By A trio of new Verizon phones have been made available as of this morning. The first, and obviously most highly anticipated, is the carrier’s version of the HTC One. Although the phone is about 4 months later than the rest, the HTC One remains one of the best smartphones that can be had today.
It’s a 4.7-inch 1080p device with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, HTC BoomSound speakers, HTC’s UltraPixel camera and more. Of course, the device is in jeopardy of being overshadowed by newer smartphones — including its own phablet cousin known as the HTC One Max — but if big phones aren’t your thing and you still prefer HTC devices, you’d be hard pressed to find anything better. The phone is available for $200 following a new two-year contract.
Next up is the Motorola DROID Mini, which we weren’t expecting to launch for another week or so. This phone is on the lowest part of the totem pole for the latest DROID devices, but it’s still quite the powerful little smartphone that could. Its 4.3-inch form factor is what gives it its designation of “mini,” even though that size was seen as gigantic once upon a time. With a resolution of 1280 x 720, though, it’s more sharp than we can ask for.
Other specs for the DROID Mini include a 10 megapixel RGBC “Clear Pixel” camera, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, Motorola’s X8 processing system, and more. The highlight will be the software, which is mostly stock Android 4.2.2 with a couple of Motorola’s loving touches sitting on top. We’re talking about features like the always-listening voice activated controls and active notifications. The rest of the customization will come from Verizon, of course, who has the DROID Command Center and a ton more preinstalled applications to keep you busy.
Finally, the least exciting phone of the bunch wasn’t even official until just this morning. It was only yesterday that we’d heard of the 4-inch WVGA LG Enact, a QWERTY slider that runs Android, but just as the credible source mentioned, it’s already available. The LG Enact is a cheap entry-level smartphone for those who might not need all the bells and whistles of the phones we mentioned above.
It sounds like a decent smartphone with its 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 8GB of internal storage, Bluetooth 4.0 and more, but you can’t expect the world for $20 so the exciting bits will stop right there.
The HTC One can be had here, the DROID Mini here, and the LG Enact here. Let us know if you’ve decided to buy any of these phones in the comments section below.
Hurray for the VZW One! I’ll be picking mine up in 1 hour.
Is the One still on 4.1.2?
The Verizon version launches with 4.2.2
Curious about that too..on their website it’s listed as running “Latest version of Android Jelly Bean operating system.” :/ considering how shady Verizon is, I’m not assuming that’s 4.3 just yet
Jellybean is the latest version so technically 4.1.2 is the latest version…. or so they can claim. It’s like a new car. If the sports edition comes out 2 months after the basic edition but they are both 2014 model they are still both the latest edition.
True but in the end it’s all semantics which is aimed at the “target” population instead of us techies lol
Just upgraded to the HTC One online
Don’t forget to apply promo-codes! Just saved $50 doing just that, offsets the $30 ‘upgrade’ fee….
(I tried promo codes SAV25 and FIFTYRMN , both were successful).
Do the promo codes work if order it online and pick it up in store ?
I guess they should work as long as you see the ‘promo code’ box when you do a checkout on verizonwireless’ online store.
The Mini is the only Droid that deserves to be disruptive. It blows the S4 Mini and One Mini out of the water. Nice to see a no compromises smaller phone.
And it shall be mine. It shall be my precious.
The whole Motorola line up is full of compromises with that outdated processor.
Droid Mini is essentially a dual core Snapdragon 600 at 1.7 GHz. One Mini is a dual core Snapdragon 400 at 1.4 GHz. S4 Mini is a Snapdragon 400 at 1.7 GHz.
Droid Mini has the better processor.
More detailed version:
Droid Mini has 2 application cores (processors) that are the Qualcomm MSM8960Pro, also known as the Krait 300. These are the exact same processors as in the Galaxy S4 and HTC One, but there are two instead of four. Additionally, the Droid Mini has the Adreno 320 GPU, the exact same GPU as the Galaxy S4 and HTC One. The Mini runs at a 720p instead of 1080p, though, and thus will perform better than the One or S4 in games.
Again, compared to the flagship S4 and One, the Droid Mini has no compromises (unless you consider two Krait 300 cores vs. four Krait 300 cores to be a compromise, but it’s so minimal as not to matter).
The Snapdragon 400 in the One Mini and GS4 Mini is downright wimpy by comparison, based on legitimately outdated tech. It has Krait 200 processors (MSM8930) which are much slower, as well as a much slower GPU (Adreno 305).
Literally the only difference between the Snadragon 600 in the GS4 and One and the “x8 Computing System” in the current gen Motos is dual core instead of quad. Most users are reporting that their quads never fire up anyway, so the difference is inconsequential, at least for now.
The new Droids use the S4 Pro not the 400 processors.
http://www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon/smartphones/finder?s4=true
When will Costco or Best Buy get this phone? I want to do an alternate upgrade and I don’t trust a Verizon store.
Best Buy has the One today. Just saw it.
Decisions, decisions. Can’t decide whether to upgrade now, or wait for more Nexus news.
I’m buying One.
$99 HTC ONE:
Verizon’s own Spanish language arm Viva Movil by J Lo has HTC ONE for $99 online and in store.
It pays to speak Spanish (just kidding, the website is in both English and Spanish)
Pre-ordered a Maxx and a Mini through wirefly a few weeks ago.
I’m hoping that now that the Mini is shipping, wirefly will complete my order and ship both.
(Before you ask, I pre-ordered the 6th, before the Maxx ship date slipped a week)
Might want to hold off on getting a One for a while. I tried this morning and after 90 minutes on the phone with tier 2 supervisor my local rep told me that there is a “known issue” where their servers aren’t recognizing the One, therefore can’t activate them. I can’t even describe how mad I am right now!!! Verizon, you’ve made a circus out of an otherwise great phone! HTC should be ashamed of you!
I have the Maxx. In my opinion the screen on the Maxx is better looking than the HTC One screen. I went to the Verizon store and checked out the HTC One a little while ago
Hi, This mobile is
good and features are better than previous series.
This mini htc set is nice and his company mobiles features is better is others mobiles company….
HTC
I saw HTC post a picture of their HTC One on Verizon. Well… let me just show you the horror that was done to the phone.