think the extra weight is a result of the keyboard, the HTC Desire Z comes in at 164 grams. LG Quantum is still the winner, or loser, depending on how you look at this.

Weight is one of those magical things – if it’s too light then people tend to think it’s cheap feeling, and if it’s too heavy then it gives the impression of bulk and carrying a brick. For me, this device was just too heavy. Your mileage may vary, so I strongly suggest you head down to your local Bell store and pick one up for yourself. But for me, it was at that weight where I can’t forget that it’s in my pocket.

The other thing that hits you right away is the finish on the device. LG made the battery door out of very thin metal, which feels nice in your hand, but they covered everything else with that soft rubbery feel. It’s great to help prevent the device from slipping out of your hands, and if LG had only used this on the back around the battery door it wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, LG covered the whole device with this soft rubber finish, including the front. The end result is that the phone looks like it has a poorly made rubber case on it all the time. Every time I looked at the device, I wanted to take the case off, only to remember that it wasn’t a case at all.

Let’s take a close look at the keyboard; The Quantum’s keyboard slides out to the left. It has 3 rows of letters and a row of symbol keys. In order to enter a number, you need to press the function button and then the corresponding key. The function and shift keys are off to the side of the keyboard and can be a little difficult to press because of their size and height, but nothing too dramatic. While the keyboard doesn’t sport an offset design, it is still very functional and I found it pretty easy to use. The keys have a good amount of travel and a spaced nicely.

Battery life on the Quantum was very nice. I had 4 email accounts (2 Exchange, 2 Gmail) linked on the phone along with my Facebook, and Windows Live accounts and I would have plenty of juice left at the end of the day. I could go a second day if I had to, without a problem.

The top of the device has the 3.5mm headphone jack and the power button. On the right side of the device, you’ll find the volume rocker at the top end and the camera button about three quarters of the way down the side. The bottom of the device is clean and clear. And the left side of the device has a little thumbnail opening where you can pop open the battery door, and then closer to to top of the side is a microUSB plug for charging and syncing the phone.

Across the front of the device you’ll find the standard 3 buttons – Back, Home, and Search. LG made the Home button a true resistive button that requires pressing, while the Back and Search keys are capacitive buttons that just require you to touch them. There’s little chance you will accidentally press the Home button while reach across the device for the Back button. LG has also offset the Home button – it’s sits below the screen and below the Back and Search keys.

No surprise that you’ll find the camera on the back of the device. I was a little surprised at the location of the flash, it seems to be set a little far into the device. But it didn’t seem to effect the pictures at all.

The battery door on the Quantum is pretty unique. It’s kind of a hinge, but not really. It’s different enough that LG felt the need to put an instructional sticker on the back of the device. When you put your thumbnail in and pop the back cover, it swings out a little and then releases. When you put it back on, you need to be sure to get the hinged side lined up first, and then swing the door down and snap it into place. Once you’ve done this it’s pretty easy and not a problem to open/close. It’s just a little different the first time.

The screen on the Quantum is bright and vibrant and very responsive to the touch. While it may not be an AMOLED, it certainly is a vibrant screen that is easy enough to see indoors and out.

The LG Quantum is a solid phone with a really good slide out keyboard. The phone is fast both on data speeds and when running applications. The weight of the device is a bit much for me, and the rubberized finish left a lot to be desired, but your mileage might vary. Head down to your local Bell shop (or AT&T if you’re in the US) and check it out – especially if you fancy physical keyboards instead of on-screen type.