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And it’s official. The HTC Droid DNA has just been announced for Verizon and will be available for purchase starting November 21st for $199 with contract. The Android 4.1 smartphone boasts some pretty impressive specs, starting with a 5-inch SLCD display with a resolutuon of 1920×1080. Yes, that’s full 1080p resolution right in your hand. But the power of the handset goes deeper with a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2GB RAM, and 16GB of internal storage (sorry, no microSD).
The Droid DNA carries an 8MP camera with HTC’s ImageChip technology. This 28mm wide-angle lens can capture video with resolutions up to 1080p, and an 88-degree ultra wide-angle 2.1MP front-facing camera can do the same. A 2,020mAh battery seems a bit light, but wireless charging capabilities still provide plenty to talk about when it comes to powering the new handset.
The Droid DNA is a Beats Audio device. The Droid DNA is an LTE device. In other words, name a spec that you were hopeful to see in your next handset and this phone probably has it. NFC? Check. MHL? Check. Bluetooth 4.0? Check.
Those interested in picking up the latest collaboration between HTC and Verizon can start placing their pre-orders today. It might be a good idea if you hope to avoid the holiday shopping rush.
2020 mAh battery….wtf HTC
Seems a bit on the low end, but that quad core S4 processor is crazy efficient… pretty sure you can get through a day without charging
I don’t know with that 1080P screen. That’s a lot of pixels to push even for a really fast and efficient CPU/GPU.
Yeah thats true… HTC does have a history of giving Verizon a phone on.steroids that has a crappy battery life (HTC Thunderbolt, for example)
Thunderbolt was a phone on steroids?? LOL
Wait till you see this one if you think TB was a beast. All that really had going for it was LTE IMO. DNA is a game changer
Yes, the thunderbolt was a beast when it first came out.. The DNA has great specs, but no microSD card and low-juice battery is its downfall .
Easily can make it past a day without charging
So can we expect a review soon? :D
This one is from a fellow HTC Elevate member: http://androidforums.com/htc-droid-dna/647389-my-droid-dna-review-2.html#post5200364
And this is the thread I started here:http://androidforums.com/htc-droid-dna/647368-droid-dna-reaction-discussion-thread.html
yeah I agree with jbo1018….the 1080p screen is going to chug battery juice no matter how efficient the processor is. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the reviews say. Until there’s a big evolution in battery technology, battery sizes have to continue to grow as screen resolutions get higher and processors get more powerful.
Battery life is amazing so far, Been playing with this phone for 4 days and been blown away by how well the battery lasts
Could you post some screen shots of the batt please? I am really thinking about this phone and batt life if going to make or break it for me…Thanks:)
First off, LOVE that avatar!! I finally got to see them live last June!
Secondly check out this thread: http://androidforums.com/htc-droid-dna/647368-droid-dna-reaction-discussion-thread.html and this one: http://androidforums.com/htc-droid-dna/647389-my-droid-dna-review-2.html#post5200364
you could always dim the brightness lol , but I have my phone @ 100% usually.
The battery life is amazing so far IMO. I’ve had this phone since Saturday morning putting it through its paces
If the screen-on time is as good as you say, then props to HTC, that is quite the feat! Now I’m just upset it’s a Verizon exclusive :(
btw, how does the battery life of the HTC DNA compare to that of other phones on the market such as the Galaxy s3? From your praise, I’m assuming it’s hopefully on par….
It is holding its own compared to my better half’s SGS3 so far
Lets see some screen prints from the battery app of screen on time. I dont see how this small battery can light that many pixels for very long.
I don’t have an app that measures screen on time, hate that JB doesn’t seem to have that metric. Is there one you would suggest?
How is the screen brightness compared to other IPS displays? I heard the colours look a bit washed out and the brightness is low, compared to the One X. Is that how HTC is getting the great battery life maybe, by having a dark screen?
The specs on this phone are similar to the Nexus 4, but the N4 has a smaller screen, less pixels to bush, same storage and ram, and a larger battery. So in theory the N4 should easily have better battery life. But most reviewers said it was good, but not great on battery life. Now to be fair, it could be that the N4 will be great, because the software that shipped with the N4 was a different one than the one the reviews were made one. Google only finished the final 4.2 version a couple days before it shipped the N4.
Only phone I have to compare it to is Rezound, SGS3, and iPhone 5. This one blows them all out of the water
Can’t wait to play around with this thing. Looks fairly impressive.
This may help save HTC…..can’t stand Sense so I’ll stick with my S3.
I hate the look of sense too. It looks like froyo/gingerbread
lack of external memory doomed this phone
sense 4 > touchwiz
Small non removable battery and no microsd = fail and more lost sales for HTC. These guys never learn.
After using the GNexus for almost a year and now switching to the SGS3 I gotta be honest and say that I dont even have an SD-Card. I am a flashaholic that flashes everything from nightly aokp roms to inverted gapp packages and never once have i felt the need for an sdcard. Never once would it have made my life easier. GDrive and Dropbox cover all my needs. Airdroid does great for on the fly transfers. If need be I just plug in a damn usb cable to do the big files. Not seeing a real reason for the sdcard.
Everyone has different reasons for wanting everything.
Music. Movies. Games. Cloud not always available. Data limits.
exactly this. I have the N7 16g first run and it fills up very quickly. Its mostly the games, but moveis and music too. If they could 32 g this thing I’d be in.
You do not backup your data, apps, pictures,… to SD and you are a flashaholic? This does not sound efficient. *Condemning
Stare*
Why is it that every time anyone says they want microsd other people feel the need to post follow up comments explaining in great detail why they personally don’t store anything on their phone and therefore nobody else needs to either?
If you don’t need the microsd slot then don’t use it. Simple.
For the average US consumer cloud sucks. It’s expensive, unreliable, and inconvenient. Local storage solves all of those problems, and HTC isn’t going to pull their sales out of the gutter by omitting it. If they haven’t learned from all the PO’d One X customers by now then they’re doomed. Same goes for all the PO’d Tbolt customers and small non removable batteries. HTC just doesn’t seem to care what their customers want, and that’s reflected in their sales figures.
The Thunderbolt’s battery was removable, FYI.
Yes but once you’ve put out a device with such terrible battery life and earned a reputation, going small and non removable is the kiss of death. Nobody trusts HTC on batteries.
Hmm, I would be excited if it wasn’t a Verizon exclusive
Exclusive to the most expensive carrier in the US, check. No microSD, check. No removable battery, check. No HTC for me, check!
And no updates. My gf’s rezound is still on ICS.
That was a fail phone to begin with though. I wouldn’t buy one either though. I’m still heated at moto for not updating the Atrix 4G.
The marketing of the phone was fail and the release OS (Gingerbread) was too wimpy to harness all the power of the phone. On ICS, Rezound is very capable and snappy as the OS makes the most of the equipment.
People are bitter because it wont make it to Jelly Bean.
It’s pretty snappy indeed. swap out with nova launcher.. better. better phone than asstrix
Word. I just moved from Apex to Nova — things just keep getting better and better. I keep putting off rooting but I’m getting excited about even bigger gains.
Atrix was a fail phone to begin with though. I wouldn’t buy one either though. (you use a lot of thoughs for no reason).
wait, i thought the rezound got its ics upgrade quite some time ago? o_O
Yes it did a few months ago
So is my EVO 4G LTE! :-(
Yep, it’s an HTC phone on Verizon, thus no updates. Pathetic.
Damn you HTC, why do you waste our time!
This looks pretty sick.. of course the non-removable battery is a pretty big detractor, and surely a secured bootloader (its on verizon)
So much for HTC focusing on one phone so as to avoid dilution and confusion in the marketplace…? Still, nice phone!
small battery? check
Indeed… HTC is known for being notoriously short-sighted on their battery offerings (it started back with OG DInc and it hasn’t changed)…
I admit to being an HTC ‘fanboy’ (DInc to Thunderbolt to Rezound) — love their design and build quality… hate their wimpy battery choice.
Seriously considering jumping to Sammy’s S3… guess I might be hanging up my HTC hat.
I know I’ve said it a bunch but seriously, battery life is phenomenal
Don’t bother with it. People love to Hate on HTC. Samsung is “king” for most of them. It is not the number of pixels that that eat the battery it is the black lighting. And Super LCD3 fix that.
Amen :)
No removable battery I might be able to deal with, but only 16gb of storage and no sd card???? Huge fail! My 32gb card in my Rezound is almost full. Why would I downgrade? HTC is about to lose it for lack of vision. Guess I’ll wait for the Samsung Galaxy S4…
16GB and no SD card??? When will these manufacturer’s realize that 16GB is not enough! My 16GB S3 has less than 1GB free but at least I have an SD card.
Would have been my next phone if it were not for the small battery and no Micro… 16GB is just not enough..
I don’t mind the no sd card but the 16gb of internal storage bugs me because the fact that it’s not enough for a phone they should have came with multiple versions with different storage size to compensate for the issue. Also 2020 mAh is the biggest fail when you have phones such as the Note 2 coming with a huger battery and then phones like the Droid Razr Maxx that comes with the great battery life. At least make the battery removable so people could buy a bigger battery for the phone
Agreed. I have waited to see the battery on this thing for months and when I read it, I literally groaned out loud with disappointment. I would have bought it otherwise.
As for storage, HTC needs to realize that 16gb (11gb usable) isn’t enough for the people this is most appealing to. Put one Blu-Ray video on this thing and you’ve filled up over 1/3 of the storage, not considering additional space from apps and pics!
Agree and taking it a step further.
A 1080p full length movie is more than this device can store. It can’t store half a blue-ray disk. What is the use of having a 1080p screen if you can’t watch a movie on it.
Battery + no micro sd = getting on Verizon site to order note 2
smart choice I picked mine up from at&t on saturday…..lightning quick, awesome features (s-pen, multi-view, etc.) and crazy efficient battery, I had 6 1/2 hours of screen time with brightness around 70%
Do you have 4g in your area because my gnex eats away battery on 4g
Again HTC underestimate the value of removable storage and either give us huge batteries or give us removable…htc when will you learn.
Battery life is a non-factor honestly. I would have preferred SD slot or a 32gig model but meh… we’ll see.
I will have to change up the way I store stuff but for me the positives FAR outweigh the negatives. This phone is AMAZING
No doubt this phone is a beast spec wise but if I have to change the way I use a phone then that phone is not the right phone for me…for me the perfect phone is a phone that just works without you having to change things…for me to just use 16gb which is really only 11gb would be next to impossible…considering some of the games I have right now are nearly 2gb in size each will fill up this phone…the cloud is all good an all but until you have perfect connection everywhere with unlimited data offline storage is still king…the j butterfly which is the same phone has a SD card slot so I don’t know why they took it here.
I have 2 large gameloft games on mine (batman and asphalt) and I still have plenty of space.
And I feel ya but yes, you will ALWAYS need to change/adapt, just the way it is unfortunately.
What I would have liked to have seen is a dropbox promotion giving DNA users a chunk of space like they did with the SGS3
Last phone I had to change my usage for was the iPhone 4 and I regreted that so much…I had the s2 and s3 now since that and those 2 phones just due to having a SD card slot av never had to alter the way I use a phone…for me micro SD is the no1 thing I look for on a phone cause I have a 32gb SD card with all my media and whenever I change phone all I need to do is put the card in..and I use the built in memory for apps only…I have over 14gb being used on the SD and over 8gb in apps on the phone memory so 16gb is a no for without SD…for those who can change there ways and live within that limit then this phone will be great for you…I have a feeling a lot of people will be turned off from this phone due to the lack of SD…
Fair enough
You shouldn’t need to adapt to the phone. It should be the other way round. HTC should say to themselves “Oh, people like storage” and then give them what they want. 16gb is a joke. I shouldn’t have to adapt to that.
Fair enough
I agree especially in the tech world, if you want a new gadget you have to get comfortable with change. Any Windows 8 user will confirm this.
Exactly
No microSD…… No purchase!!!!!!!!!!
This looks so boring, just like any other HTC phone…It has nothing exciting about it, design, battery, camera…YAWN
I call a quad core S4 processor and a 1080p screen pretty exciting!
For real ?
Is it too soon to ask when it’s getting 4.2?
LOL!
4.1.1 right now so maybe soon??
Contemplating on switching from my GS3 to this. But then what will I do with my 64GB micro SD card? I have plenty of storage devices already. The specs are awesome and I’m a little biased towards HTC.
Switching from a Galaxy Nexus? Maybe (my situation.) Switching from a GS3? Doesn’t make sense to me…
I prefer HTC phones plus that quad-core and a 1080P screen sounds amazing. If the One X came out to Verizon at the time I bought my GS3, I would have chosen that over the GS3. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the GS3 as it’s a fantastic phone.
This thing blows the SGS3 out the water. My girl has the SGS3 and I have the DNA… doesn’t even come close to comparing
all hopes of me picking this beast up went out the door when they mentioned 16gb internal with no expandable memory. I’m sorry, but how can you build a super phone that appeals to the true techies, and expect to go up against fierce competition like Samsung when you don’t offer anything more than 16gb? especially with the impending launch of qualcomm’s gaming store, games that are optimized to utilize the s4 pro quad core are going to take up a ton of memory. 16gb is nothing. I currently have the note 2 with 16 internal but is manageable because I have 64 external. Only the games and apps stay on the internal memory. enduring else goes to my sd card. If htc has any hopes of competing with Samsung and Apple, they have to support small things like external memory. Apple gets away with it because no iphones support external. But Android is a different story. key mistake by HTC
I agree, I think for the first time Google is taking android in the wrong direction by removing the expandable memory. 16GB is ridiculous. I had a 60GB iPod in 2005.
Now DNA is officially out of my consideration. Time to order Note 2.
I was actually considering leaving Sprint for Verizon for this phone, but now I think I’ll stay with Sprint and pick up the Galaxy Note 2, Sprints service is great in my part of Metro Atlanta so better coverage is a mute issue for me, I also have unlimited everything which Verizon lacks.
I am on the verge of switching from Verizon to Sprint for the Note 2, and they have mediocre coverage here. So I would say that is a good call.
HTC needs to realize that this one carrier exclusivity thing is what’s killing it. If this thing was released in 32 and 64 gig variants, on all carriers simultaneously (or at least a couple of them), without the bad marketing, it would absolutely dominate this holiday season. HTC’s user experience is good (love my Amaze), the screens are great, specs are great, I just don’t know WTF they’re thinking when it comes to marketing…
Battery will be guzzled.
How are you guys not upset with the power button in top middle? That makes no sense…put these soft buttons on the note2, and you have the perfect phone. Stupid hard home button on Note2 just makes for more work…
I actually really love the power button placement. Very easy to use
Powered by Apple.
No Holo, check!
Everything but not boring, ugly Sense 4.084727624+
Ladies and gentlemen, here is the new HTC Thunderbolt 3, but we obviously won’t call it that
TB was a dud, Try Incredible 4 (lol)
Can I get some feedback on whether this is possible or not?
If it has wireless charging, can they make a case for this that has a battery in it that will keep the phone charging throughout the day? Kinda like a Juice Pack, but not actually plugged into the usb port? Or is the technology too big and bulky to fit on the back of a phone?
If this is possible, it could fix the non-removable battery problem for some users.
It’s definitely possible, it’s just a matter of someone making it. Since this is a Verizon only phone it’s not super likely.
It would be nice. Maybe I’ll patent it before… wait, what’s this? A letter in the mail…
Apple says I can’t patent it. :(
You could just have the case plug into the usb slot. There are already some cases that do this. When your battery gets low you can turn on the case charger.
A doubt that there will be one made for the DNA.
Not bad. I wish it had just included a micro SD because then all my need would be met. I mean at least it does have 16GB and not 8, but extra storage is always nice to have. So now it comes down to Samsung GS3, the Motorola Razr HD, and this thing. There are things I like about all of them but the Razr is in the lead right now. The only thing that makes me rank this above the Razr is the camera, which my anecdotal experience has shown that HTC cameras are better than Motorola ones. Since my phone is essentially a replacement for a point and shoot camera quality is a very important feature. And as an amateur photographer it’s nice to have it when you need it. But I’ll wait till I can get my hands on this thing and see if the size is too much for me (I think the Note and Note 2 are too big for me) so I might end up going for a smaller phone regardless of camera performance. *sigh* too bad the One X+ isn’t on Verizon as well.
i wish it was unlocked, instead of being on one carrier.
Shitty battery and dinosaur storage. No thanks. Anything below 64gb or 32gb+microSD should not even be considered in this day and age.
Top end phone: Small Battery and NO SD Slot = Reason HTC is going out of business. They just dont get it.
Way too big and too thick but otherwise good looking design. Put that PPI into a 4.3″ phone with 1280×720 with the same features and it’d be perfect.
Oh snap Sammy you better keep an eye on HTC…Looks like they are coming for you :)
As a Sammy FanBoy I have to give HTC its props for such a nice looking phone…
Was looking forward to this as the only higher step from my rebound and now I’m so mad and disappointed, I don’t care about the batter because I have a car charger and can charge while I work, but no sd card slot is a deal breaker, many people can say just use the cloud, but the problem with that is assuming people are always on a coverage area, I travel a lot and get in and out of coverage areas a lot, so that’s not an option for me, and I have tons of music on my sd card, say whatever you like about not needing that much music but my moods change and I’m a music producer so having music with me at all times is kind of a big deal, different music inspires me at different times, plus, what’s the point of making a multimedia powerhouse phone when you can even use it? Is everyone forgetting how big 1080p video files are? Plus pictures? Plus music? Plus apps and other is related data users? For some and I’d argue most people they need sd storage, and thus this is a very sad and disappointing day for then because this is my dream phone that’ll have to stay there… In my dreams, thanks Verizon, the j-butterfly has expandable memory, but you purposefully left it off, ridiculous, I might buy a j-butterfly but I’m worried about is updates with it, idk but I guess I’ll be stuck with my rezound for a good while longer… Sadly… And ps the note 2 is far to big for me to want that and I have big hands…
I agree, expandable memory is must. If you have ever been on a long flight two things come in handy. A spare battery and stored movies. You should look into the Note II or SGN3.
for those that have access to this phone and a gs3. how much bigger is this phone compared to the gs3.ive heard there almost the same size that the screen on dna is just bigger cause its less bezel.
only 16gb?? What were they thinking!!! I think a 5 inch screen is also too big. What i want is the same specs, 32-64gb and a screen size like the thunderbolt. Verizon gets the worst phones and selection. I wish they got the xperia, love the design (don’t know anything else) saw it best buy.
Wow really people are bitching Lol, GET A LIFE AND DON’T BUY THE PHONE OR COMMENT SOMETHING NEGATIVE.
This phone doesn’t look bad. That S4 Pro piques my interest.
Its a BEAST!
i would rather get Galaxy Note II IMO!! bigger screen, bigger battery (3100 mAh), removable battery, and microsd card slot support up to 64GB, multiview, etc etc
It looks just great HTC is doing great work this year One X now this. I guess it was wrong to believe by a competitor that HTC is no threat, right Apple.
The only concern I have is with the display’s brightness, I saw comparisons somewhere online, and the colours seemed dimm compared to the N4 and One X. It seems that HTC has sacrificed brightness and colours for pixel count and density. Has anyone seen the screen in person, preferably next to the One X?
I am not very happy with what I have read about the DNA. The Mods in the comments seem to be defending this phone.
My real frustration is how Verizon has pushed back the release of the Note II for this. I am sure this phone is fine, but leaves a lot to be desired when compared to the Note II.