Design:
I know the official review dogged on the raised glass edges, I used the phone for a week and a half without a case, it never really bothered me. That being said, the phone is pretty slippery with the painted back, and even though the phone has weight, I feel like I'm going to break it. With a case on it, the raised glass is a non-issue, and I don't feel like I'm going to break it.
Display:
The display is quite good, extremely sharp, qHD is perfectly fine, 4.3" in the qHD resolution isn't as large as you would think, it's about the width of a 4.0" 800x480 device.
Cameras:
What can I say? The rear 8mp camera is awesome, probably on par with the iPhone 4s camera. I didn't really care about the camera when I bought the Amaze, but after a few weeks with it, I could see how it could replace a point-and-shoot for most people. The extra camera software features are useless.
Reception/Call Quality:
Call quality was actually quite good with this phone, I never really dropped any calls, and sound was always decent. The data reception is a different story. Often I'd have data drop down to edge for an hour or so randomly, in a location that I could normally go a whole day on HSPA, after the phone sees the signal drop enough to go to edge, it is reluctant to ever switch back to HSPA(+). That all being said, when on a good HSPA+ tower with good backhaul, I've seen 25mbps multiple times.
Performance:
Um, it's a dual-core 1.5ghz processor, even with the bloated Sense UI, it was very fast, it may not be quite as fast as the SGSII, but I'm sure it's close. It can for sure be said that it's not lacking in the performance department.
Software:
Well, let me start by saying Sense is useless and bloated, I would much rather have had a stock 2.3 experience. The app drawer is nowhere near as smooth as some 1ghz phones running vanilla 2.3. Worth mentioning is that this is the second phone on the market with NFC, but really no use for it, Google Wallet does NOT work on this phone.
Battery Life:
It just plain sucks. The inefficient screen, 42mbps radio, and 1.5ghz dual core processor all hog power. This is reason enough to not recommend the phone. I could ALWAYS get through a day of work with my enormous Streak, This phone has a hard time making it half a day without dying and turning itself off. For a while I tried three things, Juicedefender, underclocking, and running the minimum brightness, doing this helped, but not greatly. This phone for sure has one of the worst battery lifes of any phone currently on the market.
The Breakdown
-
Design
9
-
Display
9
-
Camera(s)
10
-
Reception / call quality
7
-
Performance
10
-
Software
6
-
Battery life
4
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Ecosystem
7
