



Packaging and accessories

From the box alone, you'd have no idea what you're holding. Verizon's smartphone marketing strategy is a fascinating case study: the boxes for its Droid models tend to be loud, in-your-face packages with a glowing red eye featured prominently somewhere, but the Rezound — which isn't branded as a Droid device, for some reason — comes in a completely black box with nothing more than a subtle "HTC" embossed at one end. That's it. No Rezound logo, no picture of the phone. Calling it understated is, well, an understatement.

When you remove the outer sleeve and flip open the box, you'll find the Rezound placed between the included Beats Audio earbuds, one bud on either side. This part of the packaging is all black, too, which really makes the red wires of the headset pop out at you — and that's likely the intended effect. It's clear that HTC really believes that its Beats partnership is a big deal, and in the consumer audio business, those red wires have become iconic to a level that's exceeded only by the classic iPod white. If you've read some of my other reviews, you'll know that I'm generally not a fan of headsets included with phones — they're rarely good enough to do your music justice — but Beats Audio may be an exception. More on that a little later.

I'm generally not a fan of headsets included with phones, but Beats Audio may be an exception

Removing the top layer of the box's interior reveals the remainder of the accessories: the LTE SIM card (which will probably be installed by the time the phone's in your hands), some documentation, a small pleather pouch for your Beats headset, some replacement buds of different sizes, and HTC's usual USB wall charger and Micro USB cable. There's also a 16GB microSD card included, which brings the phone's total to 32GB between the internal and external storage — an appropriate amount considering the Rezound's music slant. Oh, and the fact that Verizon's charging $299 on contract.

The phone

At 13.7mm, the Rezound isn't going to win any records for slim design. What's funny is that it's launching just a few days after Motorola's 7.1mm Droid RAZR, which is by far the thinnest LTE smartphone (and really, the thinnest smartphone, period) on the market. They're both $299 — and Verizon is positioning them both as very high-end devices — and yet their designs really couldn't be much more different.

It turns out I may have been a little harsh on the Rezound when I first put my hands on it during HTC's unveiling event — now that I've used it for several days, I don't think it's unreasonably thick or chunky. In fact, it feels quite good in the hand — I prefer it to the RAZR, which doesn't really have any "hand-friendly" surfaces. I find that 4.3- and 4.5-inch phones can get away with their size a little better when they're using a display with widescreen resolution, because the phone is less wide than it would be using a 5:3 display (WVGA, for example), which makes the handset easier to grip. The Rezound's 720p screen, at 1280 x 720, certainly fits that bill.

If you're familiar with HTC's Evo 3D, the Rezound's overall appearance and feel are surprisingly similar, right down to the red accents. Around back you've got a partially textured, soft-touch material that should prevent all but the most butterfingered slips. One element that isn't like the Evo 3D, though, is the asymmetric ridge along the battery cover — this is actually a carry-over from Verizon's beloved Incredible and Incredible 2. The funny thing about this design is that I've never liked it in pictures, but I always think it looks quite good when I finally see it in person. The same thing holds true with the Rezound — it's a unique and attractive look that helps the phone stand out from a really homogeneous pack.

Other features on back include the 8-megapixel camera with dual LEDs, the all-important Beats and 4G LTE logos, and a well-concealed loudspeaker grille. The placement of the grille is actually really smart — it's positioned in an area of the cover that slopes very slightly inward, which ends up giving audio something of a megaphone effect when you place the phone face-up on a flat surface. I don't know whether that was intentional or not, but it works quite well: at max volume, the sound was really loud for calls, music, and video playback.

The entire back lifts off to reveal a neat translucent red interior. (I'd assumed that HTC was moving away from its trademark brightly-colored interiors, but I was clearly mistaken.) As with some other recent HTCs, the cover doubles as an antenna, and I found that the phone immediately went to zero bars of reception as soon as I pried it off. Obviously, you won't be using the phone without a cover, but that probably raises the cost of getting a replacement and complicates the job of aftermarket accessory makers that want to offer an extended battery kit.

The Rezound's edges are half soft-touch plastic, half black chrome. In general, I'd call this phone "blacked out" — it doesn't have any bright bits, apart from the metallic red ring around the camera lens. The right edge has a fairly large volume rocker that I found easy to use during calls; the left edge has the MHL port near the bottom and a secondary mic near the top for noise cancellation. With MHL, you can connect the Rezound to HDMI for high-definition video out, but there's one very minor disadvantage: because it's perfectly rectangular, it's a little harder to tell which way to insert a Micro USB cable for charging and data transfer, and I found myself frequently getting it wrong on the first attempt. Along the bottom edge is your primary microphone and a recessed edge for lifting the battery cover, while the top has your standard 3.5mm headphone jack and power button. As with the Vivid, I felt that the button was a bit too flush with the edge of the phone for my liking, but it's certainly not a deal-breaker.

Finally, that leads us to the front. The bezel is fairly minimal on the left and right sides of the screen, with just a hint of black chrome peeking out from the very edge. The top has a long earpiece with a red grille; it's not too much red to be annoying or overpowering against the phone's understated design, and I think it's a nice touch (I'm a big fan of the black / red combo in general). You can make out the front-facing camera on the upper right, but you can't see the proximity or light sensors at all. Below the display, the Rezound uses red backlighting for the four capacitive buttons; like the phone's other red accents, I really like it, but I imagine some people might prefer the more traditional white.

All told, I like the shape, size, and feel of this phone a lot more than I thought I would. It's heavy, solid, and relatively thick, which makes it a stark counterbalance to the Droid RAZR's insane design and engineering. I think some will find the phone too heavy or too thick, but hey — that's exactly where the RAZR comes in (and soon enough, the Galaxy Nexus).