If you follow me on Google+, you will probably know that Rogers sent me my first of many demo phones to come. The first phone they sent me was the HTC Raider, which is their first LTE phone available on the Rogers network. I already did a hands-on test of the LTE network, if you missed it, you can find the ( LINK HERE )
This review will be slightly shorter than my other reviews, as I just reviewed the HTC Evo 3D not to long ago, and the software is 95% identical, so this will be geared mostly towards the physical device itself. ( HTC Evo 3D Review ) So lets get to it.
Physical Design.
First thing I noticed when picking up this phone, was the weight. This phone weighs in at a whopping 177 grams, and if you’re use to a phone like the GS2 which weighs only 116 grams, you really feel the difference. Secondly, this phone is very tall, measuring at 128.8 by 67, but makes up for it being thin for a HTC phone, only being 11.27mm thick.
My experience with HTC phones; Desire, Desire HD, Sensation, Evo 3D, now Raider, HTC seems to opt for plastic backings, which make the phone feel cheap in some aspects, (just my opinion). With the HTC Raider, they built the back plate that covers the battery in metal, surrounding edges with plastic. This is a great idea in my mind, as the metal plate helps pull the heat away from the battery under heavy use.
The screen is beautiful on this phone. it’s 4.5 inch display featuring a 540 x 960 resolution display, everything was very sharp and a real treat to play with.
Advertised as having 16GB of built in storage, but after space set aside for Apps and system files, only 9GB is user accessible. This is really nice feature for HTC phones, as they normally rely on MicroSD for any user accessible storage.
I’m very impressed with the build quality of this phone, it feels solid as a brick when holding it in your hands. This is a great change from previous use of older HTC phones.
The sound quality is really a step up from previous HTC phones. I found that HTC phones generally have poor sound quality for media playback, and very tiny speaker to play it all from. As you can see from the picture, HTC really stepped up on the built-in speaker on the HTC Raider this time around, and I actually had great pleasure watching youtube with decent sound quality. My only gripe is the maximum volume for the sound is fairly low, which is common amongst HTC phones. Hence all the volume boosting apps for HTC phones all over the market and net.
Software and UI.
Everyone knows HTC’s legendary Sense design, the market is full of imitators to prove that. The HTC Raider comes with HTC Sense 3.0 built in, disappointing they didn’t include version 3.5 instead. HTC Sense of course brings a load of widgets, pretty much anything you could ever want in terms of normal phone operation such as; Bookmarks, Mail, Calendar, Twitter, FackBook Friend Stream, various power management toggles, and of course that iconic HTC Clock. HTC Sense also delivers all the stuff some users don’t want in terms of bloatware, such as; Peep(Twitter) Twitter, Spiderman3D Demo, Cyberon Voice Commander, Flicker, My shelf, ect. On top of all the bloat, of course Rogers in turn has to pump their garbage as well and they didn’t hold back.
Camera Quality.
The camera quality of this phone is pretty impressive. Previous HTC phones seemed to have a lot of camera lag when panning from side to side, HTC did a great job of fixing that up on the Raider. I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures with this phone, but when I wanted to snap a couple quick clicks, It was always ready for the task and easily handled different lighting environments.
Only things that stood in my way was once I got to 30% battery or less, it wouldn’t allow me to use the LED flash when taking photos.
Here are a couple samples so you can judge for yourself.
Battery Life.
HTC Raider comes with a 1620 Li-Ion mAh battery. Using the HTC Raider day to day, I found the battery was draining pretty fast, which is to be expected from a HTC device. HTC Sense is beautiful, although it is a large factor why most HTC phones have poor battery life. I was able to get through a full day on medium to heavy use, but I couldn’t go much farther than that. I would label the battery length as poor for this phone sadly.
But for what the phone is capable of, there are other things that easily make up for its lack in battery.
Final Thoughts.
With a 1.2Ghz dual core processor and 1GB of ram under the hood, it’s no doubt this phone can stand amongst the rest of the other super phones with pride. Although it’s not without its faults, just like any other phone. During my week of playing and testing, I had the HTC Raider restart itself for an unknown reason, prompted with a “Your device recovered from an unknown shutdown, would you like to report this to HTC?” error. HTC and Rogers have a couple bugs to workout apparently, but with this phone being just days old, it’s to be expected.
I was very impressed with the phones smoothness in scrolling through the menus and widgets, it was defiantly a step up from previous models. The camera, sound, screen were all very impressive, but now I have to pick at the things I didn’t like. Volume wasn’t loud enough, Random reboots, No flash at 30% or less battery, Gobbles battery pretty fast.
All in all, this phone is a great phone, but there is no chance I would toss up my Galaxy S II for it, LTE or not.
If you want more info on my LTE experience, I posted a link at the top of this page.
Keep in mind this review was done on a demo unit on which I played with over a weekend. Others may have a different experience and disagree with my views on this phone, for those people I say; Post your thoughts in the comments below with your own mini review of this phone. Share with the rest of our fellow readers.
Want to get additional information, or chat with Tom Gray? You can find him on his Google+ page.
( Link to Tom Gray’s Google+ Page. )