HTC Rhyme (Verizon Wireless)

It seems like almost every new smartphone?I review has a 4.3-inch screen. Sometimes they're even 4.5-inches. And they all look pretty great, to be sure, but quite frankly, my hand is starting to hurt. That's where the HTC Rhyme ($199.99 direct) comes in. Simply put, this is one of the most comfortable phones I've ever had the pleasure to talk on. Throw in a nice bundle of included accessories and you've got yourself a pretty good deal. But a lack of 4G keeps the Rhyme from the top of the heap, even within its midrange category.

Design, Global Calling, and Voice Quality
Measuring 4.7 by 2.4 by 0.4 inches (HWD), the 4.8-ounce HTC Rhyme has a soft-touch body with rounded edges. Although no one's stating it on record, the HTC Rhyme is being targeted towards women. It's purple, it comes with a call alert charm meant to be attached to a purse, and it's designed for a smaller hand than many new smartphones. I'm a man, and I don't have particularly small hands, but even I can feel the difference in comfort between this and, say, a Samsung Droid Charge?($199.99, 4 stars). The purple color may be a turn off for some, but that's a shame, because this is one sleek phone.

Choosing a screen size is starting to feel a bit like Goldilocks choosing porridge, but I find the Rhyme's 3.7-inch glass capacitive touch screen to be just right. The 480-by-800 pixel display looks sharp and bright, and typing on HTC's predictive text-enabled, on-screen keyboards is easy in both landscape and portrait modes.

The handset is a dual-band EV-DO Rev A (800/1900MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. There's also a Wi-Fi hotspot mode that lets you use the phone as a modem for up to five devices with the appropriate data plan. I was very disappointed not to see Verizon's 4G LTE here, especially as that network now covers more than half the U.S. and is still expanding quickly. While Verizon's 3G network features solid speeds and excellent coverage, it just can't compare to the blazing fast data speeds offered by LTE.

Reception isn't great, but voice quality is solid overall. Voices sound full and clear in the earpiece, with a nice punch of volume. On the other end, calls made with the phone are extremely clear and easy to understand, although noise cancellation isn't a strong point.

Calls made over a Jawbone Era?($129, 4.5 stars) Bluetooth headset sounded good, and voice dialing worked without a hitch. Battery life was excellent, at 9 hours 22 minutes of talk time.

Android, HTC Sense, Apps, and 3G
The Rhyme is running Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread). HTC has promised that it will begin to roll out Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) updates to some devices in early 2012, but there's no guarantee the Rhyme will make the cut. So if you want to have your Ice Cream Sandwich and eat it too, you're going to have to wait for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

The Rhyme is also sporting HTC's latest Sense 3.5 UI layer, which looks beautiful. The primary home screen has undergone a transformation: instead of the usual icons running horizontally along the bottom of the screen, here they're stacked one on top of the other, vertically, with the time, date, and weather displayed in the lower right hand corner of the screen. It looks chic. Home screen widgets can also now display notifications, which is helpful. Sense isn't going to make power users looking for a stock Android experience happy, but it includes lots of useful, smooth, and visually-appealing enhancements.

The phone is packing a single-core, 1GHz, second-generation Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon processor, common for midrange smartphones. It benchmarked right in the middle of the pack, and should be up to task for most needs aside from high-end gaming. But it still falls short of the dual-core processors powering most high-end Android smartphones, like the Motorola Droid RAZR?($299.99, 4.5 stars). Still, the Rhyme shouldn't have much trouble with most of the 250,000+ apps in Android Market.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/e0vtoS2OVRU/0,2817,2396255,00.asp

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