The Pantech Breakout is one of the first budget 4G LTE devices for Verizon. It’s goal is to bring in the beginning smartphone users to android and include lighting fast 4G data speeds. Did Pantech succeed in doing this?
Hardware & Design
The Pantech Breakout come in with mid level specs and a more industrial design. The screen is a 4” LCD display with 800 x 480 resolution which is good enough to view most content. The phone is full of physical buttons which is a contrast from what you see today in most smartphones. All the menu buttons in the front are hardware buttons and they also have dedicated side keys for the camera and voice commands which I haven’t see a voice command button on a smartphone in a really long time. There is a 1 GHz Snapdragon single core Snapdragon processor that fast enough for most tasks but don’t expect it a speed demon. The 5 Megapixel on the back will give you some decent shots for uploading to Facebook and Twitter. The 720p video is ok for a quick video to upload but isn’t going to replace your current video recorder. The VGA front facing camera isn’t much to brag about its there for video chat but not great quality. You can check out the sample pics and video of the 5 MP rear-facing camera at the bottom of the review.
Inside there is a pre-installed 8 GB SD card which will hold most of your content. There is Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, GPS, 1500 mAH battery and 4G LTE data speed which are lighting fast and feel like you have cable internet speeds on your phone. The overall build is solid but does have a cheap plastic feel to it.
Software & Usability
The Breakout come with Android 2.3 gingerbread with a heavily customized UI on top. The interface reminds me a lot of the feature phones that ran BREW MP on Verizon like the LG Chocolate Touch. The custom user interface hides all of stock android and is definitely geared for those who are getting a smartphone for the first time. The interface is responsive as long as you don’t have a lot of widgets or a live wallpaper going which will slow things down. They have add some nice features to the notification section to include all of your quick connection access. They’ve also include a task manager that also tracks your data traffic and your CPU usage which I would like to see add to high-end smartphone task managers. The battery life is pretty standard android for a power user you will charge through the day but for the target mark the beginning smartphone user they will be able to go about 1.5 days with the light usage they use. Call quality was good with clean audio on both sides of the call.
Overall
The Pantech Breakout is a good phone for the first time smartphone user. Advanced and power users you will want to look elsewhere. This phone is great for those who have used feature phones and have been afraid of jumping into the smartphone world and have no idea how to use their phone. This phone does a great job of helping you along the way and keeping thing simple and with 4G LTE data speeds makes it a great pick for the light to moderate user.
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