Nokia has a knack for releasing entry-level devices unmatched in build quality, price and software compatibility.

The Lumia 620 is a natural extension of its Windows Phone 7.5-based Lumia 610 predecessor, but accomplishes everything considerably faster. At $250 outright on TELUS and free on a two-year term, there aren’t many true competitors to the 620. But is it worth purchasing for the price alone, or are there better choices out there for the average smartphone buyer?

Specs

- Windows Phone 8 Portico release
- 3.8-inch 800x480px ClearBlack LCD
- 1Ghz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus SoC
- 512MB RAM, 8GB internal storage (+microSD card slot)
- 5MP back camera, VGA front camera
- 1300mAh removable battery
- WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 3.0, NFC, A-GPS
- HSPA+ 21Mbps/5.76Mbps
- 115 x 61 x 11mm
- 127g

What’s Good

There may not be a lot to say about the Lumia 620 past the obvious: it’s a wonderful device at any price, but particularly at $250.

The screen is sharp, with excellent colour saturation and lovely contrast levels; viewing angles are fine, though anything past 30 degrees horizontal gets washed out. The ClearBlack display is responsive and gloriously one hand-friendly. There’s something peaceful about using a device this size after handling larger Android devices for the past year. Even the Lumia 920 feels cumbersome at times, and in using the 3.8-inch Lumia 620 it made me long for a simpler time.

More practically, though, the smaller screen means one-handed typing is a pleasure, as is the ability to reach any spot on the screen without adjusting the phone in your hand. Similarly, tipping the phone to one side to use as a camera is a subtle affair, and the 11mm thickness is negated by the phone’s trivial 127g weight.

Windows Phone 8 has really come a long way since its launch, with a bevy of well-made, nicely-designed, high performance apps available on the Windows Store. The Lumia 620 benefits from all of them, and runs the majority of apps with a consistency that most entry-level Android devices couldn’t dream of. Nokia didn’t skimp on power in this handset: a dual-core Snapdragon processor is plenty fast to run the latest apps and games, barring a few graphically-intense 3D ones like Asphalt 7.

The camera is quite good for a 5MP shooter, with a quick shutter and powerful flash. It in no way captures photos that compare to the excellent image-stabilized results of the Lumia 920, but Nokia does right by this little camera phone. Similarly, the Finnish OEM saw fit to include a front-facing shooter, albeit at a paltry VGA resolution, but the same can’t be said for the HTC 8S.

And while the Lumia 620 won’t win any awards for design, it does come with a removable back cover whose matte black finish can be replaced with a variety of hues. Battery life from the 1300mAh cell was excellent — we obtained longer than a day per charge — and call quality was similarly good. The device also has a microSD slot to expand storage another 64GB, if desired.

- Excellent outright price
- Fantastic one-handed usage
- Able to keep up with its more expensive peers in terms of performance
- Good call quality and battery life
- Nice screen
- Replaceable back cover
- microSD slot

What Needs Work

The Lumia 620, while great value, is only such when purchasing outright; far better phones can be had for $0, though you may have to sign a three-year contract (as opposed to a two-year) for the privilege. It may also be worth waiting to see if a Canadian carrier will release the newly-announced Lumia 720, which may carry a bit more bang for the buck.

If there is one serious design flaw in the Lumia 620, it’s that in removing and replacing the back cover, a non-trivial amount of pressure is exerted on the thin glass screen. This leaves the phone open to user-generated cracks, something that would have been avoided with a different mechanism.

The screen on the Lumia 620 also displays a fair amount of ghosting, a result of latency from a relatively cheap LCD part. Similarly, while the camera quality may be good enough for an entry-level device, it’s certainly not up to par with most mainstream handsets for a couple hundred dollars more. Lack of LTE connectivity will also be a concern for some users, especially as this is launching on TELUS and not Koodo.

Other than those minor quibbles, there really isn’t much to complain about here. We could continue to drive home the idea that Windows Phone lacks many of the top apps users can take advantage of on iOS or Android, namely Instagram, Flipboard, Path and more, but the OS itself integrates many of those popular functions. Facebook and Twitter integration is excellent, and developers are slowly coming around to the platform.

- Back cover removal is poorly designed
- Lacks LTE capabilities
- Can’t play some more graphically-intensive games
- Screen shows some ghosting
- Competitively priced only when purchased outright
- Windows Phone 8 still lacks many of the top apps available on iOS and Android

Final Words

The Nokia Lumia 620 is a competitively-priced entry-level smartphone and deserves a good look. It’s not necessarily the right choice for those signing a multi-year contract, since many better devices are discounted to $0 on three-year terms at the moment, but combined with an inexpensive pre- or post-paid plan, there aren’t many choices better than this.

Hitting all the right notes where it counts — performance, battery life, form factor — the Lumia 620 is let down only by the continued paucity of great Windows Phone 8 apps, though the number is certainly growing. Consider the Lumia 620 over the similarly-priced Windows Phone 8S, if only for the Lumia-exclusive app catalogue.

The Nokia Lumia 620 is available from TELUS for $250 outright.

And yet, the One X has held up remarkably well since its release. Its design is still largely unmatched in the Android ecosystem; its unibody polycarbonate body is tremendously hardy and its Super LCD 2 display phenomenally sharp.

So it’s bittersweet that, eight months or so later, HTC’s follow-up to the phone that started its design revolution is one that looks identical. That it arrives in Canada days after the release of the company’s next-generation Droid DNA doesn’t help matters. Where does the One X+ fit in TELUS’ lineup, and despite the speedy 1.7Ghz quad-core Tegra 3 chip and 64GB of internal storage, how quickly will be it replaced?

Specs:

- Android 4.1.1 with Sense 4+
- 4.7-inch 1280×720 Super LCD 2 display
- 1.7Ghz quad-core Tegra 3 SoC
- 1GB RAM / 64GB internal storage
- 8MP back camera / 1.6MP wide-angle front camera (with ImageSense)
- 2100mAh internal battery
- 850/900/1900//2100 MHz HSPA+ / 700/850/AWS/1900 MHz LTE
- 134.36 x 69.9 x 8.9mm
- 135g

What’s Good

The One X+ takes everything that made the One X a great phone and improves upon it. That includes a LTE-capable Tegra 3 chip at speeds faster than the original international version; triple the internal storage of the former Rogers- and TELUS-sold One X; and a larger 2100mAh battery inside the same frame.

While this doesn’t change the experience dramatically — the One X, even running Ice Cream Sandwich, doesn’t feel slow to this day — it certainly adds some zip to app loading times, and improves upon the already-great benchmark results of its predecessor.

The screen and build quality are superlative. The black finish on the phone looks a lot nicer than that of the original white, though I am still a fan of the grey model that came to TELUS this summer. The two phones share the same 720p Super LCD2 screen, and even after eight months it’s still the best on the market. Nothing has beaten it for clarity, viewing angles and sheer beauty — not even the Nexus 4.

While the One X+ uses the same 8MP back camera with ImageSense, the front camera has been upgraded to a wide-angle 1.6MP shooter which also plugs into the ImageSense chip. The updated camera software offers a timer for front-facing shots, and the back camera appears to take photos slightly faster than its predecessor.

Battery life on the One X+ is also improved over the original, though that feat shouldn’t have been difficult to achieve; the One X always had disappointing uptime. Nevertheless, we were able to attain over a day on a single charge, and that was even without the persistent nagging Power Saving feature turned on.

Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean on Sense 4+ doesn’t look too different from its Sense 4 predecessor, but expanded notifications and Google Now are appreciated additions. The UI doesn’t feel any faster or more fluid than the already-polished experience under Ice Cream Sandwich, but the extra 48GB of internal storage is certainly appreciated. Because the One X+ uses a Tegra 3 chip, you have access to the “Tegra Zone” gaming portal, where developers have created apps specifically for the hardware. These games usually have smoother frame rates, more detailed textures, or added lighting/water effects over their non-Tegra counterparts.

What’s Not So Good

Whomever decided that it would be a good idea to have a persistent “Power Saver Off/On” switch in the notification bar needs to lose his or her job. Not only can it not be removed, but even if you fully disable the Power Saver mode it sits there unused and unbidden. It’s a waste of space and an abhorrent abuse of Android’s customizability by HTC.

And while TELUS does not include any bloatware (other than one app portal, which upon launching directs you to download it from the Play Store), there are still a ton of preloaded apps here, many of which will never be used by the average consumer.

We’re also concerned that the Tegra 3 SoC, despite its extra 200Mhz per core, is showing its age. It is built on a 40nm process and is inherently less energy efficient than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 chipset. The One X+ would have been better suited for the quad-core S4 Pro SoC with the Adreno 320 GPU, a graphic chip far more powerful than the anemic ultra low power GPU in the Tegra 3.

Conclusions

The One X+ is a great phone, and HTC has every right to improve upon a timeless design and an excellent feature set. But when it comes mere months before the inevitable launch of the Deluxe, and the constant forward momentum of next-generation chips and high(er)-definition screens, we wonder if the One X+ is merely a stopgap phone on the way to something better.

Most consumers who would have appreciated the One X+ have likely already invested in a One X, and few will see it is an essential upgrade. Indeed, while the synthetic benchmark scores are 20-30% higher than the dual-core version, real-world performance improvements are barely noticeable, and once the original gets upgraded to Jelly Bean, many of the advantages of the One X+ will be rendered moot.

If you’ve been holding off buying a One X in hopes of something better, here’s your chance to unload $129.99 on contract or $649.99 outright. You’d be buying one of the top Android phones on the market today — you just never know how long that qualification will last.

But with the Lumia 710, a much more powerful device in almost every regard, available for the same cost, is there room in Canada for the Lumia 610? And, judged on its own merit, does it make a splash? Available for $200 outright on Koodo and $229.99 on TELUS, let’s see if this Lumia lights the way.

Specs:

- Windows Phone Tango OS
- 800Mhz single-core processor
- 256MB RAM / 8GB internal storage
- 5MP camera with flash
- VGA video capture
- WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS
- 1300mAh battery
- 119 x 62 x 12 mm
- 131.5g

Build Quality and Screen

The Lumia 610 is solid and hefty in a way an increasing number of entry-level smartphones have managed to be. The HTC One V and Desire C come to mind, as well as the Lumia 710, and the 610 stands on its sibling’s shoulders. There’s an accomplished design sensibility to the phone that only Nokia could have earned. Its smooth corners and swooping-S battery door are modern-looking, and though the company saves some money by using “plain jane” plastic over the scratch-resistant polycarbonate of the Lumia 800, I never questioned the robustness of the phone.

The three main buttons are on the right side of the phone: volume near the top; power in the middle; camera shutter on the bottom. Below the display’s glass are three capactivite touch buttons that respond eagerly to presses. On the back is a 5MP camera with LED flash, but there is no front-facing camera to take advantage of the new Skype app.

The screen is deeply recessed and clearly does not match the fidelity of the 800 or even the ClearBlack LCD nature of the 710, and is the phone’s biggest weakness. Colours are muted, viewing angles are awful, and the phone suffers from glare even in the most forgiving of environments. But it’s also WVGA and therefore has a better pixel density than the majority of phones at the same price point.

Nokia’s newest and most inexpensive phone gives a great first impression.

Software & Performance

Despite being equipped with an 800Mhz processor and 256MB of RAM, the Lumia 610 did not perform demonstrably poorer than any Windows Phone I’ve used before. That’s because Microsoft spent a great deal of time optimizing the “Tango” code to be more conservative in its memory usage and disallowing apps that have yet to adhere to those alterations.

Windows Phone has always behaved extremely well, and the Lumia 610 is no exception. Apps load quickly, games play smoothly and home screen animations lose none of their alacrity. Indeed, were I to have not known that the Lumia 610 came with lower specs than many of its peers, I likely wouldn’t have been able to tell a difference.

Indeed, the only major issue with app compatibility on the Lumia 610 is in the Xbox Live category, where just under 25% of games are not compatible. That number shrinks to around 1.5% when you consider the entire Windows Phone catalogue, but be aware that 3D games such as The Sims 3 and NFS: Hot Pursuit will not install on the 610. Keep in mind, too, that due to the slower processor web pages in Internet Explorer take a few seconds longer to load than on the Lumia 710.

The Lumia 610 comes pre-installed with Windows Phone Tango, the not-so-sequel to Mango that adds (obviously) compatibility with lower-memory devices, but also augments a few features of the device. MMS improvements are on board; so too is a little icon in the notification bar when GPS is being used. These little things don’t change the overall look or feel of the OS but flesh out its completeness. Windows Phone is still very much an operating system in its infancy and suffers from an incomplete notification system, poor customization options and a lack of compelling apps.

It does, however, have a few advantages over its iOS and Android competitors. The Live Tile system is fantastic, and as more developers take advantage of the expanded APIs in Windows Phone 7.5, the more useful the information one can glean from an app without opening it. WP’s mail app is astoundingly powerful, too, and is an example of how austerity can triumph over features. Microsoft bundles Office Suite with Windows Phone, though it’s still quite limited and cannot compete with suites on iOS and Android such as QuickOffice.

Nokia’s suite of apps, including Drive, Maps, Transit, Camera Extras, Play To, Trailers and Creative Studio are among the best on the platform, and the Lumia 610 can take advantage of them all. Drive and Transit are, for me, reason alone to invest in Nokia over any other Windows Phone vendor.

Camera

The Lumia 610, like all Windows Phones, can shoot from sleep by holding down the camera shutter button. In fact, the camera experience on the 610 is identical (in a good way) to its more-expensive peers, though the same cannot be said about the quality of the photos themselves.

The 5MP sensor is another area in which Nokia cut costs. Details are washed out, shots are often overexposed, and though the shutter is impressively quick, photos are often blurry. Thankfully the low-cost device comes equipped with a flash, something that can’t be said for Android devices in the same price range.

You have all the requisite tweaks and settings such as White Balance, Exposure Values and ISO to play with, and there are preset Effects such as Black & White and Sepia. For video, you’re limited to VGA quality (640×480), something we’ve come to expect from devices with sub-1Ghz processors.

Battery Life

The Lumia 610 is not a powerhouse, nor is it particular power-hungry, and I found myself to be quite satisfied with the end results. On average, the device lasted between 16 and 24 hours with regular use (meaning I would use it the whole day and leave it on before I went to sleep. There was usually 5-10% battery remaining when I woke up).

The device comes with a removable 1300mAh cell, so if you’re a heavy user you can always order another one to have on hand. You’re unlikely to need one, though, as Windows Phone in general and Nokia devices in particular typically have excellent uptime.

Audio, Network Speed and Storage

Nokia’s Lumia 610 has excellent call quality over TELUS’ network, though its network performance is hampered by a slow baseband chip. This is neither a “faux-G” nor a LTE device, and is limited to speeds of 7.2Mbps down. As a result, web page rendering was considerably slower than on the Lumia 710 or 800 — remember, there’s a 600Mhz difference in processor speed, too.

There’s 8GB of internal storage in this Lumia, but only 6.5GB is available to the user. Still, it’s the same amount as the Lumia 710 and we have to give Nokia props for that.

Conclusions

As an entry-level smartphone, the $200 Lumia 610 is pretty competitive, especially when paired with a low-cost plan from Koodo. On TELUS it’s a bit more difficult a decision, as Rogers sells the 710 for the same $229.99 price outright. While there are certainly some benefits over the similarly-priced HTC One V, it’s hard to recommend a Windows Phone over an HTC device running the latest version of Android. Google’s OS may not be as consistently smooth but it’s considerably more versatile and has a much wider array of apps and media content.

Where Windows Phone excels is in its simplicity and user experience. The 610 feels, due to Microsoft’s lean operating system, like a phone double its price. That is until you attempt to load a webpage or download a 3D game. At $200 the Lumia 610 is an excellent deal, but it’s not cheap enough to make us forget about the far-superior Lumia 710.

Overall revenue for the green giant is up 4% year over year totaling $2.6 billion. Net Income and EPS (earnings per share) was $348M and $1.07 respectively, representing 6% year-over-year growth. TELUS claimed 6% and 2% growth for their wireless and wireline portfolios, respectively, with strong wireless data growth up 36% and wireline data growth up 13% from Q1 2011.

Q1 was another strong quarter for TELUS in terms of net postpaid subscriber additions, totalling 63K, leading first place for quarter-over-quarter growth of the top three Canadian carriers. Bell reported the same addition of 63K subscribers last week, leaving Rogers in last with only 47K net new postpaid subscriber growth. TELUS’ total subscriber numbers are now an impressive 7.36 million users.

TELUS reported another industry leading quarter for ARPU growth up 1.7% from last year. Blended churn decreased by 15 bps (basis points) sitting at 1.55%. TELUS states strong churn is a result of successful retention initiatives with the help of smartphone activations on the base of customers.

Free cash flow increased more than 50% to $358M for Q1 2012, which is a rise of $196M compared to Q1 2011. This was due primarily to lower discretionary contributions made to defined benefit pension plans, lower restructuring payments and higher adjusted EBITDA.

Source: CNW

The prepaid market is one that we don’t really broach too often, but it’s an essential component of everyday life for millions of Canadians. While the penetration rate for smartphones is nearly 40%, it’s still much more common to see someone with a cheap flip phone or aging candybar walking down the street. Smartphones are essential to peoples’ lives, but so is the savings from a $89.99 prepaid phone paired with a $20/month commitment-free rate plan.

The MOTOKEY SOCIAL, hereby deemed Motokey for austerity sake, is an interesting take on the the portrait QWERTY phone. At first glance it appears quite similar to the previously-reviewed Android-powered Motorola Pro+ but for the smaller screen and dedicated Facebook button.

Let’s take a look at this pseudo-smartphone and see if it’s right for you, or your younger sibling.

Specs:

- Custom Motorola operating system
- 2.4″ 320×240 capacitive touch screen
- 64MB RAM, 128MB ROM (50MB user available) with microSD slot
- 3MP camera
- GSM 850/900/1800/1900, EDGE Class 10, WCDMA 850/1900
- 910mAh battery
- WiFi / Bluetooth, GPS
- WiFi hotspot support
- Built-in Facebook button
- Stereo FM radio
- 87g
- 60 x 105.5 x 9.98 mm

—

It’s important to note that the Motokey is not, depending on your definition, a smartphone. It runs a touchscreen-”friendly” operating system, but it’s a far cry from the versatility of Android, or even Samsung’s Bada.

This simple Java-based operating system is surprisingly robust, with capacitive touchscreen support and native social networking features. There are smartphone features we take for granted, such as a Java browser (Opera Mobile), Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo and weather applets. I’d be remiss to call them apps, but they perform ably enough.

There are five home screens, each of which is adorned with various widgets and app icons; holding down on one will bring up an ugly prompt asking to change the source of that shortcut. You cannot move an icon, or replace it with a widget, so an icon must be replaced with another, and a widget with another, and so on. The system works quite well, though getting things exactly right is time-consuming and cumbersome. Nevertheless, we have to go back to one thing: this phone provides, for $90, similar albeit vastly simplified functionality as a device three or four times the price.

The hardware is quite hardy for such an inexpensive device. The keyboard is similar to the one on the Motorola Pro+, but adds a dedicated number row in the space where an extra half-inch of screen space would be. The keys are spritely and well-honed, spaced just right for messaging hounds; the number row will appease those with aversions to the “BlackBerry Way” of holding down the alt key for most secondary presses. As you can see, like the Android-powered HTC Status there is a dedicated Facebook button near the bottom left of the keyboard. Such an inclusion leaves no doubt as to whom this diminutive device is to be marketed to.

The 2.4″ QVGA screen is appreciably crummy, but not a write-off. With sufficient brightness, clarity and touch responsiveness, it’s a great deal better than a resistive layer. Viewing angles are pretty laughable though, and you can see the banding in most gradients, owing to the limited colour palette.

Around the back is a 3MP camera, for which the software could be worse: one-touch Facebook sharing, plus decent response time makes for a pleasant enough experience. I foresee many young people pointing the lens at their own faces, friends gathering in the shot for a candid self-portrait. The lack of flash is no surprise, but one can take grainy and low-framerate video at a decent 640×480 resolution.

Though the phone does not come with a microSD slot, the phone supports one up to 32GB, and it’s a good thing too, since there are only 50MB of usable storage out of the box for photos, video and music. There is a decent media player built in, though, to accompany the top-side 3.5mm headphone jack. Indeed, the phone appears to be a smartphone from the look of it: it is charged with an industry-standard microUSB cable (provided, thankfully) and has similarly robust build quality.

The Motokey is ringed by a chrome plastic bezel, to which a sturdy battery cover is attached. Underneath the hood is a 910mAh battery, but I had no issues with the battery. Since I couldn’t perform my usual suite of battery tests (for lack of apps), I merely repeated a short video I filmed until the cell wore to zero. The phone lasted nearly fifteen hours on medium brightness, indicating a relatively mild battery draw under load.

Surprisingly, the Motokey has a built-in WiFi hotspot feature to accompany the HSPA+ baseband inside. Telus offers a wide range of Prepaid Plans, though the base cost is 20c/min with a monthly plan and 30c/min without one. Data can be added, in 250MB/month increments, for $20, though it does not look like it can be combined with a voice plan. One plan, which includes such “deals” as $45/month Unlimited Voice gives you access to 5 numbers, plus evenings after 6pm and weekends and no-limit messaging, are a far cry from post-paid contract rates, but perform the function for those people who want nothing to do with a 3-year contract. Per-use data rates are $3/MB.

Thankfully, like all Motorola phones, call quality is excellent. There is an ample-sized speaker on the back for those tinny music urges, and the device, which is around the same height and width as the BlackBerry Curve 9360, is very comfortable to hold in the hand.

There is no doubt that the MOTOKEY SOCIAL is not aimed at me, nor most of our readers. But I decided to review it precisely because it is the type of phone that parents will buy their kids, or themselves, if cost is important and usage is kept to a minimum. Prepaid costs can add up quickly, but those who will seek one out are unlikely to be the heavy “Crackberry” users who will invest in an expensive handset.

As such, the Motokey gets a hearty recommendation without many of the reservations I usually foist on a smartphone. For $89.99 outright, and a $20/month prepaid plan which comes with no commitment, it’s the most robust and feature-filled fuss-free handset I’ve used.

The MOTOKEY SOCIAL is available from Telus for $89.99 outright.

On paper, the HTC Amaze is our dream phone. Rounded and comfortable, dual-toned (silver and black) with a gorgeous 4.3″ qHD display, dedicated camera and camcorder buttons to accent its no-lag 8MP camera, a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor with enough RAM to feed an army. There is definitely a lot to like about the Amaze, which debuts exclusively on Telus (for now).

And since we use a lot of handsets, it is difficult to have an emotional connection with any one of them; you get in, use it for a few days, and get out. Rarely do we come off a review yearning to own one ourselves. And yet that is exactly what happened with the Amaze which is, in our opinion, the best device HTC has made in a very long time. Though it may lack the GPU firepower of Bell’s Galaxy S II or the HD screen of the LG Optimus LTE, it’s shaped right, performs right, and does just about everything we need it to do for as long as we need it to do. Don’t believe us? Read on…

Specs:

- Android 2.3.4 with HTC Sense 3.0
- 4.3 inch 960×540 pixel qHD display
- 1.5Ghz APQ8060 Snapdragon S3 processor w/ Adreno 220 GPU
- 1GB RAM, 16GB internal eMMC storage (expandable to 48GB)
- 8MP camera w/dual LED flash, f/2.2 aperture, 28mm lens with dedicated camera button, 2MP front camera
- 1080p video capture w/ dedicated camcorder button
- Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi b/g/n
- MDM8200T baseband supporting HSPA+ (850/1700/1900/2100MHz) and quad-band GSM/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz)
- 130 x 65.6 x 11.8 mm, 173g
- 1730mAh battery

The Phone

There is no overstating it: the Amaze is a huge phone. It’s thick, at nearly 12mm, heavy at 173g and imposing. There is no mistaking it as either an Android device or an HTC creation. The silver accent appears almost white in the right light, and the earpiece grill is taken straight from the T-Mobile’s myTouch line. In fact, the Amaze is the myTouch 4G Slide combined with the HTC Sensation. It hits all the right points: solid without being rigid, thick without being oversized. It fits perfectly in our hands, and but for the comparatively low pixel density, we preferred using it to the iPhone 4S for most tasks. There is no question that a 4.3″ screen is going to be too big for some, and the perfect compromise for others.

Build quality is excellent, as the aluminum battery cover fits over the device like a glove. Portions of the backing are black matte plastic, owing to the fact that HTC stores the MIMO antennas for cellular connectivity in plain view. These gold overlays, along with an NFC chip, are situated at the top and bottom of the inside piece, allowing for simultaneous transmit and receive while limiting attenuation. And because the Amaze incorporates Dual-Cell HSPA+ technology, there are two dedicated transmit and receive antennas for a maximum throughput of 42Mbps.

The right side of the device incorporates a lengthy volume rocker, of the same silver shade as the rest of the bezel, and two camera buttons: one for the photo app, another for video. While we’re not sold on the need for the smaller camcorder button — it takes one touch from within the app to change to video mode — its inclusion makes recording a 1080p clip a two-second practice. The respective apps can be accessed at any time, even when the phone is off, by holding down either button. Add to that the fact that the shutter is nearly instantaneous and you’ve got one heck of a point-and-shoot replacement.

The bottom houses the latch to open the battery, while the left side owns the microUSB/MHL connector which, when paired with a converter can output what’s on the screen to an HDMI port. While the connector may look proprietary, it’s actually compatible with all microUSB ports. The back of the device is stunning. Multiple microphones pepper the soft black plastic while, on the top left side the wide-angle 8MP camera lens sits like a king above two variable LED flash lights. The speaker to the right emits tinny, disquieting sound and is one of the Amaze’s great flaws (even though sounds is excellent through the headphone port). We love the two-tone style but can’t help but think the aluminum-plated areas feel too plasticky for our liking. Nevertheless the body is extremely hardy.

The Display

Without falling prey to the “not-the-best-so-it-sucks” syndrome, the qHD display on the Amaze is stunning. No, it’s not HD — it’s only 258ppi — but it’s one of the best currently on the market, and a HUGE improvement over the lacklustre screen on the Sensation. Colours are vivid, text is clear, and most importantly, viewing angles are much better, almost 180 degrees. We found, compared to the Raider, the colours are in fact over-saturated, more like a Super AMOLED screen than an LCD. Black levels are improved somewhat over the Raider’s slightly greyish tint and, since the same resolution is on a slightly smaller screen, everything is just that much sharper.

That’s not to say everything is amazing on the Amaze. The LCD glass itself, in a provocative display of showmanship, extends up and past the aluminum bezel, jutting out uncomfortably. As we glide our thumb or forefinger towards the edge of the screen we reach the precipice only to be welcomed by a sharp, discordant railing of sorts. We don’t understand why HTC didn’t just curve the glass concave with the bezel; it would have made for functional and aesthetic uniformity.

Performance

The HTC Amaze, internally, is almost identical to the Samsung Galaxy S II X. Both devices run the 1.5Ghz variant of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S3 processor, along with 1GB RAM and the MDM8200 baseband. Functionally, since we find TouchWIZ to be a great deal smoother in operation than HTC’s Sense UI, it comes down to which Android skin you prefer more or, ultimately, hate less.

Compared to the Raider, which is clocked 300Mhz slower, the Amaze is the obvious winner. Even scrolling, swiping and typing within the Sense UI itself, or launching apps, rendering web pages or playing 3D games, appear noticeably faster on the Amaze. This should seem self-evident, but at these speeds, when everything seems to run pretty smoothly, even the most subtle of performance improvements is well felt.

Benchmarks, too, speak for themselves. As you can see below, the Amaze outscores the SGS2X by nearly 100 points in Qualcomm’s own Vellamo benchmark, and routs it in Smartbench 2011. Only CF-Bench is left to the Samsung handset, likely due to its hardware-accelerated browsing experience that fares so well in Javascript tests. Neither of them can compete against the Mali-400MP GPU of the Bell Galaxy S II, though the Snapdragon chip bests it in multi-core CPU tests.

We’ve said it before, though: we feel that Sense UI, with its bloated animations and garish graphical flourishes, is becoming more a liability for HTC than a benefit. Its aesthetic has barely changed since its Android launch in 2009 on the HTC Hero, sporting Android 1.5 Cupcake. Though steadily improved, it has reached maturity in Gingerbread like an aging king — more Robert Baratheon than Tywin Lannister — no longer able to fight the battles he once relished. We hope that with Ice Cream Sandwich, HTC lets Google have more of an aesthetic influence, while remaining a leader of Android content and well-designed first-party apps. There is nothing wrong with the company continuing to focus on coherent, quality experiences but the more Sense diverts from the original Android source code, the longer it will be for updates and the more alienated its customers from core experiences.

Cameras

The Amaze incorporates HTC’s now-infamous f/2.2 8MP lens, “the best smartphone camera on the market,” so they claim. Whether marketing hyperbole or fact is irrelevant: the same optics are present on the Raider, the upcoming Windows Phone-powered Titan and, previously the myTouch 4G Slide. There is no doubt the experience is markedly better than its immediate predecessor, the Sensation: flat colours are now vibrant, laborious shutter speeds now instant, blurry subjects now clear. The UI has been polished and simplified, the excess removed, and it is now — we hate to admit it — more Apple-like in its fundamental objective of getting out of the way and allowing the user to take great pictures.

But unlike the iPhone’s interface, HTC has hidden in plain sight numerous excellent one-touch modes and settings. When you first enter the camera app there are four icons vertically arrayed on the right side: Camcorder/Camera; Front-facing camera; Flash; Effects. The bottom icon, a magic wand, brings up a list of effects on the left side: Panorama, HDR, Burst Mode, Vintage, Depth of Field, Dots, Greyscale, Posterize and more. In addition, once shot, the built-in photo editor can add Instagram-type filters for added indie cred. In all seriousness, without any filters or special modes the Amaze takes wonderful still shots. Like all phone cameras it fares less well in low light, and we honestly found it to be less capable than the iPhone 4S or Galaxy S II in this regard, but the f/2.2 sensor is a great deal better than any HTC has previously used. But as you can tell from the park shot below, the edges of photos tend to be significantly softer than the centre, exposing the disadvantages of such a small lens in its ability to focus on a large area.

If there is one area in which the Amaze, and its Raider cousin, betters any device we’ve previously used, is in its shutter speed. Because the device is constantly caching what it sees on the screen to take a photo is all but instantaneous. While multiple shots are sometimes blurry — and the Burst mode mostly useless as a result — it is possible to pre-focus, which automatically adjusts the white balance and depth of field, and not worry your object will be out of range once the shutter goes. Even the iPhone 4S, which claims an instant shutter, often needs to adjust its focus for half a second before shooting. And like its iOS competitor, the Amaze can pre-focus by tapping anywhere on the screen. Though by default the phone reviews each shot for three seconds, by turning this option off you can take hundreds of shots a minute, ensuring at least one perfect moment.

We found the flash to be more capable than the Raider’s, firing accurately and consummately to fill half a room (and not make its subjects white-eyed and pale). Like any good camera flash it fires twice, once to meter the amount of light available to the lens, and to adjust the white balance accordingly, and the second, more severe, to light the object appropriately. It appears to work well most of the time, though it occasionally overcompensates and overexposes subjects in the immediate foreground. With the Amaze’s capable face detection, a setting enabled by default, its IQ managed to adjust exposure, focus and ISO as well as we’ve seen from any phone thus far. And, due to its lower aperture, you can expect a modicum of true depth of field, something missing from last generation’s camera phones.

Like with the Raider, we also found the Amaze’s images to be sharper than the 4S, with truer colours. It must be said that the iPhone, once it gains focus, takes shots faster with less blur than the Amaze, but unless you’re trying to follow a sneaky two year old around the house the difference shouldn’t be perceptible.

The 2MP front-facing camera adorning the Amaze is on par with its Galaxy S II nemesis, and works great with Skype, Google Talk and checking your hair. While clearer than the majority of other front shooters out there, it serves an otherwise limited function.

The Amaze also takes fantastic 1080p video, though like HTC’s other products it doesn’t handle motion very well. What should be a completely flawless 30fps pan across a busy intersection quite bumpy, exposing the inherent problems of small lenses and complex compression. Though we love the quality of the end product — like its stills, the Amaze excels in capturing the most minute details of its subjects — we found compression artifacts in scenes with low light and frame rate drops in stark lighting changes. We experienced the same problem with the Raider (see sample video) but, thankfully, the Amaze handled motion a great deal more adeptly due to its faster processor. It also helps that the chassis is thicker than the Raider’s, and that of the iPhone 4S, allowing one to grasp the device more firmly.

One problem we occasionally ran into was when we held the phone as we would a regular camera — with our thumb and palm supporting the device at the front, with our index finger over the trigger — our palm would brush over the Home button and either exit the app or bring up the multitasking menu. There should be an option to temporarily disable the capacitive buttons while taking photos or shooting video.

Software

The HTC Amaze runs the same version of Android 2.3.4 with Sense 3.0 as the Raider and the Sensation before it. Ultimately it comes down to whether you can stomach Sense over Android, or whether you like Android at all. We like Sense and think that it brings a consistency and fluidity to Android that was sorely needed before the announcement of Ice Cream Sandwich. Since seeing ICS in action, however, we are less bullish on the future of HTC’s skin and its placement in the Android ecosystem. While ultimately an argument for another day, you’re not going to find anything particularly new on the Amaze.

We also found very little to complain about, either. Apps were, for the most part, stable and fast. Our favourite third-party apps such as Twitter for Android, Google Reader, Rdio, Skype — they all operated with aplomb. The reason we included the last two, in addition to being a couple of our most-used programs, is because they are pre-loaded on the Amaze. Telus has entered into a partnership with Rdio and Skype, allowing for carrier billing and, for Rdio, a one-month free trial. Unfortunately they cannot be uninstalled; if you update them through the Marketplace, “uninstalling” them will just remove those updates, not the app itself.

It’s a practice that is becoming increasingly and brazenly common in the industry, and though perhaps we should count ourselves lucky not to have the same amount of bloatware as Verizon or AT&T, two companies notorious for their excess, it’s a sad, cold precedent. It should not take rooting an Android device to be able to remove non-system apps that can be downloaded from the Marketplace. We suppose the argument could be make that Gmail or Google Maps, both pre-loaded, are too available for download and also cannot be removed, but it’s a slippery slope.

Read our Raider review, our Sensation review or our Raider vs Amaze Showdown for more insight into Sense 3.0 and the Android 2.3.4 software.

Battery Life

Before the Amaze launched in Canada it debuted on T-Mobile in the US. Like a bogeyman come out to play, one of the biggest criticisms of the device was over its plainly poor battery life. Some reviewers were complaining of less than 8 hours on a single charge, which should be easily attainable from the 1730mAh battery.

Perhaps it’s because Telus consistently gives the Amaze a stronger signal, reducing 3G signal searching, but we had no such issues with the battery life. No, it’s not great, but we were able to get through an entire day on a single charge, and even a couple times well into the following morning. We liken this to a couple things: the Amaze is bright, even when set to Auto. Lowering it to 1/3 of the max brightness still gave us plenty of lumens to work with without killing the juice.

Second is to keep track of what’s happening in the background. We’re not talking Task Killers here — those are utterly useless since all they do is close open apps, not prevent them from starting again — but rather being vigilant about what is loaded onto your phone in the first place. With no third-party apps loaded, the Amaze easily lasted two days with some phone calls, photos and browsing.

Once we loaded Facebook and Twitter on there, battery life halved. This is a by-product of push notifications and background updates — the former is a scourge to iOS battery life, the latter not possible on it — and needs to be addressed head on. Android inherently necessitates more user interaction with its settings; in fact, it encourages it. Most apps will never perform any background function, but be aware of every app you download and check them for how frequently they access the network behind your back. While the ability to truly multitask can be a fantastic benefit to Android users, it can also be its biggest battery-related liability.

For monitoring of what is going on in the background of your Android device, we recommend downloading System Panel. The Lite version is a free download but we recommend the paid version for real-time monitoring.

Overall, while we weren’t happy with the Amaze’s battery life, with a bit of diligence we managed average-to-good results, and certainly a full day’s use per charge is not out of reach.

Network speeds, sound quality and other benefits

We knew the Amaze held in it some magic, and we were surprised to find a couple bonuses, too. The MDM8200T baseband chipset inside the device supports not only Telus’ 850/1900Mhz HSPA+ channels, but the AWS frequencies used by WIND Mobile and Mobilicity. This is advertised right on the box. While the device obviously comes locked to Telus, it’s not too far a stretch to see the Amaze arriving at one of these new entrants in the next few months. At the moment it is T-Mobile’s flagship device, and would be a huge benefit to either company.

While we’re on the subject of speed, we may want to mention the Amaze supports up to 42Mbps in the downlink. This is a theoretical maximum, though we averaged around 7-10Mbps down and 2-4Mbps up. Compared to the Raider, whose LTE speeds often topped 25Mbps, the Amaze is disappointing. Compared, however, to the iPhone 4S, which maxes out at 14.4Mbps down, and it consistently hit double the speed or higher.

For many users across Canada who don’t and will not have access to LTE for many more months the Amaze may be the fastest device available to them.

As for voice quality, we had consistently excellent sound, in part due to the multiple noise-cancelling microphones adorned on the device’s battery cover. Speaker quality, while thin and tinny, fared better than any HTC device we’ve used so far. We played M83′s Midnight Children through its speaker and got some room-filling volume; whether it will fill the room with joy is debatable.

Headset sound reached equally head-destroying heights, and though the Amaze does not come with HTC’s new Beats equalizer settings its clean DAC and ample amplifier had no trouble powering our 120-ohm Beyerdynamic headphones.

Another nice inclusion in the Amaze is NFC connectivity. While not as widely advertised as on the Galaxy S II X (we came across it by accident) it’s a useful feature to have as more vendors include NFC payment systems and more developers add quick transfer features to their apps.

This or the Galaxy S II X?

A lot of people have an opinion one way or the other. Both devices are virtually identical internally. They share the same processor, GPU, amount of RAM, internal storage and megapixels. The SGS2X has a 4.5″  800×480 Super AMOLED Plus display with perfect blacks and vivid colour; the Amaze has a 4.3″ 960×540 Super LCD display with more accurate colours, higher brightness and sharper text. It’s also more solidly constructed but much heavier than the Samsung.

Both have incredible cameras capable of replacing a point-and-shoot. Neither of them will replace your video camera just yet. We prefer the lightweight nature of TouchWIZ 4 over HTC’s languid Sense UI, but to many the latter skin will seem more polished. Both devices trade benchmark wins depending on the app, and neither can be considered a better experience, just different. If browsing is a priority we’d recommend the Samsung by virtue of its hardware-accelerated browser app; if photos are a priority we’d recommend the Amaze for its better camera UI and superior still shot results.

As for price, they’re both $99 on a 3-year term and $599.99 outright. Our only real recommendation — and this applies to all reviews — is to go to a retail store and actually use the devices.

Conclusions

Using the HTC Amaze has been like a breath of fresh air. It’s not often we have an emotional connection with a smartphone, but that is exactly what happened here. From its dual-toned aluminum design to its ample heft to its stunning screen we were left impressed time and time again. Like the Incredible S, we feel like the Amaze is a culmination of many months of R&D and lessons learned from some mediocre product offerings. This is the device the Sensation should have been, and though we’re pleased it’s finally here it is only because we haven’t played with the Galaxy Nexus that we’re able to bestow such honours.

When we look at the ultimately purpose of a smartphone — phone, messenger, social connector, camera, gaming device — the Amaze gratifies. We also have confirmation that it will be one of the first devices HTC updates to Android 4.0 in the new year, reassuring us of its potential longevity.

Whether it’s Telus’ best device is up for debate, but the Amaze is certainly HTC’s best device, and that’s good enough for us.

Rating: 9/10

Weighted Rating: 8.5/10

(based on 9/10 rating of SGS2X and adjusted for time)

Pros:

-      Sharp, vibrant screen with excellent viewing angles and brightness levels
-      Camera takes some of the best stills we’ve seen from a phone
-      Camera and camcorder buttons a huge benefit to the average photographer
-      Excellent speeds apps, browsing and benchmarks
-      Inclusion of AWS bands increases carrier flexibility
-      Commendable build quality and robustness
-      Good headphone sound quality

Cons:

-      Underwhelming battery life
-      Sense 3.0 is becoming more a burden than a benefit
-      Minor issues with video image stabilization
-      Disappointing network speeds compared to 42Mbps claim

The term ‘mini’ is almost always a pejorative. It’s a synonym for small, weak, underpowered. So it’s probably a good thing that Sony Ericsson decided not to call the Xperia ray the Xperia arc mini, even though, for all intents and purposes, that’s what it is.

In reality, the Xperia ray is an extremely capable phone in a tiny package, and a coup for TELUS. It appeals to anyone who longs for the days of the tiny Nokia clamshell but wants the power of a high-end smartphone. It’s not going to change the phone industry, but it underscores Sony Ericsson’s progression into a forward-thinking Android manufacturer who knows its multiple demographics. Read on to see how much we liked it.

Specs:

- 3.3″ 854×480 pixel LCD display with Sony’s Bravia Engine
- 1Ghz Snapdragon MSM8255 SoC with Adreno 205 GPU
- 512MB RAM / 320MB internal storage /8GB included microSD card (32GB max)
- 8.1MP camera with Sony’s Exmor R sensor / 720p video capture @ 30fps / Video light
- WiFi (b/g/n), A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support
- 111.0 x 53.0 x 9.4 mm / 100g
- HSDPA 7.2Mbps / HSUPA 5.76Mbps
- 850/1900/2100 UMTS

The Phone and initial thoughts

With a 3.3″ screen and a 9.4mm thickness, the ray turns heads. It resembles in many ways the Xperia arc released earlier this year except it lacks the distinctly curved back, opting instead for a straight and simple cover. Adorning the device is a matte, graphite-coloured polycarbonate, very sturdy and easy to hold.

There is a moulded 3.5mm headphone jack on top, slightly raised, to accommodate the most stubborn of headsets, a microUSB port on the left side and a simple volume rocker on the top right side. The ‘up’ arrow protrudes slightly from the volume rocker, while the ‘down’ is recessed, ensuring accurate pocket access. It’s these small details that delight.

The front is comprised of a sharp and bright FWVGA screen with a true 16:9 ratio. Sony has embedded its Bravia Engine technology into the ray, as it did with the arc, and it’s remarkable to witness on such a small screen. With the same resolution as the arc’s 4.2″ screen shrunk down to 3.3″, the ray has a healthy pixel density of 297ppi. While we wouldn’t necessarily recommend watching a full movie on such a diminutive screen, it’s worth loading up a couple HD movies on it just to get a sense of its capabilities. Colours are lush and vividly drawn, with staggering amounts of detail. Similarly good are brightness levels, though for some frustrating reason Sony Ericsson has neglected to include an auto-brightness setting, an essential battery-saving feature.

Forgoing the traditional four capacitive Android buttons, the ray includes an oval-shaped physical home button and omits the dedicated search button, keeping the front clean and stylish. The oval symmetry continues on top with the headset grill and a power button directly above it on the bezel. The home button has a lovely multi-coloured LED that slowly pulses green or orange depending on the notification.

The ray comes with a VGA front-facing camera and a rear 8MP shooter that uses Sony’s exellent Exmor R sensor. Unfortunately its usefulness is stymied with the inclusion not of a flash but, like the Xperia X10 before it, a video light. This means the LED is either on or off, even for still shots, somewhat negating its usefulness. You can still touch the screen to focus and take a photo, but white balance is not readjusted on the fly as with most flash-based shooters. Still shot results are excellent, though: the camera takes great macro shots and even better landscapes.

The camera UI is usable, if a bit aggravating at times. There is no dedicated shutter button: shots are taken by tapping on the screen. Controls are on the left side (scene select, resolution, flash, etc.) with a thumbnail row of the five last photos on the right. As with Windows Phone 7, you can swipe from the right side of the screen to reveal a makeshift gallery and, when finished, go right back to taking photos. This is a fantastic inclusion and something we used often.

The ray’s design is a treat to see first hand. It’s light, thin and small, and as such easy to hold through long phone calls or slip into a pocket or purse. At 100g, it’s one of the lightest phones we’ve used, but due to its high quality chassis, doesn’t feel cheap. More companies should be using the materials SE are using with their latest crop of devices.

The Software and performance

The Xperia ray has Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread loaded onto the device. While not the latest version of 2.3, it’s modern enough to be considered up-to-date, considering many Canadian Android devices don’t yet have Gingerbread at all. Though much pared-down since the X10 halcyon days, Sony Ericsson’s distinctive neon blue colour scheme pervades, and there are numerous familiar widgets pre-installed across the five home screens. As you can see in the above screenshots, there are a bunch of different “themes” included with the ray that alter the system colours.

The 1Ghz processor keeps things humming along — we’ve always found SE’s Gingerbread builds to be relatively smooth — but we found browsing to be a stuttering endeavour. The browser does a decent job fitting desktop pages on the tiny screen, but for the most part we tried to find mobile equivalents; the screen is just too small to read all the way zoomed out. Granted, due to the high pixel density the text is clear and actually readable.

The Sunspider Javascript benchmark completed in a fantastic 3267.4ms, while the Vellamo, Smartbench 2011 and CF-Bench scores were 851, 1436 Productivity / 1805 Games, and 3025 respectively. Results were in line with typical 1Ghz single-core processors, if a bit higher in fact, but there is practically nothing that the ray cannot do — it will run pretty much all the games in the Marketplace but for those specifically designed for Tegra 2 — and that should help keep the naysayers from reducing the device to a single core/dual core debate. The Sunspider benchmark was in fact 30% faster than the brand new HTC Raider, which has a 1.2Ghz dual-core processor.

The UI is extremely usable, and portions of it we prefer to the stock Gingerbread experience. In the stock launcher, you can pinch on any of the homescreens to show a preview of the available widgets. We actually found this a more useful behaviour to that of LauncherPro or HTC’s Sense, which merely show zoomed-out previews of the entire homescreens.

Sony Ericsson includes a bunch of first-party applications meant to flesh out the stock Android experience. Most notable is the Video Unlimited app that is becoming standard on all SE hardware, including tablets. This includes movies for purchase or rental, and is a direct competitor with HTC’s new Watch software, along with Apple’s iTunes. Selection is excellent (for a relatively new service) and prices are within expectations: $19.99 for new release purchases, $3.99-$4.99 for 48-hour rentals.

Also includes is the Shazam-emulating TrackID, meant to sniff out song titles based on snippets from the radio or television commercials. We found that it worked about as well as its competition, but since those services are now free for unlimited tags, found it to be a rather superfluous addition.

More useful is the native DLNA player, which pushes content from the device to a compatible television or computer. The ray also comes with a basic version of OfficeSuite, which can read and create Word-compatible documents. As per TELUS’ recent partnerships with Skype and Rdio, the apps are pre-installed on the device and credit can be taken directly from your monthly bill. For users trying to cut down on the number of debit sources, the convenience of seeing credit taken alongside your regular monthly charges is certainly a convenience, but we wonder how useful this is to the average credit card owner. Xperia ray users do get one month of free Rdio service, and a 20c Skype credit, so there is certainly some benefit to be gotten from the inclusion.

Curiously the ray comes with something called 3D camera. Since the device only has one backside sensor, we wondered what the heck the app did. Turns out Sony Ericsson’s interpretation of three dimensions is merely a synonym for panorama. With the software, the ray can take (quite excellent, we might add) sweeping shots of your surroundings. Instead of linearly stitching three or four static images, the ray films several frames of video across a straight  X axis (and is overly sensitive in trying to do so, resulting in a lot of frustrating failed attempts) from left to right. Whether in 4:3 or 16:9 ratios, the results are on par with other solutions offered by HTC and Samsung, but we found Sony Ericsson’s user interface less intuitive and consistent than its competitors’.

Sony Ericsson also incorporates a feature called Facebook Inside Xperia, added recently to the Android 2.3.4 update for the Xperia Play and arc. It uses open APIs from the official Facebook app to provide seamless integration into its own Timescape and Mediascape widgets, pulling status updates and photos right onto the home screen. Disabled by default, the service also ties in with the Contacts app, showing you that person’s latest Facebook status updates (along with Twitter updates if you use the official app) along with photos and Facebook “Likes”. The integration is subtle but useful, though most of the information can be obtained with equal speed from the official Facebook app.

A bona fide useful inclusion, however, is the ability to natively take a screenshot of your current screen by holding down the power button until the context menu pops up. While this has been included in the stock version of Ice Cream Sandwich, it’s a nice feature to have on a Gingerbread device.

Battery Life

The Xperia ray comes with a relatively large 1500mAh battery for the device’s size, and we got excellent, multi-day battery life as a result. Indeed, if you’re a heavy Android user you’ll be happy to know that Sony Ericsson, without any Motorola-like power-saving features, has managed to do what most other OEMs cannot: keep an Android device alive for longer than the iPhone 4.

We had no issues using the Xperia ray for over 24 hours of moderate usage, often reaching 36 hours before the battery hit red. While usage patterns may vary from person to person, we’re confident the ray is a good choice for someone looking to solve Android’s traditional battery fickleness.

The high efficiency is owed to a couple things: first, the Snapdragon MSM8255 processor is relatively low-power, especially at 1Ghz. Add the fact that the ray has one of the smallest screens on a mid-range Android device running Gingerbread, and you have a potent power-sipping solution.

Phone Calls and Other Stuff

The Xperia ray sounds great over TELUS’ network, via both the earpiece and the speaker. Network speeds disappointed, however, as the device only supports up to 7.2Mbps in the downstream; we did not exceed 3Mbps in our Speedtest.net tests in either direction.

Though there are no special business-related features, the ray has a great suite of replacement apps, and we really enjoyed using the Mail, Calendar and Contacts apps, all of which are endowed with tiny flourishes to consolidate the Sony Ericsson Android makeover.

Unfortunately the keyboard, which is admittedly much improved over the X10, is a bit cramped when used in portrait mode. SE thought it a good idea to include a “hide keyboard” button on the bottom left, taking up much needed-room for the “numbers/symbols” key. As a result we kept accidentally hiding the keyboard when we wanted to enter our passwords or a phone number. We find the issue disappeared when changing to landscape mode, and SE includes a keypad-style portrait keyboard for those who long for the good ol’ punch-type days.

Conclusions

The Xperia ray is going to turn heads not because it’s the most powerful, the thinnest or the most modern-looking. Instead, it will attract smartphone users who want compact, fast and stable. It’s a mature Android solution with few sacrifices for its size.

It has one of the highest-density LCD displays currently on the market at 297ppi, and Sony’s Bravia Engine actually makes a difference when viewing movies and photos. Because it uses the same resolution as its 4.2” Xperia arc cousin, text is sharp and pictures pop, and all apps in the market are resolution-compatible. You can’t say that for the majority of devices with a 3.3” screen size.

While we don’t yet know the price that the Xperia ray will be, but we can’t imagine it will break the bank. In any case, the investment should be a positive one, as we enjoyed the heck of out this small device.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia ray will be available on TELUS for $49.99 on a 3-year term, and $379.99 outright. Check out the landing page for more information.

Rating: 8/10

Pros:

-       Gorgeous, vibrant screen with high pixel density
-       Sony Ericsson’s Android modifications are subtle and useful
-       Good performance for a last-generation processor
-       Camera takes great shots and excellent 720p video
-       Size is a huge plus for those looking for a smaller Android device that doesn’t suck
-       Design is austere and modern
-       Excellent battery life

Cons:

-       Camera UI is a bit clunky
-       Small size may be a turnoff for some
-       Last year’s hardware in a modern device
-       Included apps are not uninstallable
-       Portrait keyboard is too small, key placements questionable
-       No camera flash or automatic screen brightness settings
-       Low amount of application storage (only 320MB)

While there is nothing inherently wrong with that strategy, it lead to a six-month space where Rogers and especially Bell were offering superior, albeit more expensive, Android phones. As its competitors used words like dual-core and qHD, focusing on speed, size and might, Telus offered the HTC Status with Facebook integration and the LG Optimus Black with built-in Skype support.

The Samsung Hercules was rumoured for many months to be an American variant of the Samsung Galaxy S II, and has since been confirmed for T-Mobile. When the photos leaked showing it was coming to Telus, Android fans and spurned Telus customers alike shouted for joy.

While it resembles Bell’s Galaxy S II in many ways, there are several aesthetic and internal changes that differentiate, and improve upon, the original.

Specs

- Android 2.3.5 with TouchWIZ 4 overlay
- 4.52” 480×800 pixel Super AMOLED Plus display
- 1.5Ghz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8660 SoC w/ Adreno 220 GPU
- 1GB RAM / 16GB Internal Storage (2GB for apps)
- 8MP back camera / 2MP front camera
- 1080p video capture with anti-shake
- 42Mbps/11.52Mbps Dual-channel HSPA+ speeds
- WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, DLNA, WiFi-Direct, dual microUSB/HDMI out MHL port
- Stereo FM radio, native DivX playback
- 1850mAh battery
- 131mm / 67mm / 9.4mm
- 135g
- 850/1700(AWS)/1900/2100 HSPA+ & Quad-band EDGE, Technology 3GPP Release 8 (HD Calling)

Design

The SGS2X, as it will henceforth be named, is slightly wider and thicker than the original. The screen size has been increased to 4.52” from 4.3” but maintains the beautiful, paper-like sharpness that Super AMOLED Plus offers. The resolution stays the same, too, meaning that icons are almost comically oversized, especially if you are coming from an Android device with the same resolution but a smaller screen, like the HTC Desire. You’d think, though, that text at such a size would be blurry, but is in fact extremely sharp, even if the individual letters are bigger than average.

The body is wider than the Galaxy S II, owing more of its lineage to the original i9000 model that Bell released in summer 2010. This time, though, Samsung didn’t skimp on the quality of materials: compared to the Bell Galaxy S II, the SGS2X is robust despite being entirely made of plastic. Its chrome bezel is a bit garish, and a fingerprint magnet, but it’s the sturdy spine that we so longed for in previous models. Because the bezel is rounded and thicker, it is more comfortable to hold for long periods of time, especially for phone calls.

The back of the device is stunning. Simply put, Samsung has designed one of the most attractive battery covers we’ve ever used. While it maintains the textured backing of the SGS2, the X’s pattern is smaller and closer together; it resembles leather, but feels like high quality rubber. Like all Galaxy S variants, the bottom curves out slightly, but this one is more subtle and elegant.

Due to the large size of the display, the device feels right in both portrait and landscape mode. We found the landscape keyboard just the right balance of width and height to type on without mistake or interruption. The body is 135g all told, some 19g heavier than the SGS2, but the extra weight is distributed well, and instead of feeling heavy, we’d argue the original feels light.

The Display

There is no question that Samsung still holds the crown in terms of display quality. The extra .22 inches certainly brushes against the edge of WVGA fidelity, and we’d have loved to see a few extra pixels on this gorgeous screen, but this is still THE best on the market.

Black levels are perfect — pixels literally don’t turn on unless they’re used — while colours are vivid and, though slightly exagerrated, pleasant to look at. Even more impressive, as we noted in the original’s review, is text, which appears more like reading a piece of paper than any other device we’ve used. This trend continues on the SGS2X despite the size of each letter being slightly larger than on its predecessor.

At this point, though, we think that 4.52” is the largest one should stretch the WVGA resolution. The company just announced an HD version of the Galaxy S II LTE, with a stunning screen resolution of 1280×720, but it likely incorporates the inferior PenTile technology, so we’ll have to see how they compare.

One area that we’d like to see improved is the quality of the glass. Even though both models use Gorilla Glass to cover the screen, protecting it from scratches, we found that after several months of using a Galaxy S II as our daily driver the screen was full of tiny scratches and blemishes. We never found this with the iPhone 4, or any number of other Android devices. While we haven’t seen this issue crop up yet on the SGS2X, and hopefully it won’t, just be cautious if not using a screen protector.

Performance

So, here’s the kicker. The Samsung Galaxy S II X does not use the same processor as the original. It actually uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8660 processor, similar to the one in the HTC Sensation and Evo 3D. While this is the first Qualcomm processor we’ve seen inside a modern Samsung device, there were rumours bubbling for months hinting that the company may be using nVidia’s Tegra 2 processor.

The Snapdragon processor inside the SGS2X is clocked some 300Mhz faster than the Exynos processor in Bell’s version. However, Samsung’s home-made SoC, with its Mali400-MP GPU is known to be somewhat faster than anything on the market, and in our previous tests blew away the Sensation in synthetic benchmarks. So why the switch to Qualcomm from their admittedly faster home-made chip? It’s all about network speed. In order to reach those astronomical speeds of 42Mbps, twice what the original could pull off, Samsung had to pair the Qualcomm MDM8220 baseband chip with the MSM8660 SoC. Simple as that: there are no baseband chips compatible with the Exynos chipset right now to help achieve those dual-channel speeds, necessitating a move over to Snapdragon.

So how does this affect performance? In day to day usage, you’re unlikely to notice a difference. In fact, for single-core non-GPU applications, the SGS2X is likely to be faster merely by virtue of its 20% increase in core clock speed. As a result, we experienced a massive 627ms speed boost in the popular Sunspider Javascript benchmark, from 3316ms to 2689ms. This translated well in general browsing, too: desktop pages loaded extremely quickly and scrolled, panned and zoomed noticeably better than the SGS2.

Synthetic benchmarks didn’t fare as well. Because the SGS2X has the same graphics processing unit as the HTC Sensation and EVO 3D, albeit clocked slightly higher as well, synthetic benchmarks in which the GPU was tested failed to compete with the Bell Galaxy S II.

While Qualcomm’s own Vellamo benchmark was neck and neck, with the SGS2 beating out the SGS2X by a mere 6 points, the venerable, and notably more GPU-focused Smartbench 2011 test suite favoured the Bell GS2 by a wide margin.

Except for the Sunspider test, the Bell Galaxy S II comes out on top in every benchmark, especially when it comes to more GPU-intensive applications. That being said, the SGS2X holds its own very nicely and in real world settings even if, for some reason, it doesn’t scale as well as the Sensation at the same clock speed. (Note that the Sensation has a screen resolution of 960×540 so graphics-intensive tests must take those extra pixels into account, as tests are run at the phone’s native resolution. We included the Sensation merely for comparison purposes).

However, this brings to bear a couple things. First, that Samsung has optimized its browser for hardware acceleration (affecting the Sunspider tests); second, that Samsung has a conundrum on its hands, as a new device being marketed if not as a successor to the current Galaxy S II, at least a superior option, is inferior when it comes to sheer speed.

TouchWIZardry

The SGS2X ships with build KI3, which means it was released in the third week of September, 2011. As a result it’s running Android 2.3.5, the next-to-newest compilable version currently available, and possibly the most up-to-date code on any shipping Android product to date (except for the Nexus S and Nexus One).

In terms of differentiation from the original Galaxy S II, there is none. They both run the TouchWIZ 4 skin with its smooth, hardware-accelerated scrolling, austere aesthetic and advanced feature set. Since its release in June, we’ve come to love the simple-yet-powerful launcher.

By default there are five home screens, loaded to the brim with Samsung widgets. There’s a digital clock, a weather applet, a search bar, a news portal along with the icons to the four Samsung Hubs: Reader, Music, Games and Social. Each one represents a tie-in with a third-party company, offering various media to purchase. We appreciate that the Reader application is partly powered by the Canadian e-seller Kobo, which allows you to syncronize existing content to your device. Zinio and PressDisplay offer magazines and news, respectively.

Music is powered by 7Digital, a legitimate contender to iTunes in the digital space. They offer fairly-priced DRM-free tunes that can be downloaded to three devices, though they don’t yet offer a streaming service a la Google Music.

The Social hub consolidates Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with your various corporate or private email accounts. It works well, and for light users will suffice as a replacement for individual applications, but we’d recommend going with the services’ respective official apps.

The only “bloatware” to speak of was a GroupOn app, which offers daily deals in your notification bar every morning. Unfortunately you are unable to delete the app, but you can manually turn off deal notifications in the Settings.

In addition to the requisite Google apps such as Gmail, Maps and YouTube we noticed an icon for Google Books on the device, even though the service is not yet offered in Canada. While you can download copyright-free content, it isn’t yet possible to purchase books, but its inclusion makes us hopeful for the future.

We liked the quick toggle icons at the top of the notification bar, and the easy way to place icons on the homescreen through an intuitive grid system that is head and shoulders above the stock Android organization method. And the myriad widgets that Samsung includes for weather, news, and social media? They’re all pretty useful, and gorgeously arrayed on the Super AMOLED screen.

In terms of built-in storage, 13GB or so is available to the user, and is divided between 2GB of application storage, while the rest is allocated as an internal SD card.

For a more in-depth roundup of the features in TouchWIZ 4, see our review of the Bell Samsung Galaxy S II.

Reception and Network Speed

Let’s go back a second to why Samsung chose to slap a third-party baseband chip in a device that could have seen a home-made part inside. To understand this reasoning, we have to take a look at the last year or so of Canadian network expansion.

As Bell and Rogers turn on their LTE networks, it’s Telus who remains the only carrier advertising speed improvements to its existing HSPA+ network. Granted, Bell and Telus share many cell towers between them, but the Galaxy S II X is the first device in Canada to support Dual Channel HSPA+, which utilizes two distinct 5Mhz channels in either the 850- or 1900Mhz spectrum. Because a single HSPA+ channel theoretically supports 21Mbps, by engaging two for a single transmit we ostensibly double our bandwidth to 42Mbps in the downlink.

We were able to see some ridiculous speeds as a result, with LTE-rivalling results of 14Mbps in the downstream and up to 3Mbps in the upstream. But raw speed has never been an issue for HSPA+ networks, at least not in practice; rather, it is high ping times which truly affect the performance of mobile products. It is not uncommon to see 300+ms ping times to a remote server, which means that it takes almost one-third of a second for that server to respond to our device and send back an acknowledgement. This may not seem like much, but every time you visit a website or initiate a data-based communication, even to a device in the hands of someone sitting next to you, high latency can drastically deteriorate overall network performance.

We noticed that in the curious, though admittedly synthetic, Speedtest.net application, higher download speeds translated into significantly higher ping times. When we achieved that result of 14Mbps, it was accompanied by a 1200ms latency time. When we achieved more reasonable results of 3Mbps download, we obtained a more reasonable 105ms ping. Dual-channel doesn’t always mean higher latency, but higher a cell-site utilization means less unobstructed bandwidth is going to be allocated per device, lowering speeds in both the up- and downstream.

In real-world browsing, the extra speed is noticeable. When launching a HD YouTube video over 4G, for instance, not only does it begin almost instantly, but we had none of the buffering hiccups so often experienced over 3G networks. And since we are utilizing two channels, the cumulative bandwidth allows for streaming while background downloading; in other words, you can be download a large file while streaming the latest Bieber album from Rdio.

Samsung has never been known for the sharpness of their earpieces, and the SGS2X continues this unfortunate tradition. While we had no issues hearing the other person under ideal circumstances, the maximum volume was too low when walking down a busy street, or when the other person spoke quietly. There is a second noise-cancelling microphone which did successfully filter out external din, the results were underwhelming when compared to the superlative earpieces on the Motorola Atrix or BlackBerry Bold 9900.

In its favour, however, was the excellent cell reception maintained by Telus’ HSPA+ network. We did get a chuckle seeing the 4G icon next to the four reception bars, but like its Galaxy S II brother, the X was a stalwart trooper, finding reception in basements, elevators and even behind concrete. And because the SGS2X comes with built-in WiFi sharing, your excellent reception can be translated into a ubiquitous hotspot.

Cameras

The Galaxy S II X comes with the same excellent camera sensor as its brother. Easily incorporating one of the best lens/sensor combos on the market, the 8MP shots that this phone takes will make you leave your point-and-shoot at home. They’re that good.

Colours are vibrant and true, while detail is phenomenal. We found that photos took a fraction of a second longer to process than the Bell version, likely due to the different way the processor renders the image, but shots are virtually instantaneous. The interface is simple and powerful, with the option to customize the left shortcut bar to your heart’s content. If you want the Flash toggle to be on the top, you can put it there; if you want the ability to change photo resolutions with one click, the option is available.

The number of customization options is astounding. There are several Shooting Modes, including face-detecting Smile Shot and red-eye reducing Beauty, while the Action Shot mode produces a fantastic panorama as you follow a single object along a static path. Further confusing things are the myriad Scene Modes which add filters and adjust white balance to suit a particular backdrop. You can shoot in at all times of the day, with Dawn, Sunset and Night modes, in addition to Beach/Snow, Party/Indoor, Fireworks and Fall Colours modes. There is even a Text mode for when you’re trying to turn words into memories.

The 2MP camera on the front delivers excellent, true depictions of your vain self, and with the proliferation of conferencing applications recently released, including Skype, Google Talk and Google+ Hangouts, it can actually be put to good use.

In terms of video capture, the 1080p results from the Galaxy S II line remain unrivalled by any device except Nokia’s N8, which still holds the quality crown. The SGS2X captures h.264-encoded .MP4 files, easily editable with most common software. While many OEMs claim their current high-end devices capture 1080p video at 30fps, the Galaxy S II line is the only one that actually looks like it does. We noticed no slowdown, no dropped frames, only perfect, enviable smoothness. The only thing we’d have liked to see is tap-to-focus in the UI itself, which both Apple and HTC can boast of their software. We found continuous autofocus to be a tad slow and unpredictable, often marring an otherwise perfect shot with a second or two of blurriness.

The Galaxy S II X, with its slightly wider and thicker frame, can get away with a beefier battery, and we get 200mAh extra to go along with an improved battery cover and .22” extra screen space.

What we get is a comparatively high-powered, long-lasting Android device. Though the phone generally lasted us most of the day without issue, there would be the occasional time that by 1pm the battery would be down to 25%, and that’s solely due to baseband chip needing more power to utilize the wider pipe. There is no way to we can tell to limit download speeds over 4G, so if you’re downloading large files, streaming lots of movies or photos you’ll notice the battery draining pretty fast. Offloading the bandwidth duties to WiFi, which seems counterintuitive, will do a lot to prolong the daily life of the phone.

That being said, we found the device, like its forebear, to last longer than most other Android devices, and it wasn’t uncommon to go to bed with 15% battery remaining. Unfortunately Samsung has seen fit to include a Battery Full vibration, which usually goes off an hour or two after going to sleep. There doesn’t seem any way to turn this off, barring editing sensitive system files or rooting the device and installing a custom ROM.

NFC, GPS, OMG

The NFCs are coming! The low-power RFID-like protocol being built into a growing minority of smartphones including the Nexus S and BlackBerry 9900 is meant to help transfer small amounts of data in close quarters. With Google Wallet just launched (not available yet in Canada), the service should grow amongst Android users but it maintains an esoteric and largely inaccessible “future-proof” feature.

Soon, when more devices and retailers are equipped with NFC, safe payment transactions such as paying for your meal or transferring money to a friend, can happen by merely tapping a console or bumping your phone with another. As it stands, there is a Tags application built into the device without much current value.

We’re happy to say that GPS works very well on the Galaxy S II X; we had no issues locking on, and staying connected to, a number of satellites. The large screen works great as a turn-by-turn navigation unit: all you need is a smartphone car mount.

WiFi and Bluetooth, as expected, work as expected and we had no trouble connecting our A2DP-enabled headset to the device for stereo music streaming.

Where It Needs Improvement

Samsung just brought word of the upcoming HD version of the Galaxy S II, which sports a 1280×720 pixel display and a 316PPI compared to a paltry 206PPI on the 800×480 Super AMOLED Plus display. As a result, text tends towards the larger size, even if it’s difficult to see any grain due to the excellent technology behind the display.

What we do know is that the next-generation of Galaxy S devices will have a higher-resolution display, and we’ve already seen the fruits of this on qHD devices like the Motorola Atrix and HTC Sensation. Yes, the Samsung’s screen looks better but fits far less than its higher-res peers.

We also found issue, as we did on the Bell version, with the sound quality coming out of the headphones and speaker on the Galaxy S II X. It has been widely noted that Samsung downgraded the Digital to Analog converter on the GS2 line, utilizing a cheaper Yamaha part over an excellent Wolfson Micro part on the original Galaxy S i9000. After using the Bell GS2 for many months, and the Telus version, I have grown used to the slightly lower fidelity audio coming out of the headphone jack, but that doesn’t mean to say I like it. Practically any other modern headphone jack, from the iPhone to any HTC device, sounds fuller, punchier and less noisy than that of the SGS2.

There are an excessive number of system applications running in the background on the SGS2X. Despite there being 1GB RAM under the hood, only 230MB are accessible to the user on first bootup. While there are essential services, such as media synchronization and background updates, that require a sizable amount of RAM, we’d have liked to see more available to the user for apps.

Hacking and Slashing

Even though the device has not been released yet, in a word: yes. With an unlocked bootloader and myriad developers chomping at the bit to develop their own piece of Android ROM history, the Samsung Galaxy S II X is sure to be a very active modders’ device. Add in the fact that this is the exact same model as the one being released on T-Mobile, and you’ve got a recipe for XDA-Developers success.

Just note that Samsung has added what they call a custom kernel counter to the Galaxy S II line. The moment you install a custom kernel, the count starts and your warranty is void. While there are ways around this, you’re on your own once you’re out in the wild. You’ve been warned.

Conclusions

The Telus Samsung Galaxy S II X. TSGSIIX. It’s coming at a very important time for the carrier, who needs a hit phone that will get people talking. Samsung currently has the most cultural cache amongst mainstream users after Apple. After hitting the 10 million sold mark, the Galaxy S II line is a clear hit, and this model is easily its most attractive version (though we haven’t seen the Sprint version, nor the upcoming LTE models for comparison).

As for performance, the rather tiny hit in synthetic benchmarks is a small price to pay for the extra bandwidth obtainable by utilizing Telus’ dual-channel HSPA+ abilities. And, like its future-LTE companions, the battery hit is more than welcome when instantly loading web pages and streaming high quality video over the cellular network.

More than the sum of its individual parts, the Galaxy S II X is one of the most attractive smartphones we’ve ever used. At no time did it feel oversized, clunky or in the way. Its greatest weakness — a relatively low resolution — is also one of its biggest strengths: the screen on this device is stunning.

As a business phone, it not only has the looks but the Exchange chops. If you’re dissatisfied with the stock apps, there are plenty of alternatives in the Android Marketplace, which has just been updated to include film rentals, most of which would look great streaming to the large screen.

While there are some problems with the device, they are mostly minor quibbles that will diminish as you get used to it. Samsung has bested itself, again, and we’re grateful they continue to do so.

Rating: 9/10

Pros:
- Beautiful, vivid screen that does not pixellate or distort despite the large size
- Excellent build quality, huge improvement over SGS2
- Battery cover is gorgeous and makes the phone easy to grip
- Speed demon: excellent day-to-day software performance
- Bandwidth demon: best HSPA+ scores we’ve ever seen
- Camera is awesome, and the video results are fantastic: leave your P&S at home
- NFC included (thanks?)
- Battery life is better than average
- Android 2.3.5 is smooth as butter
- AWS compatibility means 3G with every GSM carrier in Canada

Cons:
- High bandwidth activity eats battery
- Headphone sound quality is not satisfactory for an expensive smartphone
- Not quite as fast as SGS2 variant in most benchmarks
- Disappointing amount of free RAM (lots of stuff in the background)
- No notification LED

Source: TELUS

HTC isn’t messing around these days. It wants every base covered, regardless of market size. It wants big screens, small screens, landscape QWERTY devices, and now, with the HTC Status, a keyboarded portrait device. The well-trodden BlackBerry territory may not be the first place you’d think Android would go (though it has gone there before in such devices as the Droid Pro), but the experience suffers very little from the permanent landscape orientated screen. The Status is by no means a power-user device, and with a dedicated contextual Facebook button, there is no question to whom the device is going to sell. The question is: will you want it despite, or perhaps because of, its uniqueness? Read on to find out.

Specs

- Android 2.3.3 with HTC Sense 2.1 for Messenger
- 2.6″ 480×320 pixel capacitive LCD screen
- 800Mhz MSM7227 Snapdragon processor
- 512MB RAM / 512MB ROM (150MB available for apps) / 2GB microSD card included
- 5MP camera with LED flash / VGA front-facing camera
- Full-sized QWERTY keyboard with contextual Facebook button
- WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, A-GPS
- 1250mAh battery
- 114.4 x 64.6 x 10.7 mm
- 120g
- 850/900/1800/1900Mhz 2G | 850/1900Mhz 3G

The Phone

While it is a certain departure from recent HTC Android devices, when you first see it there is no question the Status maintains its parent company’s long pedigree. Avaiable in charcoal black or amethyst purple (we reviewed the black version) it is constructed of high-quality brushed matte plastic and feels fanatastic in the hand. Owing to a slight inward chin, the keyboard portion is comfortable to use, and despite only having only four rows there is sufficient separation between keys to touch-type with accuracy. Even our fat fingers found their way to the right keys most of the time.

There are a couple issues we had with certain key placement. The backspace key is illogically placed right below the P button on the right hand side, leading to many a time when, instead of deleting a word it would be affixed with several ‘ppppppp’s at the end. Simiarly the Shift/Caps button is located above the Function button on the left side of the device, causing similar confusion. Yes, it’s true both instances are standard on most mobile QWERTY keyboards, and once adjusted the placements should not pose much of an issue.

Happily, the number keys are bunched together on the left of the keyboard like on a real phone, and though they are accessible through the Fn key many applications automatically toggle them at appropriate times, such as when inputting phone numbers.

The keyboard has good clicky feedback, and the keys protrude just enough to feel distinguishable without adding thickness. There are some useful secondary features on the keyboard, too: Fn+period brings up the camera application from inside any app, and Fn+space brings up the Settings application the same way. There are dedicated arrow keys, too, for the occasional time you want to select text and the on-screen markers are too finicky for you. We’d have rather seen HTC forgoe the arrows for more dedicated punctuation keys; as it stands there are only period, question mark and comma keys available without toggling Fn first.

The screen, at 2.6″ and 480x320px, is not a show-stopper, but it does a good job. What you lose in display real estate the device makes up for in a deliberately “phone-like” aesthetic, negotiating both capacitive touch buttons and hardware “Call/End” keys. When first using the device, it is admittedly a bit awkward to navigate Android in a permanently landscape configuration, but HTC has done a great job tweaking the UI and overall aesthetic to make it seem more spacious. More on that later.

One of the more interesting aspects of the device, and certainly a divisive one, is the dedicated Facebook key. While not necessary to use, it performs some wonderful functions for sharing on the web in general, and utilizes Android’s penchant for sharing to its fullest extent.

Camera

There are two cameras on the Status, and they too are just OK. But in the context of a low-cost device this is a great achievement, as most sensors on sub-$500 phones are terrible.

The back shooter has a 5MP sensor and a very able flash that illuminates the immediate vicinity with aplomb. In good lighting, the camera takes excellent shots with little noise and accurate colour. The quality subsides dramatically in low-light conditions, but there is an “Auto Enhance” feature in the camera settings that, when toggled, increases brightness and softens the image somewhat by running it through an anti-aliasing filter. The results are often more pleasant to look at, but lack the finer detail of the original image. We found it to be useful in low-light pictures, but less so outdoors. The LED flash performed well, illuminating nearby objects without overexposing them, something other low-resolution phone cameras often have issues with.

The Status shoots video at an underwhelming maximum resolution of 720×480, though I think it’s a limitation of the processor more than the sensor. Like still shots, video is grainy but smooth, capturing at a healthy 30fps in good lighting conditions.

It also comes with a VGA front-facing camera for vanity shots and video chats, but the Status ships with Android 2.3.3, so it does not support native video chat in Google Talk like the Nexus S. Hopefully this feature will be added in a future software update.

Performance and Network Speed

The HTC Status has the same processor inside it as the LG Optimus One and upcoming LG Optimus Chat, but clocked 200Mhz higher to a still-anemic 800Mhz. Thankfully HTC understands that there is a lot more to a device than CPU speed: affixed with 512MB RAM, the device never feels like it’s struggling, even with several apps open at a time. Beyond basic multitasking and 2D gaming, however, there isn’t much room to breathe.

Where the device has some issues is with Flash videos. Anything rendered in the browser larger than 360p resolution usually results in lost frames and stuttering over 3G. Over WiFi 480p videos run without issue, but forget about trying to squeeze a quarter out of a penny with this processor: it just can’t keep up with many of the activities we take for granted on higher-end Android devices. The good news is that, because of the lower screen resolution there really is no benefit to being able to play HD video: at 480p the video is sharp, colours are full and motion is fluid.

Because the screen is permanently placed in landscape mode some apps perform awkwardly on the 2.6” screen. Portrait-only applications require holding the device on its side, but unlike Windows Phone 7 most modern apps have no issues in landscape.

Even apps that do scale properly often require a prolific amount of scrolling that most users will quickly tire of. Native apps, like the HTC Calendar and Contacts, and several Google applications like Maps and Talk, look great on the 480×320 pixel screen, and once you get used to the new form factor the screen is actually quite pleasant to look it.

Web pages in the included browser scale dynamically to fit the screen, and while most require a scrolling workout this can be deftly accomplished using the arrow keys. Text, while small, is perfectly readable and pleasantly sharp. You won’t be reading Anna Karenina on the Status, but for most tasks the screen works quite well.

The device runs on Telus’ HSPA+ network, and data speeds are in line with similar HTC devices: 3-4Mbps downstream and 0.5-2Mbps upstream, depending on congestion and signal quality. Voice calls sound great on the Status, and holding the device to your ear is comfortable due to the subtle inward chin on the bottom portion of the phone.

HTC Sense for Messenger

As stated, the HTC Status is very much a messenger phone, and we hope that Telus won’t require a data plan with purchase. The keyboard is one of the best we’ve seen on a non-BlackBerry device, and we found typing much faster than on most landscape QWERTY devices like the HTC Desire Z or Motorola Milestone.

HTC Sense has been re-tooled with the landscape screen is mind: instead of menus and context buttons being placed on the bottom they have been relocated to the right side in oversized blue pendants. Many of them adapt to touch depending on what app you’re in: for example the Photo Sharing app will allow you to switch between your photos and your friends’ Facebook photos by gliding your finger downwards from one pendant to another.

With a focus on Facebook, the Status has been dubbed the “Facebook Phone,” though there is a lot more that can be done in a social context. In the initial set up it asks you for your Facebook login information, but you also have the option of adding Twitter and Flickr accounts.

When added, the device allows you to auto-upload (a la Google+) photos in the background to either Flickr or Facebook (but not both). Similarly you can press the Facebook button when in the Gallery app to instantly share that photo to Facebook. The oddly-placed blue button sticks out like a sore thumb, and when placed in a contextual situation, such as the Gallery app or when browsing the web, it pulses an encouraging white. When pressed, it will share the photo or web URL to an album or your wall respectively. We found ourselves using the feature more than anticipated; for Facebook addicts this button is going to be your favourite part of the device.

Similarly, when listening to a song in the Music app the Facebook button allows you to post a link to song on your wall, though it links to Amazon.com and not Amazon.ca, which is an unfortunate oversight. And when in the camera app, the Facebook button doubles as a camera shutter, obviating the need to manually share it: after taking the shot it skips the review and sends it right to sharing mode.

The lock screen takes inspiration from Sense 3.0 by making it easy to get into the apps you use the most. Four customizable shortcuts (see the first image), by default Phone, Mail, Camera and Messages, are configurable through the Personalization menu, and while they can be set to any app installed on the device, the value is in getting to your core apps quickly. When playing a song, however, the shortcuts are replaced by a small music widget with quick play/pause/next capabilities.

Along with the requisite FriendStream application/widget combo that comes standard on all HTC Android phones, they have included a dedicated Facebook Chat application which too includes its own widget. Though somewhat redundant considering the included official Facebook app has chat built in, the dedicated app is more robust, offering chat history and a rather spacious interface.

Usage Patterns

When purchasing a device like the HTC Status, you’re buying function over form. You’re also declaring what type of phone user you are: a content creator, or more likely, a socialite. Most smartphones with touchscreens – yes, even the iPhone – are better at content consumption than creation. A good hardware keyboard is in our opinion always – ALWAYS – going to be superior for typing, regardless of how accurate your phone’s autocorrect, or how tenacious your thumbs.

For writing emails, you have two apps: the Gmail app which has not been adapted for the small landscape screen, meaning that between the permanent header bar at the top and permanent context bar at the bottom, there is a thumb-sized area for reading the actual email; and HTC’s email app, which thankfully has been updated for the landscape display, and works well. You have the option of pinch-to-zoom to re-orient text, and despite not having the granularity of Labels and Priority Inbox as you do in the official Gmail app, the experience is far superior. The Mail app thankfully supports threaded conversations, so keeping track of long chains is a breeze.

It also supports Exchange, and will work on most on companies’ networks; we’ve found HTC’s support for Exchange rivals Motorola’s, and is far superior to stock Android’s when it comes to compatibility with different security certificates.

The official Twitter app works quite well, too. So does Facebook. Basically any app that contains large swaths of text, ironically, works better than ones with garish design flourishes.

Battery Life

The Status is equipped with a 1250mAh battery that lasts longer than most Android devices with significantly more juice. Obviously the larger the screen the more power is needed, so the Status, with its relatively lightweight CPU and small display, gets off easy.

The device lasted almost two days of heavy use, and that includes all the things we’d normally do on an Android device: phone calls, two push email accounts, background Twitter updates, some photos and some web browsing. Perhaps an upside, if you can call it that, is that the Status won’t play all the latest games, and movie watching on such a small screen is anything but a pleasure. Your battery life is instead going to be dedicated to productive things, like spending hours trolling your friends’ Facebook pages.

Conclusions

In order to keep costs down, the Status only comes with about 150MB of app storage out of the box. And it comes with a 2GB microSD card. Other than the limited storage the HTC Status does not feel like a low-cost device, and that’s something to celebrate.

Its keyboard is one of the best in the business, certainly up there with the BlackBerry Bold 9780, and if you can get used to the small and at times awkward screen the Status is a fantastic and versatile messaging device. It is also a very good phone, with excellent headset sound and ample volume, and a form factor that makes holding it to your ear comfortable.

Of course it contains all the right connectivity options – WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS with turn-by-turn navigation – and the 5MP camera does a decent job at rounding out the featureset.

If Telus can release the Status at a low-enough price point (which will be reflected here when the device ships) and provides voice-only plan options, it could be one of those easily justifiable purchases, especially for the Facebook addicts out there.

For back to school season, Telus is seeing beyond the dual-core focus of Bell, and Rogers 3D devices, and is aiming the Status at the same market that makes Justin Bieber a billion dollar entertainer and Harry Potter a trillion dollar movie. It’s risky, but we’re betting it’s going to pay off handsomely.

The Telus HTC Status will be available soon. Check out the landing page for all the details.

Rating: 7.5/10

Pros

- Great aesthetics and build quality
- Premium feel, excellent keyboard
- Good still camera performance
- Runs Android 2.3.3
- Excellent messaging capabilities
- Facebook integration is very robust
- Superb battery life

Cons

- Awkward screen resolution makes certain apps ill-fitted
- Older processor means you’re not going to be playing the latest games
- Keyboard button placement could use some work
- Facebook button may limit appeal of device
- Browsing requires excessive scrolling
- Gmail app has not been well adapted for the small screen