HTC Vivid hands-on

AT&T’s first two LTE-enabled smartphones were unveiled earlier this week and they’re certainly strong handsets on paper, but we had a chance to put these smartphones through the paces earlier this afternoon to see how they perform in the real world. The first device we checked out was HTC’s Vivid, a supersized Gingerbread phone with a unique look and feel. The Vivid is definitely the more solid of the two phones in terms of build, but we weren’t big fans of the glossy plastic around the sides of the back of the phone. HTC has used a lot of soft-touch rubber feel materials or aluminum on their recent smartphones, and the difference is noticeable. Performance was as expected in light of the phone’s 1.2GHz dual-core chipset. Navigation around the Sense UI was snappy and the phone was very responsive. Sadly, we were in New York City without AT&T 4G LTE coverage so we weren’t able to test the phone on AT&T’s new 4G LTE network. We’re working on our full review of the HTC Vivid but in the meantime, check out our hands-on photos in the gallery below. AT&T will launch the HTC Vivid on November 6th for $199.99 on contract.