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Hey guys, this is Austin and today I’m here with a review of the HTC Droid
DNA for Verizon. With a 1080p screen, quad core processor and Android 4.1
let’s take a look. The DNA brings along the familiar Verizon red and black
color scheme which gives a bit of pop to the design. The front is fairly clean
with a single piece of glass with a Verizon logo up top and the capacitive
Android keys below. Along the sides are red accents which give a bit of
texture to the phone and around back you’ll see the DNA is entirely coated in
a soft touch plastic. Generally these surfaces pick up dust and fingerprints
easily but it really wasn’t a huge issue. At 9.7mm thick it’s on the chunkier
side but thanks to the heavily tapered edges it feels like a much thinner
phone in the hand. Here is where the 8 megapixel camera is found along with
the speaker with Beats Audio branding. It’s not particularly noteworthy and in
fact it’s a bit too easy to cover with a single misplaced finger. Along the top
you’ll see the 2.1 megapixel front facing camera and red speaker grille and
below are your capacitive back, home and multitasking buttons. There’s a
notification LED hidden in the grille of the phone as well as on the back which
is a really useful feature. The rest of the ergonomics are less than spectacular
however. Unlike most smartphones the volume rocker is over on the right
side and worse still it’s narrow and blends in. HTC has opted to load the top
up with your MicroSIM slot, sleep button and headphone jack. Having the
sleep button centered up top is awkward as it forces you to hold the DNA
differently compared to almost every other large phone out there. Finally on
bottom is your MicroUSB port which is weirdly covered by a flap. MicroUSB is
plenty robust to handle being uncovered so it’s beyond me why HTC and
Verizon chose to cover it up here. This wasn’t cool on the Palm Pixi and it
definitely isn’t cool for a flagship phone at the end of 2012. It is compatible
with the Qi wireless charging standard so your best bet is to buy a wireless
charger and ignore the fiddly little MicroUSB port altogether. The screen on
the other hand is absolutely fantastic. It’s a 5 inch IPS panel with a resolution
of 1920x1080 and with 440 pixels per inch this absolutely destroys every other
smartphone out there right now. Even when viewing the screen much closer
than you ever would normally there’s still an incredible amount of detail. Not
only is it high resolution but it’s also among the most vibrant screens I’ve ever
seen with top notch viewing angles. I have zero complaints at all here: it’s
noticeably better than any other phone screen period. The Droid DNA is
running Android 4.1 Jellybean with the HTC Sense 4+ skin. I’ve never been a
big fan of Sense and this latest iteration doesn’t do anything to change my
mind. The overall UI design is very different than stock Android and a lot
seems to be change for change’s sake rather than making things faster or
better. There’s a lot of chrome all over the phone which really doesn’t hurt
anything but it’s not as sleek of a look as even TouchWiz on the Galaxy Note 2.
On the whole of it the DNA is certainly a fast phone thanks to the powerful
internals and Android 4.1 but it’s not as smooth as it could be with animations
frequently losing frames. Most apps work just fine on the 1080p screen
although it is easy to spot graphics made for 720p or lower resolution devices.
As with most recent Verizon phones there’s a notification for Wi-Fi which
never goes away which is a minor annoyance and there’s a good deal of
bloatware installed which gets it’s own category in the app drawer. Unwanted
apps are fairly easy to hide however so it isn’t a huge problem. Overall the
software could be better but load up a custom launcher, hide the bloatware
and you’re good to go. The 8 megapixel camera is quite good overall.
Saturation is solid and there’s a good amount of detail to work with. The
white balance gets tripped up sometimes but you can adjust it manually if
you need. Low light performance is right on par with most smartphones,
salvageable for a quick shot but it pales in comparison to the Nokia Lumia 920.
Video on the other hand really is not the Droid DNA’s strong suit. So in really
nice lighting as you guys can see here it’s not so bad but a lot of highlights on
his face you can see are just getting totally blown out and the audio just really
does not sound particularly good. The camera software is generally quite
good. It’s not as intuitive as Android 4.2 however you have quite a few
manual options for ISO, exposure and more. There also some effects you can
choose from including a fun little distortion effect which you can play around
with, dots which renders the image in a series of interesting looking dots and
finally your standard depth of field, vignette and Instagram like filters.
Powering the HTC Droid DNA is a Snapdragon S4 quad core processor clocked
at 1.5GHz paired with 2GB of RAM and Adreno 320 graphics. This is the same
combo you’ll find in the Nexus 4 and it delivers some of the best performance
in any smartphone available right now. It has plenty of power to push around
all the pixels on that 1080p screen however some games aren’t updated to
work on the DNA just yet. You’ll also find 16GB of storage built-in which is
about average however the lack of a MicroSD card slot is a bit disappointing.
Call quality on the Verizon network is top notch, rivaling Motorola phones
like the Droid RAZR HD. You’ll also get solid LTE data speeds topping 30Mbps
at times and even pulling in over 10Mbps in my office where most Verizon
phones struggle. With a 5 inch 1080p screen and quad core processor running
off a 2020mAh battery I was skeptical of the battery life but in my testing I
found I was easily able to make it through a full day of use and then some.
The HTC Droid DNA has some faults. The hardware is well built but a few
design choices hold the phone back. It’s great to see Android 4.1 on board but
Sense is really in need of a redesign. That said, you’re getting the best display
on any phone out there and top notch specs all for a reasonable price. If
you’re looking to pick up a new phone on Verizon the Droid DNA is absolutely
worth a look. You can check out more videos on the Droid DNA here and don’t
forget to hit up that Like button and Subscribe for more! Anyway I’ll catch you
guys in the next one!