The Lenovo ThinkPad Twist joins the small number of convertible Windows 8 tablets to hit the market after the launch of that new operating system at the end of October 2012. The Twist looks like a standard ThinkPad or ThinkPad Edge compact system until you open it up and try out the center swivel hinge that allows you to use the Ultrabook like a laptop, as a tablet or in presentation mode. The 12.5", 350 nit brightness IPS display is sharp and colorful. Better yet, it has 5 points of capacitive multi-touch, though there's no digital pen option as with the ThinkPad X230t.

The ThinkPad Twist is a relatively affordable machine that at first was going to be a part of Lenovo's affordable Edge line, but the company created a new category for the Twist. Like Edge machines, it has that ThinkPad look and Raven black soft touch finish, but the chrome accents and occasional gloss that are telltale Edge touches. Lenovo calls this 3.5 lb. machine an Ultrabook, and though it's a little heavy for that designation, it has all the key elements: third generation Intel Core i3/i5/i7 ULV CPUs, Intel HD 4000 graphics, 4 or 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM and your choice of a spinning hard drive with a small caching SSD or a full 128 gig SSD drive.

As you'd expect from a ThinkPad, the Twist is a sturdy and understated laptop with a superb keyboard and very good Synaptics trackpad plus Trackpoint. Alas, the keyboard isn't backlit, but that's our only qualm. The keyboard, as you'd expect from a ThinkPad, is exceptional with good key travel and tactile feedback. The keys are roomy and the "smile" curve makes them comfortable and distinct from each other.

The build is solid and the unidirectional traditional center swivel hinge that's been used on Windows Tablet PCs for a decade is strong. There is a little bit of wobble when you poke at the screen with a finger, and so far slider designs do the best job of fighting wobble.

Below the soft touch black finish a metal casing keeps the laptop safe from occasional bumps and thumps. As with all ThinkPads, we expect this one to tolerate more abuse than the average plastic notebook. There's no chassis flex and it feels like and is a well made computer. The exterior and keyboard deck are matte but the display surround is a gloss black plastic that cheapens the look a bit. But this is an Edge system, and that means occasional gloss and chrome bits that are flashy and distracting from the overall stately design.

 

The tablet's power button is on the right edge of the display, as is the rotation lock button. There are volume controls on the Fn row of the keyboard and just below the display so you can access them in tablet mode.

Unlike the 1600 x 900 Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, the Twist's display is the more common 1366 x 768 resolution. It looks sharp enough, though it's obviously not as razor sharp as full HD displays like that of the Sony Vaio Duo 11 and Dell XPS 12 convertible Windows 8 Ultrabook-tablets. Still, this is a high quality IPS display with wide viewing angles and good colors, and it's protected with Gorilla Glass. The display is glossy and it does have the usual glare you'd expect from a Gorilla Glass gloss display. The 350 nit display has good brightness and it supports 5 points of capacitive multi-touch but there is no digital pen option (you can use a capacitive stylus, which is less accurate). 

The ThinkPad Twist has two USB 3.0 ports (one on each side), a mini HDMI port (we'd actually prefer micro HDMI or full size since those are both more commonly used), a mini DisplayPort (perfect for driving higher than 1080p monitors), a 3.5mm combo audio jack, an SD card slot and an Ethernet jack. It has the traditional barrel charging connector rather than Lenovo's new compact rectangular port used on some of their skinnier systems. There is currently no fingerprint scanner with TPM option, though the tablet does have a 3G SIM card slot (in the US we currently can't order it with a 3G module however).

Our review unit shipped with the usual 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U ULV Ivy Bridge CPU with Turbo Boost to 2.6GHz, 4 gigs of RAM and a 128 gig SSD. The configuration sold at Staples stores for $899 has the same internals except the drive, which is a 500 gig HDD SATA drive with a 24 gig mSATA SSD caching drive to speed up boot and launch times. If you're a self-upgrader, you can upgrade the drive yourself at a later date by purchasing a SATA 2.5" SSD drive.

If you order from Lenovo's website, you can go with an SSD drive and there's a 1.9GHz dual core Intel Core i7-3517U option with Turbo Boost to 3GHz. RAM is apparently soldered to the motherboard and you can only get 8 gigs if you opt for the Core i7 CPU. All Twist models ship with Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics, and that's a capable GPU that can handle moderate gaming, though we wouldn't call an Ultrabook with integrated graphics a gamer's machine. It can handle World of Warcraft and Left4Dead 2 at native resolution at better than 30 fps. The Twist can handle 1080p playback easily as well as productivity apps like MS Office, web browsing, email and social networking as well as Adobe Photoshop and other more demanding applications. While it lacks the pure computational speed of the ThinkPad X230t with full mobile Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs, it offers enough power for the average user and then some (the same is true of most Ultrabooks).

What's the difference between the ThinkPad Twist and the Lenovo ThinkPad x230t? The Twist is approximately $300 less, and it runs on slower ULV CPUs rather than the full mobile CPUs used in the X230t. The X230t is available with either touch or a digital pen (but not both) and has a matte display vs. the glossy Gorilla Glass-clad Twist.

As is the norm for Ultrabooks, the ThinkPad Twist's Lithium Ion Polymer battery is sealed inside. The 42.4Whr battery is ample enough, but as with other Windows 8 touchscreen convertibles and Ultrabooks, runtimes aren't terribly impressive. Our machine gets a boost from the power-frugal 128 gig SSD drive, and we've averaged 4.5 hours on a charge with brightness set to 50%, WiFi on and Bluetooth off. Our test includes a mix of productivity work with MS Office, email set to check at 15 minute intervals, web browsing, social networking and 30 minutes of streaming HD video playback. Users with the standard issue 500 gig HDD have reported 3.5-4 hour runtimes.

The BlackBerry Z10, running BlackBerry 10 is finally here in the US. AT&T is the first carrier to release the Z10, and that's the model we'll review here, with occasional mention of the unlocked US model STL100-3 that we also have in house. In terms of both hardware and software, the AT&T version (also an STL-100-3) is nearly identical to its unlocked US and Canadian cousin, and only a small AT&T logo on the back gives it away. There are just a few carrier apps like AT&T Family Maps and a shortcut to the AT&T account management portal, making for a very clean experience.

This is a pure touch screen phone with no hardware QWERTY keyboard. Instead a capable software keyboard takes care of your text entry needs. The 4.2", 1280 x 768 IPS display is sharp and good looking. The BlackBerry Z10 runs on a 1.5GHz dual core Qualcomm CPU with 2 gigs of RAM and 16 gigs of internal storage. Those are beefy enough specs to make the smartphone's pervasive multi-tasking smooth. The Z10 has a rear 8MP camera that can shoot 1080p video and a front 2MP camera that can shoot 720p video. Wireless is well covered with LTE 4G and HSPA+, dual band WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and NFC. The phone has the mobile hotspot feature and very good reception.

The Z10 is a pleasing looking smartphone that's relatively compact by today's standards. At 4.2", the Z10 feels a lot like the iPhone 5s in terms of size and screen dimensions. I personally prefer larger displays at 4.5" and above for the larger text and more immersive video watching experience, but there's something to be said for a phone that's still small enough to be comfortable to use as a phone. It fits easily enough in a pocket and the textured, rubbery back isn't slippery. The phone is largely make of plastic with an stainless steel inner frame, stainless steel buttons and the front could fool you because it looks so much like metal. The look is strikingly similar to the iPhone 5 and HTC One from the front, but Apple and HTC's offering look much classier from the back and more exciting overall. That said, the BlackBerry Z10 is attractive looking, even if it doesn't wander far from the black slab look (Verizon customers have the option to get a white Z10 along with the usual black model).

We won't complain too much about that plastic back because it allows for a thin phone with a removable rear cover. That means you can swap out the battery and there's an SDXC microSD card slot under the back cover as well as the micro SIM card slot. Removable batteries and storage cards seem to be going the way of the angels, so we're thrilled to see it here. Given BlackBerry's government and business heritage, the ability to swap in a spare battery on the road is a must.

Controls are easy to use, and we like that the center button that's sandwiched between the volume buttons does double duty to bring up voice command. However, we found voice command selection limited and the phone's voice recognition skills mediocre--it doesn't compete with Siri or the very good voice recognition system in Android. Even Windows Phone does better (Windows Phone 8 has excellent recognition skills but a limited set of commands).

The power button up top is just right: easy to press when you want it, but not easy to press accidentally. The smartphone has both micro USB (for charging and data transfer) and a micro HDMI port on the left side. The front camera is offset to the right side just a bit and the rear camera is at the upper right corner beside an LED flash. And no, there's no home button, be it physical or software-based. As you'd expect from a BlackBerry, there's a notification LED on the front above the display.

The smartphone's fresh new OS reminds us strongly of the PlayBook, which in turn reminds of us of webOS. The icons have that signature BlackBerry styling as do menu fonts, but the swipe gestures are pure PlayBook (with a nod to webOS gestures and card metaphor). BlackBerry OS 10 and the PlayBook OS have a lot in common, with a foundation in the very robust and secure QNX operating system. The good news is that the phone is fast and fluid and extremely stable. It doesn't slow down after a day or two and require a reboot as Android sometimes does. We had the web browser quit once in the middle of a page load, but that didn't take down the OS and it only happened once in 10 days of use.

Flow, or gestures are the heart of navigation, and they're optimized for one-handed use. Swipe up to minimize an application and it will then become an "Active Pane" that runs at 1/4 screen size. Some apps will update in Active Pane mode, and it's hard to guess which ones, and you can have up to 8 apps running in this multi-tasking mode. Start a ninth app and the OS will start closing other running apps (or you can tap the little x at the top right corner of an Active Pane to close that app yourself).

Your home screen is a three part experience: a multi-screen palette of icons much as you see on the iPhone and Android, the Active Pane multi-tasking area where you can swipe up and down to view all open apps and the BlackBerry Hub that serves as your one-stop location for text messages, emails, social network status updates, reminders and app update notices. You'll swipe from side to side to access these three main areas. When in an app that has menu options, you'll either see three stacked dots on the bottom right edge of the screen or you can swipe down to see any available options. This isn't consistent from app to app, unfortunately.

We found the keyboard easy to use and text prediction was quick and rational. You can accept a suggested word with a swipe up, which isn't the quickest way to do things in terms of usability, but BlackBerry is clearly in love with swipe gestures. Overall, this is one of the best on-screen keyboards on the market.

The smartphone market is a ruthlessly competitive place, and I must say that BlackBerry was smart to wait until their new OS was super-stable, fast and feature complete. Remember not so long ago Apple and Android came out missing basic features like third party app support (iOS), cut and paste (iOS, Android and Windows Phone) and multi-tasking (iOS and Windows Phone). Fast forward a few years and it isn't even worthwhile to release an OS missing those staples. All the basics are here with BlackBerry OS 10, and we applaud them, even if they don't have a "killer feature" that competing operating systems lack.

I love BlackBerry Hub, I confess. One place to look at and interact with all the things important: what a godsend! From email to texts to software update notices and tweets; it's all there. Twitter messages are threaded, which is wonderful if you have a lot of twitter conversations with strangers as I do. You can reply to social network messages, emails and texts directly from Hub, and in fact there's no dedicated email application. Yes, the phone has email with support for MS Exchange, Exchange Activesync, POP, IMAP (including IMAP idle for a push-like experience), but there's no icon for an email app, let alone the separate email icons BlackBerry 7 provided for each email account.

BlackBerry was synonymous with world class email for years, and now it's one of the platform's less stellar features. I confess, a unified email inbox just doesn't work for me as a business user: I need to jump on my important work emails first, and worry about my personal accounts only when I have time. I don't really want them mixing, and I'm not thrilled at having to tap on the Hub's caret to filter my email account view. Since I'm not a BES 10 user, I can't rely on BlackBerry's nifty BlackBerry Balance feature to separate personal and business emails. That's me, maybe you'll love it. I don't like the unfied iOS inbox either. Folder management has been a bit buggy for me (sometimes emails in folders don't appear) and mass message management shouldn't involve hunting (tap and hold on a message until a side menu appears, then you can choose the "Select More" function- it's the last option).

Gmail is handled as IMAP idle automatically since Google stopped offering Exchange Activesync for free accounts on Feb. 1, 2013. If you pay Google $5/month, you can have your EAS back. The first time I set up my Gmail account, it took about 10 minutes for new messages to come to the Z10, while they arrived instantly on my Samsung Galaxy Note II, Nokia Lumia 920 and iPhone 5s running the Gmail app. IMAP idle should be quicker than that... so I deleted my Gmail accounts and created them again. Second time it worked fine and emails arrived within 15 seconds of my other phones. Quirky. On a positive note, HTML emails look lovely and Exchange works like a charm. You can use the phone with BES 10 (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) but not BIS.

As ever with a new smartphone OS, app selection is slim. Surprisingly, game selection is a strong point in the fledgling BlackBerry World that now also offers video purchase and rentals in partnership with Rovi and a music store. Apps like Netflix are MIA but WhatsApp, Flixster and Adobe Reader are there. The phone ships with a good starter set of apps including Docs to Go for your MS Office needs (view, edit and create MS Word and Excel and view/edit PowerPoint), a pretty calculator designed by The Astonishing Tribe, PIM apps, BBM, Adobe Reader, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Box and DropBox as well as a file manager. There's a YouTube app (actually a shortcut to the mobile YouTube site), weather, a clock with alarms, mediocre voice command and a very good HTML5 web browser with Adobe Flash support and a Reader mode that works more reliably than the iPhone's. BlackBerry Maps offers basic 2D maps with no POIs and 3D driving directions with spoken navigation. BlackBerry Hub brings text messaging, reminders, email and BBM together along with social networking updates. BlackBerry says there are currently 100,000 apps in BlackBerry World, but this is quantity over quality. Many name brand popular apps from iOS and Android aren't here, but there are a lot of junk apps. Too many. We'd love to see BlackBerry raise the bar for apps because these low quality apps don't make a good impression.

As a consolation, it's supposed to be fairly easy for developers to port their Android apps over to BlackBerry 10, so we should see app selection continue to grow quickly. These non-native apps tend to run a bit slower, but for lightweight apps, it's hardly a problem. Creative geeks can grab Android apk app files and self-sign them and send them to their BlackBerry Z10 over USB. If you understand what I just said, this might be for you. If not, it's probably too techy or tedious.

The BlackBerry Z10 is an excellent voice phone with near landline clarity and fullness for incoming and outgoing voice. Volume is average for incoming voice and louder than average for outgoing voice. The speakerphone is very effective (we like it better for speakerphone than multimedia), and it's loud enough for big box stores.

Data speeds on AT&T's LTE network with both the AT&T version and the unlocked model are very good. There's still no good speed test app in BlackBerry World, but subjectively websites loaded quickly and app downloads were speedy. Reception is very good and the phone doesn't suffer death grip reception drops when you wrap your hand around it.

The BlackBerry Z10 has a superb 4.2" 1280 x 768 IPS touch screen with 356ppi pixel density and it's one of the better looking on the market. It's right up there with the iPhone 5 and HTC One X for viewing angles, sharpness and colors. It's also bright enough to be easily viewable in sunlight. Top and bottom bands protect the glass since this isn't Gorilla Glass. Text is very sharp and videos look great, though color saturation isn't quite as high as the iPhone 5 or Nokia Lumia 920. The BlackBerry Z10 supports a fairly wide variety of video formats including MOV, MPEG4, WMV, Xvid and AVI. Throw your movies on a microSD card and the built-in video player will find them and play them. The bottom-firing speaker isn't all that loud but it is clear and doesn't distort. Audio through headphones and stereo Bluetooth is quite good.

I miss a few things from BlackBerry 7, including scheduled on-off times and better control over display brightness. The ambient light sensor never sleeps: there's no way to disable it. That means if you set the phone to max brightness (and you'll probably end up doing just that), you won't get max brightness. Instead you'll get a relatively brighter setting that's still dimmed if the phone is indoors under so-so lighting. Scheduled on-off is gone, but there is an easy to access quiet mode for bedtime that you'll see on the lock screen (swipe down to activate it from the lock screen). This brings up the beloved BlackBerry bedside clock with quick access to alarms, which will work in bedside mode.

The BlackBerry Z10 has a removable 1800 mAh Lithium Ion battery. That's not a huge capacity battery by today's smartphone standards, but it's sufficient to power the phone through a day of moderate use. When the phone first launched in Canada and a few other markets a month ago, battery complaints were common, but BlackBerry has released an OS update with 60 battery tweaks and the AT&T Z10 is running that updated OS. Battery life has been perfectly reasonable for a modern smartphone, though the BlackBerry Z10 doesn't trounce the competition--it merely keeps up. The phone charges fairly quickly: it took 2.4 hours to charge the battery from 10% to 100% and just an hour to charge it from 40% to 100%. If you're a moderate user, you'll charge the Z10 daily, and if you're a light user you'll charge it every other day. If you're a heavy user, you'll need to top up by late afternoon or buy a spare battery.

It's hard to beat free, and the LG Lucid 2 is free on contract with Verizon Wireless. For your money (so to speak) you get a smartphone running Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean on a 1.2GHz dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus CPU with a gig of RAM and 8 gigs of internal storage. The phone has a sharp 4.3" IPS qHD display, a microSD card slot and a removable battery. As you'd expect from a Verizon smartphone it has 4G LTE, dual band WiFi, Bluetooth and a GPS. There's a front video chat camera and a rear 5 megapixel camera with HDR. Not too shabby if you're looking for no cash outlay or you're starting out with your first smartphone.

In a sea of huge Android phones, the 4.3" LG Lucid 2 is downright pocket-friendly and easy to hold. The tapered sides look good and feel good in hand and the back is grippy textured plastic. The back isn't exactly chic, but it is removable and it grants access to the battery, microSD card slot and micro SIM card slot. It's not a bad looking phone, though it won't beat the HTC One or even the Samsung Galaxy S4 in a beauty competition. The 4.5 ounce phone is 0.39 inches thick.

As with most smartphones, the micro USB port for charging and syncing is at the bottom, the headset jack is up top and the speaker is on the back. The volume rocker is on the left side and the power button is at the upper right side. The 4.3" display dominates the front and there are 4 rather than the usual 3 Android capacitive buttons below the display. If you've used other Android phones, the extra button might throw you, and because button backlighting doesn't come on until you touch a button, it's hard to guess which one you should go for in the dark.

The LG Lucid 2 has a 960 x 540 IPS display that's sharp and fairly bright. LG makes nice displays and we have no complaints even though the phone won't win any Retina competitions for extremely high resolution. At 4.3", it really does need a crazy high resolution to look good to the naked eye. Viewing angles on IPS displays are typically the best in the industry, verging on 180 degrees. The seemingly thick glass creates glare and light refraction here that diminish viewing angles a bit, but it's not bad by any means. Outdoor visibility is decent, but not as good as the original LG Lucid with its wildly bright 600 nit display.

First the bad part: voice quality is just passable. We noted somewhat digitized and warbling speech for incoming and outgoing voice. Conversation wasn't hindered, but we had to work a little harder to understand what was said at times. The good news is that data speeds on Verizon's LTE network were solid and the phone averaged 17Mbps down and 4Mbps up according to Ookla's Speedtest.net app.

The Lucid 2 has the usual Mobile Hotspot feature so you can use the phone as a high speed wireless modem for your laptop or tablet. This is a CDMA smartphone with 3G EV-DO Rev. A and 4G LTE on Verizon's network. It is not a world phone with GSM roaming capabilities. 

Last year, a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus was state of the art, but now the specs-obsessed world has moved on to quad core CPUs. Does that mean that the LG Lucid 2's 1.2GHz dual core S4 Plus CPU with Adreno 225 graphics is slow? Quite the opposite: for average users this is a peppy phone that can handle web browsing, email, streaming video and gaming like a champ. Will it keep up with the top smartphones a year from now if you're playing the latest killer 3D game? Probably not, but this is an entry level free phone. And a year from now it will still handle web browsing and most games perfectly well; it just won't be the fastest. In terms of synthetic benchmarks it does better than most Android smartphones running on the same CPU and it's comparable to the Verizon Wireless Samsung Galaxy S III running on the same CPU (in fact, it does better on some benchmarks).

The phone runs Android OS 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, which isn't quite the newest 4.2 available on phones like the Nexus 4 and upcoming Verizon Samsung Galaxy S4, but it's close enough that we won't complain. Currently, most phones other than those two are shipping with the same OS version. The Lucid 2 has LG's Optimus 3.0 UI enhancements, and these are toned down from previous versions (that's a good thing). The UI isn't overbearing and the quick access to settings and LG's handy memo app are good stuff. Still, the icons are a little cartoony and we get the feeling LG is copying Samsung's TouchWiz here and there. The phone supports gestures like flipping the phone to silence incoming calls or pause video playback and it has a notification LED above the display. There's a "Starter Mode" simplified UI option for newbies.

Budget phones don't often have good cameras, but LG makes solid camera phones and even the Lucid 2 manages images and 1080p video that are pleasing. For the price, we're pleased to see full HD video recording and HDR photo mode, and in fact the phone takes pleasing photos and video. No, it won't compete with the 13MP Samsung Galaxy S4, but I suspect entry level buyers will be very happy with the properly exposed photos and fairly smooth video captured by the LG Lucid 2. Just don't expect low noise, detailed nightclub shots or blur-free video of sporting events.

The 2460 mAh Lithium Ion offers more capacity than many competing smartphones, and given the dual core CPU and relatively small display that equals solid battery life. We had no trouble making it through the day on Verizon's LTE network in a mix of web browsing, calling, email, 30 minutes of YouTube video streaming and an hour of music playback with the screen off. The battery is removable so you can swap in a spare if needed. LG offers an optional desktop dock that can charge both the phone and a second battery.

How do you make a very good thing even better? If it's a smartphone you add a few more cores while cranking clock speed, increase battery capacity and cram in 64 gigs of internal storage. That's the HTC One X+, available exclusively on AT&T in the US. It's the mid-cycle refresh of the HTC One X to keep the phone competitive with the Samsung Galaxy S III, LG Optimus G and other high end phones.

The One X+ has the same design and unibody polycarbonate casing as the One X, but it's available only in gray (the One X was also available in white). For a 4.7" smartphone, it's surprisingly compact and the curves fit perfectly in the hand. The non-gloss surface is easy to grip and polycarbonate is durable and doesn't interfere with wireless radios. Like the One X, the rear camera lens protrudes from the back like a small porthole, making it a little wobbly when you use it on a desk.

If you've read our review of the HTC One X, you know it was one of our top picks in May 2012. The iconic unibody polycarbonate design, superb 4.7", 1280 x 720 Super LCD2 display with 312 ppi pixel density and smooth and reliable performance made it stand out. The display is still one of the best we've seen on a smartphone, and images and text look painted on. Colors are rich and accurate and auto-brightness works perfectly, unlike our Galaxy S III that keeps us in the dark on auto-bright.

The One X+ moves up to the new NVidia AP37 1.7GHz quad core Tegra 3 CPU, making it faster than both our US One X with the dual core Snapdragon and the international 1.5GHz Tegra 3 One X. The phone benchmarks are at the top of the list in all tests and even more important, it feels fast in actual use. Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with its "Project Butter" speed optimizations adds to that perceived quickness and the phone never lags. HTC Sense 4+ skins Android, and we have no complaints. Sense is never overbearing and it brings good usability tweaks while still letting features like Google Now shine. Though there's no microSD card slot for expansion, we can forgive HTC since the phone has a plush 64 gigs of internal storage at a much lower price than the 64 gig iPhone 5.

Just as with the One X, voice quality for both incoming and outgoing voice is very good on the One X+. Call recipients couldn't tell we were on a cell phone and the phone did a good job of rejecting ambient noise via the built-in mics. Incoming voice was clear and easy to understand with slightly better than average volume. As a calling device, the HTC gets a thumbs up, with one complaint: Bluetooth audio quality for calls is sub-par. HTC has a fix in the works for this and it should be deployed OTA very soon.

This is a quad band GSM world phone with 3G HSPA+ (AT&T calls this 4G) and 4G LTE. Like most current smartphones, it has the mobile hotspot feature so you can use the phone as a WiFi hotspot for your computer or tablet.

The HTC One X+ has a 2100 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's sealed inside (up from 1800 mAh on the One X) and we've so far had no trouble making it through a full day (7am-11pm) with moderate use that includes everything but gaming. 3D gaming will drain the battery more quickly than anything else, and gaming drain is higher on the One X+ than on dual core Snapdragon phones. The One X+ also gets quite warm on the upper rear and near the earpiece when gaming for 10 minutes or more. The same is true when using the LTE 4G connection heavily, say to download 20 apps in one session. It's by no means hot enough to burn you, but you'll notice the heat. The phone gets even hotter when plugged in and charging while gaming, an unfortunate Catch-22 since gaming drains the battery fast.

The phone has an excellent 8 megapixel camera with a BSI sensor, a fast f/2.2 28mm lens and an LED flash. It can shoot 1080p video at 30 fps and has features like HDR, burst mode and panorama. It's largely unchanged from the One X rear camera, and it's still among top camera phones in the US (Galaxy S III, iPhone 5s and Nokia Lumia 920), though we'd say the Lumia 920 sits at the top for low light work. The front camera is improved from the One X and is 1.6MP.

The HTC One X+ has Beats Audio, and the audio enhancement works with any brand of headphones. Beats has quite a few settings to choose from, ranging from the classic bass-heavy Beats EQ to classical, vocal and warm. That should help for those who like their music less managed by EQ, but who do appreciate some audio enhancement. The rear firing speaker isn't all that loud and is easily muffled when laid face up on a desk, but music and video sound good through headphones.

The phone can handle HDMI out using an optional MHL adapter that plugs into the micro USB port. We tested this with a few TVs and our Sony AV receiver and it worked fine.

HTC includes their own music app that integrates TuneIn Radio, MOG Music and SoundHound for track info, artist info and lyrics. You can add other music apps to the player if you like. The Music app automatically got album art for our tracks and we like the rich interface and background playback feature. You can control playback from the lock screen, top taskbar and widget.

For those who prefer Google's apps, Google Play Music is here as is the Google movie store and standard Gallery application for photo viewing and video playback. HTC Watch is here for movie rentals and purchase. We tested 720p and 1080p MPEG4 video playback stored on the device and through MHL to HDMI and videos played smoothly with good audio sync.

The smartphone had Beats audio, dual band WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, a GPS with GLONASS and NFC. While Bluetooth behaved well on our One X, the One X+ has a bug where Bluetooth audio with many headsets and our car's built-in Bluetooth sounded blown out, overly loud and distorted as if the gain had been set much too high. HTC is aware of the issue and they'll release an update to fix the problem. WiFi on the other hand performed well as did the GPS.

Pantech isn't known for their high end phones, but that's changing with elegantly designed, well equipped Android smartphones like the Pantech Discover. The phone has a 4.8" display running at 1280 x 720 and a sleek design that doesn't look the least bit cheap though the phone is only $49 on contract with AT&T.

Like most higher end US smartphones, the Discover has a 1.5GHz dual core Snapdragon S4 CPU with a gig of RAM and 16 gigs of internal storage. Despite the slim design, the back cover is removable and there's a microSD card slot and a removable 2100 mAh battery under the door. The back cover has a grippy texture and is curved so it's less likely to slip out of your hand. The phone is thicker at the top to accommodate the large side-facing stereo speakers and 12.6 megapixel rear camera with LED flash. And yes, it takes very pleasing photos and good 1080p video.

The phone runs Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich rather than 4.1 Jelly Bean, and at $50 with contract, we're guessing it won't get the Jelly Bean upgrade. It has Pantech's UI customizations, which aren't our favorite but they're not that intrusive. There's an option to enable a simplified UI for newbies. The Discover surprisingly ships with Adobe Flash Player 11.1, which has all but disappeared from new Android phones and is no longer available for new installs on the Google Play Storeake note, Flash video addicts: there's no need to hunt down and sideload Flash.

The phone has 4G LTE on AT&T's 800MHz band as well as HSPA+ 3G (though AT&T also calls this 4G). Reception is solid, data speeds are excellent and call quality is good. The Pantech Discover had dual band WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and NFC. There's a front 2MP for video chat. It's quite the phone for $50 on contract and it compares favorably with more expensive smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S III, HTC One X+ and the Nokia Lumia 920.