Pantech Burst Review: Fast and Affordable Android Phone - sansomcombehe

At CES this year, the comer of sixpenny LTE phones and tablets was one of the overarching themes. Particularly, AT&T was pushing this idea, cathartic a whole lot of Mechanical man and Windows Phone 7 handsets happening its 4G network. The Pantech Burst ($50 with a two-year AT&T concentrate, price as of February 5, 2022), with its low price tag, high-end eyeglasses, and sleek-fluent performance, was a breakout star at CES. But if you similar to take very much of photos with your phone, you won't appreciate the Burst's below-norm photographic camera and long-play shutter amphetamine.

Conception and Specs

Traditionally Pantech has made only feature phones and electronic messaging devices for AT&T and Verizon, but in the past year the company has stepped sprouted its game, making midtier, affordable Android phones. The Burst is the 1st dual-core earphone from Pantech, and IT's the company's first AT&T LTE phone.

The Burst comes in two colors, bloody and "titanium." The battery cover has a brushed appearance, which makes the Burst look a bit more elated-end. Measure 5.0 away 2.5 by 0.45 inches, the Burst fits easily into a pocket or bag, and it weighs a manageable 4.32 ounces. It is a morsel plasticky, and IT doesn't have the feel of a phone four times its price, such as the Motorola Droid Razr operating theater the HTC Vivid. IT seems sturdy decent, however, and it can probably withstand mundane depreciation.

The Bust's 4-in Fantastic AMOLED display is a step upwardly from that of previous Pantech phones we've seen. In my opinion, 4 inches is the perfect size for a phone display: It's large enough for sufficient gaming, Web Page reading, or movie streaming, only IT doesn't make the phone look oversize or unwieldy.

With a 480-by-800-pixel resolution, the Explosion's screen ISN't as sharp as the displays on other phones we've reviewed new. Text looks slightly fuzzy, and colors are a small-scale clean out. You bottom see the display's pixels, if you look intimately. The Burst's presentation is dustlike for casual gaming, browse, or watching YouTube videos, only I wouldn't want to read an ebook or watch a sport-length film on it.

Computer software

The Burst runs Mechanical man 2.3.5 with the same custom overlay found connected the Pantech Scoop. Generally we're non big fans of Android overlays, but Pantech keeps this one pretty lightweight. You get heptad home screens to customize with widgets operating theater shortcuts to apps. At the bottom of the inning of all home covert is a navigation legal community with shortcuts to the dialer, your SMS messages, the browser, and the apps menu.

A useful 'Easy Setting' pull-down menu resides at the pinch of the home screen. From there, you send away easily toggle the Wi-Fi, sound, Bluetooth, GPS, and so forth. Annoyingly, the Burst has no electric switch to turn off 4G/LTE. Not many manufacturers build this boast into their phones, but it is a nice option to have when you're not in an area that has LTE coverage, and you want to conserve battery life.

The Pantech Burst carries quite few AT&T-added apps, such arsenic AT&T Code Digital scanner, AT&T Navigator, AT&T FamilyMap, and MyAT&T, as good as past apps like Amazon Kindle, Qik Lite, Twitter, and YP (Unhealthy Pages). You can uninstall most of these apps away going to Settings, Application Settings, Deal Applications. Of flow, you also get all of the Google apps and services, including Gmail, Google Search, and YouTube.

Fast Execution

A Qualcomm Scorpion 1.2GHz dual-essence CPU keeps the Burst running smoothly. We ran Qualcomm's have Vellamo benchmarking app happening the Burst, and the headphone reached an impressive score of 1182, landing above the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (with a rack up of 802) and the Droid Razr (1070). Because Vellamo is a Qualcomm-made benchmark, however, we take these scores with a grain of salt. I downloaded a few different graphics-intemperate games, much American Samoa Minecraft, Osmos HD, and World of Goo, and all performed well without some glitches.

Concluded AT&T's LTE 4G network, the Burst achieved important-looking download and upload speeds in San Francisco. In the FCC-approved Ookla Speedtest app, the Burst posted an average upload speed of 10.48 megabits per second and an average download speed of 16 mbps.

Call quality over AT&T's network in San Francisco was very good. Callers sounded clear, with an ample amount of volume. When I made calls from a active street corner, my friends on the former cease of the line of work reported that they heard no ground noise.

Mediocre Camera

The Burst's 5-megapixel camera is possibly the phone's biggest weakness. My photos, shot indoors and out, had a strange, hazy look. Colors were faded, and details seemed fuzzy. The fanfare hardly manages to brighten your subject, indeed don't even flirt with exploitation the Burst in a dark eating house or at a concert. The camera's shutter speed is also painfully slow; trying to capture fast-moving subjects, such as kids Beaver State animals, is difficult.

The camcorder, which captures video recording at 720p, wasn't much better. American Samoa you can see in the trial run video below, it produced a great deal of flickering and stuttering when fast-touching objects (such as the cars) passed aside.

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Bottom Line

Buying a budget-friendly smartphone always involves trade-offs, simply fortunately the Pantech Burst has very a few. AT&A;T's LTE network offers blazing speed (in cities where coverage exists), and the dual-nucleus processor keeps the phone lengthways healed. But if you'Re preparation on taking a lot of photos with your phone, you'll be discontented with the Burst's tv camera. The slow shutter speed, paired with the hazy image quality, is this phone's biggest helplessness.