LG G2 (Verizon Wireless)

Pros Huge screen. Super-fast processor. Multitasking.

Cons Processor benefit doesn't play out in apps. Some bugs. Not the best voice quality. Bottom Line The LG G2 is both super-sized and super-powerful, but it doesn't quite match the mighty Samsung Galaxy S4, our Editors' Choice Android smartphone on Verizon.

By Eugene Kim

The LG G2 ($199/32GB with 2-year contract) is a study in one-upmanship: From its slightly larger screen to its slightly faster processor, the G2 edges out the Samsung Galaxy S4 in the spec war. But that's just on paper. The modest performance gains aren't enough to overcome some of its bugs and its senseless carrier customization. Still, the G2 is an excellent Android option that'll satiate spec fanatics, but it falls just short of replacing the Galaxy S4 as our Editors' Choice Android phone on Verizon.

We've already tested the LG G2 on AT&T, and there are a few notable differences we'll cover here, but check out our original AT&T LG G2 review for a full rundown of features.

Physical Features, Performance, and Call Quality
The G2's dimensions, weight, and display are the same across carriers. Despite its large 5.2-inch screen, the G2 handles similarly to the 4.9-inch Galaxy S4. All carrier G2s have the bizarre rear-mounted Volume and Power buttons below the camera, but not all of the rear-mounted buttons are created equal. On AT&T's model, the Power button is raised between the Volume buttons, and the plastic has a different texture that makes it feel more defined. Verizon, for reasons unknown, made all three buttons smaller, flatter, and the same texture. It's hard enough to get used to AT&T's setup, but Verizon has rendered these buttons fairly useless—I very rarely found the button I was looking for on my first try. You'll be using LG's clever "knock on" gesture a lot. I really like this feature, and it works about as well as AT&T's, which is about 80 percent of the time. Tapping twice on the screen at any time brings the phone to life. Somtimes I had to tap faster or harder than other times, but it worked more often than not.

The plastic back also features a subtly different look, with a honeycomb pattern instead of the carbon-fiber-like weave on other models. There's also only one speaker port on the bottom of the Verizon G2, versus two on AT&T's. Oddly enough, however, the Verizon G2's speaker got much louder than AT&T's. Audio quality is otherwise equal, with tinny audio that lacks any true bass.

Note: The slideshow below is of the AT&T LG G2, which has identical dimensions, but a different button design and carrier logo.

Aside from the buttons and back design, the G2 is basically identical on all carriers. You still get the excellent 1080p IPS display and blazing fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. In our synthetic benchmarks, Verizon's G2 turned in nearly identical scores on every test. It's the fastest Android phone out right now, but like we saw on AT&T's model, LG's aggressive Android skin seems to be holding the G2 back a bit.

The Verizon G2 is global-ready and supports CDMA, GSM, and LTE on 800/850/900/1800/1900/2100MHz frequencies. In my tests, the G2 had excellent reception, even showing two bars of LTE in our office basement, where many phones struggle to have any connection at all. Voice quality is average, falling noticeably short of the Galaxy S4. Calls made with the G2 are easy to hear, but not as crisp or clear as the S4. Voices sound a bit muddy with some annoying static at the beginning and ends of phrases. Noise cancellation is excellent, as the G2 was able to eliminate most of the loud construction noises during a test call. When on LTE, the G2 averaged between 1-2Mbps down, which is consistent with what we've seen lately on Verizon's increasingly crowded network.

The 3000mAh battery was good for 11 hours, 38 minutes of talk time in our tests. That's a solid result, but is much shorter than the AT&T model's 16 hours.

Bloatware and Conclusions
Of the 32GB of internal storage, only 23.86GB are available out of the box. Like the AT&T model, Verizon's G2 is laden with carrier bloatware. That includes six Verizon branded apps and various third-party apps like Amazon Kindle, Slacker Radio, and Polaris Office. Unfortunately, none of these can be uninstalled and there's no microSD card slot for memory expansion. Aside from that, you get the same heavily skinned Android and LG features that you'll find on the AT&T G2.

The LG G2 can lay claim to fastest processor or biggest screen (not including phablets, like the Samsung Galaxy Note II), but those advantages don't amount to much in real world use. The speed shows through in benchmarks, but not in everyday system performance or intensive apps. The display is beautiful, but even with almost no bezels, this phone is still a bit too wide for comfortable one handed use. Then there's the unorthodox button design, which is worse on the Verizon model. Our Editors' Choice Android phone remains the Samsung Galaxy S4, which offers very similar performance and more polish in a better design. Another Editors' Choice, the Apple iPhone 5s, is in an almost entirely different category at this point, with its own ecosystem and small, 4-inch screen that appeals to a different set of customers. But it's worth checking out if you're not a fan of giant phones.

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Apple iPhone 5c (Verizon Wireless)

Pros Bright and cheerful new colors. Solid value. iPhone 5 internals are still solid. Stronger RF reception than iPhone 5. iOS 7 is a dramatic upgrade.

Cons That 4-inch screen is starting to feel small. No significant new hardware features. Bottom Line The colorful, plastic iPhone 5c is a welcome upgrade for existing iPhone 4 and 4S owners, and a great introduction to Apple's awesome app platform at a nice price. It's the best $99 phone you'll find on Verizon Wireless, but otherwise, there's not much new to see here.

By Sascha Segan, Jamie Lendino

If you think you know the new Apple iPhone 5c ($99 for 16GB/$199 for 32GB with contract), you do. It's the guts of the iPhone 5 wrapped in a colorful enclosure, with a new front-facing camera and battery. That's basically it. Still, the iPhone 5c marks the first time you can get an iPhone in an array of bright colors, recalling the cheerful iMacs and iBooks of the late 1990s. The 5c is a solid play for existing iPhone 4 and 4S owners, as well as those with older Android and BlackBerry phones, and it's a terrific introduction to Apple's app platform at a reasonable price. It's the best new smartphone you can get on Verizon Wireless for $100. But there's zero gee-whiz factor surrounding the iPhone 5c; for that, you need to cough up $100 more for the iPhone 5s—or, for that matter, the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Design, Enclosure, and Case
What's intriguing here is that typically, Apple doesn't sell a newly designed phone for $99; instead, it lowers last year's flagship model to $99, and introduces its new top-of-the-line product with a $199 start price. This time around, the company discontinued the iPhone 5 after just one year, replaced it with the iPhone 5s at $199, and introduced this new lower-price iPhone 5c.

With that out of the way, let's talk details. The iPhone 5c is slightly thicker and heavier than the iPhone 5 and 5s. It measures 4.9 by 2.33 by 0.35 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.65 ounces. Compare that to the iPhone 5s, which measures 4.87 by 2.31 by 0.30 inches and weighs 3.95 ounces. It doesn't make much of a difference, unless you're really picky. Notably, all five color options (blue, green, pink, yellow, or white) are bright and cheerful; there are no neutrals, earth tones, or Droid-esque dystopian-future shades available. Each model also comes with matching home screen colors and wallpaper, which is a nice touch.

But the strangest thing about the iPhone 5c is that it's slippery. You're aware of it while holding it, and you can actually slide it across a desk, in a way that you can't with a Galaxy S 4. It's something about the glossy clearcoat finish over the polycarbonate. It definitely looks and feels smooth and solid. The hardware controls are mostly the same, with the only difference being the volume controls, which are long and thin instead of round. The enclosure also seems more durable; aluminum-bodied iPhones feel richer and more luxurious, of course, but they're also known for getting pretty scratched up if you don't buy a case. There's a reason Samsung has stuck with polycarbonate bodies for its Galaxy phones all this time.

Speaking of cases, Apple's $29 silicone case for the iPhone 5c is much grippier. It's easy to slip the iPhone 5c in and out of, and it lets some of the original color through, thanks to the neatly arranged circular cutouts on the back. The case itself is lined with microfiber, which cushions the phone nicely, and you can get it in an array of colors, which means you can make your own custom color combo. (For more iPhone 5c cases, check out our roundup.)

Connectivity, Call Quality, and Reception
Internally, almost everything in the iPhone 5 is in the iPhone 5c, including the A6 processor, LTE compatibility, 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with f/2.4 aperture, and the 1,136-by-640-pixel 4-inch display. None of these features are suddenly lacking; the iPhone 5's camera remains one of the best you can get, and all current iOS apps run as fast as they need to here. The display is sufficiently sharp, and the new iOS 7 fonts look terrific. But you could definitely argue it's time the display was bumped up in size. Four inches can feel mighty small if you've spent any length of time using a late-model Android phone.

Performance-wise, the iPhone 5c is identical to the iPhone 5. That means it's snappy in day-to-day use, and especially smooth with iOS 7, which features nifty movement and parallax tricks that weren't in the old OS. Downloading Web pages and firing up apps are just as fast as usual, and the iPhone's sensitive multi-touch support and ultra-smooth page scrolling are still the best in the business.

That said, connectivity, call quality, and reception are the places where the iPhone 5c can differ from the iPhone 5, so let's focus on those.

I tested the iPhone 5c side by side with a Verizon iPhone 5 running iOS 7 (more on that later). In a series of speed tests around midtown Manhattan, the iPhone 5c generally pulled in the same disappointing LTE results of 1-3Mbps down and about 1Mbps up that the iPhone 5 scored. But there's a marked, if sometimes inconsistent, improvement in reception; taking both phones out of my pants pocket, the iPhone 5c almost always locked onto LTE faster, while the iPhone 5 waffled between 3G, LTE, and sometimes even 1x for a while.

In our office building's basement, we made test calls and ran data speed tests with the iPhone 5c, 5s, 5, the LG G2, and the Samsung Galaxy S4. The LG G2 had the most trouble connecting calls, and the Galaxy S4 the least, and the newer iPhones leading the iPhone 5.

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Droid Maxx by Motorola (Verizon Wireless)

Pros Excellent build quality. Long talk time. Adequate storage. Quick camera launch feature. Powerful voice commands.

Cons Low-res screen for the size. Wide. Lots of bloatware. Bottom Line The Motorola Droid Maxx has a big battery and a nice build, but it loses some of the Moto X's hand-friendliness.

By Sascha Segan Is bigger better? The Motorola Droid Maxx packs a big battery and more memory into yet another phone with roughly the same features as the Moto X, which we love. But although the Maxx has more storage and better battery life than the X, it loses some of the friendly, human qualities which make the X so appealing.

In general, the Droid Maxx is extremely similar to the Motorola Droid Ultra, but with a bigger battery. Go read my Motorola Droid Ultra review for a rundown of the basic features. I'll focus on the differences between the phones here.

The first big difference, of course, is the design. The Droid Maxx, with its five-inch screen, is noticeably wider than the Moto X at 5.41 by 2.8 by .33 inches (HWD) and 5.9 ounces. The difference between 2.57 and 2.8 inches wide is a big deal; while the X is comfortable to use in one hand, it's harder for your thumb to reach across the Maxx. 

Motorola gets things spot-on with the Kevlar casing on this phone, though. Why don't the other Droids feel like this? The Maxx's back is soft-touch, patterned black Kevlar which actually feels like Kevlar, not the ugly, greasy stuff used on the Droid Mini and Droid Ultra. It's even nicer, and the phone feels more solid than the polycarbonate Moto X—not to mention the flimsy plastic Samsung Galaxy S4.

You'll have to buy a Maxx if you're at all worried about storage space, as the Droid/X line don't have memory card slots. The Maxx comes with 25.48GB available of 32GB total storage (25.48GB available) to the Droids' 11-or-so of 16GB. The real frustration here is that a 32GB Moto X exists, but it's an AT&T exclusive.

Call Quality and Battery Life
The Droid Maxx's voice quality is similar to the other Droids. The earpiece is loud and a bit trebly, but it doesn't distort. Call audio wobbled a bit, but that seemed like a network problem rather than a handset issue, as speed tests also showed the Verizon Wireless network was pretty congested near our offices. There's a pleasant amount of sidetone in the earpiece and the speakerphone is very powerful.

Transmissions through the mic in a noisy area sounded robotic; Motorola's CrystalTalk noise cancellation killed the noise, but at the cost of rich voice tone. Transmissions through the speakerphone were very clear, although there was very little background noise cancellation. 

The Droid Maxx's 3,500mAh battery is the largest built-in battery in a one-handed smartphone available today. It's significantly more capacious than the Moto X's 2,200mAh battery. But the giant battery didn't translate into a gigantic increase in talk time, with talk time rising only from 14 hours, 15 minutes to 19 hours, 56 minutes when tested in the same location.

I don't want to minimize the advantage of the bigger battery, but I had expected more from such a capacious power cell. That said, the Droid Maxx should last for two days of moderate use without a problem, and it's the only smartphone I can say that about.

Conclusions
Verizon has made things very confusing by carrying the $99 Droid Mini, the $199 Droid Ultra and Moto X, and the $299 Droid Maxx. The Moto X is still the best; it's made from the nicest body material, has the slimmest set of bloatware, and does away with the horrible death-robot Droid branding.

Both the Mini and the Maxx have their advantages. The Maxx has more memory and a bigger battery, and the Mini is even tighter and easier to hold than the Moto X. But in my mind, neither quite hits the sweet spot that the X does; the Mini slips up with its fingerprint-magnet body and misanthropic Droid branding, and the Maxx loses the X's hand-friendliness with its 2.8-inch width.

Our general Editor's Choice for smartphones is still the Samsung Galaxy S 4, for being more things to more people. It's no wider than the Droid Maxx, but it's slimmer and lighter, with a better screen, better camera, and removable memory. While the Droid Maxx is a good smartphone, it's not quite as good as it could be.

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HTC One (Verizon Wireless)

Pros Best-built phone on the market. Fast quad-core performance. Striking 1080p display. Excellent low-light camera performance.

Cons Heavy Android skin. No removable battery or memory card slot. Lots of bloatware. Bottom Line The HTC One continues to be a well-designed, powerful 1080p Android smartphone, but the five-month wait for a Verizon Wireless version didn't do it any favors.

By Jamie Lendino

It certainly took long enough. After five months of waiting, the HTC One is finally available on Verizon Wireless, after appearing on the other three major U.S. carriers first. The HTC One is still an impressive phone, thanks to its beautiful 4.7-inch 1080p display, quad-core processor, and top-notch UltraPixel camera. The problem is that it's less impressive almost half a year later, as is often the case with Verizon phones—and, coming just days before Apple's next iPhone announcement, it doesn't have a lot of time to win over customers. 

Design, Screen, and Call Quality
For full details, read our Sprint HTC One review, where we go into much more detail on the UltraPixel camera and software features. Here, I'll do a quick recap first, and then tackle what's special about the Verizon Wireless handset.

The HTC One measures 5.41 by 2.69 by 0.37 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.04 ounces. It's fashioned in a rich-feeling aluminum with a thin white plastic strip around the edges. The 4.7-inch, 1,920-by-1,080-pixel Super LCD 3 display is beautiful and bright, although it trades the Samsung Galaxy S4's black levels and color vibrancy for a more accurate, if not quite as striking appearance. Instead of a hardware Home button, all HTC Ones feature a pair of capacitive Back and Home buttons, and there's no direct Menu button, which I continue to find annoying when using Android. Most users have long since gotten used to it, though.

The Verizon Wireless HTC One is a true world phone, with quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), dual-band EV-DO Rev. A (850/1900 MHz), dual-band UMTS (1900/2100 MHz), and LTE support; it runs at 4G speeds here in the U.S. and 3G speeds overseas in most countries. I saw poor results outside in midtown Manhattan, on the order of 1.5 to 3Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up. But my own iPhone 5 on Verizon was notching the same numbers; either something was up on test day, or Verizon's LTE network is getting really crowded here in New York City.

Note: The slideshow below is of the AT&T HTC One, which is identical except for the Verizon Wireless logo on the back.

Otherwise, voices sound crisp in the earpiece, with plenty of volume, although the Galaxy S4 continues to sound the best thanks to its adaptive EQ software. I heard a little static through the mic on the other end of the call, but my voice was easily intelligible. The speakerphone is excellent, thanks to the integrated Beats Audio (more on that later). We're still testing battery life and will update this review as soon as we have a result.

Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean is on board, along with a quad-core 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, 2GB RAM, NFC, and Bluetooth 4.0 support. HTC Sense 5 looks the same here as it does on the other HTC Ones. HTC BlinkFeed aggregates news and social media updates in a somewhat inflexible interface; you can disable it, but to do so, you must set a different home screen as the default; there's no way to remove it the way you can other widgets. Creating home screen shortcuts also takes an extra drag step, and HTC's vertical scrolling is bizarre but works well once you get used to it.

Verizon adds the usual bloatware, but it's not nearly as bad as what AT&T packs in, and it's all neatly stored in a shortcut icon on the home page. You can't remove the individual apps, though.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
HTC and Beats may be drifting apart, but the HTC One still benefits from Beats Audio. A pair of stereo, front-facing speakers sit at the top and bottom of the front panel; they deliver clear, crisp sound that gets fairly loud, but they still lack bass. It's a completely different story with earphones: The supplied wired earbuds and Beats Audio software deliver bass that's capable of dislodging the fillings from your teeth. HTC adds its own music player, and you still get access to Google Music, Spotify, and a number of other music streaming services.

The UltraPixel camera is quite effective, if not exactly class leading. It's very fast to start and shoot, and takes beautiful, colorful photos outdoors and surprisingly well-lit ones indoors, thanks to the built-in hardware processing. HTC Zoe is the company's Vine competitor; it snaps three-second videos you can't do much of anything with. There's also a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera for self-portraits and video chats.

Our favorite phone on Verizon Wireless is the Samsung Galaxy S4, thanks to its larger display, removable battery, and all-important memory card slot. The Moto X and Droid Mini by Motorola are two additional compelling options; the Moto X offers a beautiful UI and excellent voice activation software, while the Droid Mini follows in the footsteps of earlier Droids with software but is smaller and saves you $100. The Apple iPhone 5 is also clad in aluminum, is the lightest of all, and has the best app catalog in the business, but its 4-inch display is much lower resolution, and the HTC One just has fresher hardware and specs overall. All told, the HTC One is a beautiful smartphone, but now that there are a handful of top-notch smartphone options on Verizon, HTC's job to ensnare consumers is a lot tougher than it would have been back in April.

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Droid Mini by Motorola (Verizon Wireless)

If 5-inch Mega-phones are just too big for your delicate hands, it's time to welcome the Motorola Droid Mini to your table. With the Droid Mini ($99.99 with contract), you save $100 over the very similar Moto X in exchange for suffering through some Verizon bloatware and slightly weaker signal strength. That could be a good deal.

Physical Features and Call Quality
Like the other new Droid phones, the Droid Mini is made of a very slick black Kevlar which looks and feels like plastic. It attracts some serious fingerprints on the back panel. The Droid Mini's slickness bothers me a lot less than the Motorola Droid Ultra's, because it's small enough to securely hold and operate with one hand.

At 4.77 by 2.41 by .35 inches (HWD) and 4.6 ounces, it's smaller and lighter than the Moto X and Verizon's other leading smartphones, but its 4.3-inch TFT LCD screen has the same 1280-by-720 resolution as the Moto X's 4.7-inch AMOLED panel does. That makes for a higher pixel density, at 341 pixels per inch. LCD screens also typically have cooler, less-saturated colors than AMOLED screens do, and the Droid Mini's screen is both a bit brighter and a bit better color-balanced than our Moto X.

Below the screen are always-visible back, home and multitasking buttons, which I prefer to Samsung's now-you-see-them-now-you-don't approach. On the back you find Droid, Verizon and Motorola logos, along with the camera and a sizeable speaker. Like all the other Droid phones, this phone has a sealed-in battery and lacks a memory card slot.

Tested side by side with the Motorola Droid Ultra and Moto X, I found that the Droid Mini had the weakest RF reception of the three phones; it also took the longest to trade from 3G up to LTE. The difference in recepton was only a few dBms, so you'll only see it at the very edges of Verizon's coverage.

The phone's earpiece is loud, even louder than the Droid Ultra's. It flirts with distortion at top volume, but fortunately doesn't quite get there. The speakerphone is louder and fuller, too, and quite useful outdoors. As with the other recent Motorola phones, though, the effective noise cancellation adds a robotic tinge to voices transmitted through the mic in noisy areas.

The Droid Mini paired just fine with my Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset . You can trigger Google's voice command system using the action button on your headset, although you can't just say "OK Google Now" into the headset to launch voice dialing, as you can with the phone itself.

The Droid Mini supports Verizon's CDMA network, the AT&T HSPA+ network (oddly enough), foreign HSPA+ networks on the 900 and 2100MHz (but not 1800MHz) bands at speeds up to HSPA+ 42, and Verizon's LTE network on 700MHz only—for now. A firmware update will bring support for Verizon's AWS LTE spectrum, which will improve LTE speeds where it's implemented. 

The Mini can hit Wi-Fi networks on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, including the new 802.11ac networks. All the usual other radios are here, too: Bluetooth 4.0 (which works very well for voice dialing and media playback), GPS, NFC and such. No, you can't have Google Wallet; Verizon blocks it.

I got 13 hours, 40 minutes of talk time with the Droid Mini, better than the Droid Ultra but not quite as good as the Moto X. The Mini has a 2000mAh battery, smaller than the other two phones, but its smaller screen size will help balance that out for comparable battery life.

Performance and Apps
The Droid Ultra, Droid Mini, Droid Maxx, and Moto X are all based on the same chipset, Motorola's X8. That's basically a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro dual-core Krait 300 processor running at 1.7GHz with an Adreno 320 GPU. On benchmarks, it holds its own with Snapdragon 600-based competitors, so banish all of those complaints about it being an "older part."

All of these phones have effectively the same performance, which is very good. The phone feels fast and responsive, with smooth scrolling and few delays. Like the Moto X, the Ultra is running Android 4.2.2; Motorola says an Android 4.3 update is coming.

The best way to think of the Droid Ultra's software is that it's the Moto X, with a bunch of Verizon preloads tacked on. Take a look at our Moto X review for a rundown of the thoughtful, useful things Motorola has added to Android: the twist-to-launch camera, the "touchless" Google Now voice controls, and Motorola Assist, for example.

Verizon had nothing useful to add here, but added things anyway. Droid Zap is yet another proprietary sharing protocol. Droid Command Center is a battery status widget. Then there's the undeletable niche-market content, like NFL Mobile and Ingress. Verizon should have saved its time and money here.

I'm also officially tired of Verizon's Eye of Sauron Droid graphics and sound set. It's grim and off-putting, in an era when HTC, Samsung, and even Motorola (with the Moto X) are paying more attention to the human factor in phone UI design. It's time to retire the killer robots.

Multimedia Storage and Playback
The Droid Mini comes with 11.03GB of available storage, down from the Moto X's 11.88GB because of the additional Verizon preloaded apps. There's no memory card slot. That's not a lot of free memory, but it's appropriate for the $100 price point.

Music and video playback do well on the powerful back-ported speaker. It's no HTC One Boomsound speaker, but it's higher quality than the Samsung Galaxy S4's.

The Droid Mini handled all of our music playback formats, but just like the Moto X, it struggled with WMV and Xvid video files; the WMV support topped out at VGA resolution, and one of my Xvid files lost lip sync when I scanned through it. Like on the Moto X, there's an equalizer buried in Settings, so you can adjust bass to your taste.

The 10-megapixel camera uses Motorola's new, very simple camera interface with few options. There's HDR, slow-motion video and a flash option, but not much else. Most annoyingly, you can't cut down on the photo or video resolution to save space. But I'm madly in love with Motorola's Quick Launch camera trick, which lets you wiggle the phone to launch the camera in about 2.7 seconds; after that, the shutter is instantaneous.

Accordingto Motorola, the Droid Mini has the same camera module as the Moto X and Droid Ultra, but I was startled by some differences between the three phones. The Droid Mini handled an outdoor HDR shot much better than the Ultra did, for instance, not leaving the foreground in shadow. The front camera really struggled with blur in dim lighting, whereas the Moto X's had a sharper but noisier picture. Overall, though, we continue with the good-but-not-great camera trend here, with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Apple iPhone 5 both generally turning in better images.

In my tests, both the front and rear cameras took 1080p videos at 30 frames per second indoors and out; as the lights went down, the color noise level went up.

The Droid Mini, like the rest of Motorola's recent phones, has no wired way to connect to a TV. Instead, you need to use a wireless Miracast adapter like the Netgear Push2TV ($59.99).

Conclusions
Are you shopping with your head, your heart, or your wallet here? The Droid Mini's greasy "Kevlar" body and Eye of Sauron graphics are much less emotionally appealing than the Moto X's soft curves and organic wallpapers. But if you're looking strictly at the numbers, you're getting a very similar phone here (minus a bit of RF reception, and a bit of storage) for $100 less. That's a good buy.

Smaller-phone aficionados should also take a close look at the Apple iPhone 5, of course, which provides excellent performance in an even smaller package. If you're willing to go larger, our Editor's Choice smartphone across all the major carriers remains the Samsung Galaxy S4, thanks to features like tuneable call audio, expandable memory, and a better camera.

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Droid Ultra by Motorola (Verizon Wireless)

The Motorola Droid Ultra ($199.99 with contract) has little reason to exist. While it's completely functional, it's the weak sibling in a litter of new Motorola phones, outclassed by competitors on all sides. We're giving it a surprisingly high rating for a phone we wouldn't recommend given the current smartphone landscape, but there you have it: Just because something works, doesn't mean it's your best bet when you consider the competition, like Motorola's own excellent Moto X, which is the same price.

Physical Features and Call Quality
The Droid Ultra's hallmark is its thinness, at 5.4 by 2.8 by .28 inches (HWD) and 4.83 ounces. For all intents and purposes, it feels about the same size as the Samsung Galaxy S4. That makes it a little too wide for my hand, but it'll fit fine in bigger paws. It's made from a hideously slick, black material which slides around in your hands and attracts fingerprints. Motorola says it's Kevlar, but it feels like polycarbonate. The battery is sealed in, and there's no memory card slot.

Most of the front panel is occupied up by a 5-inch, 720p, typically oversaturated AMOLED screen; at 293 ppi, it's lower-density than other similar-size competitors. The shiny back sports Motorola, Droid, and Verizon logos. There's a stark contrast in materials between this and the Moto X, which uses a less slippery, more matte polycarbonate back that's much more pleasant to hold.

The Droid Ultra's larger body allows better RF reception than the smaller Droid Mini, but I found that the Moto X was even better at hanging on to Verizon 4G LTE signals. The earpiece and speakerphone are surprisingly loud for such a slim phone, going to a relatively high volume without distortion. Transmissions through the mic, on the other hand, aren't perfect. I found that Motorola's noise cancellation added a noticeably robotic edge to my voice, although it canceled surrounding noise.

The Droid Ultra paired just fine with my Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset . You can trigger Google's voice command system using the action button on your headset, although you can't just say "OK Google Now" into the headset to launch voice dialing, as you can with the phone itself.

The Droid Ultra supports Verizon's CDMA network, the AT&T HSPA+ network (oddly enough), foreign HSPA+ networks on the 900 and 2100MHz (but not 1800MHz) bands at speeds up to HSPA+ 42, and Verizon's LTE network on 700MHz only—for now. A firmware update will bring support for Verizon's AWS LTE spectrum, which will improve LTE speeds where it's implemented. 

The Ultra can hit Wi-Fi networks on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, including the new 802.11ac variety. All the usual other radios are here, too: Bluetooth 4.0 (which works very well for voice dialing and media playback), GPS, NFC and such. Verizon blocks Google Wallet.

I got 12 hours, 28 minutes of talk time with the Droid Ultra, a fine result but one that fell short of the Moto X, which clocked in at more than 14 hours. The difference is in the battery: The slender Ultra has a 2130mAh battery, while the Moto X has a larger 2300mAh cell.

Performance and Apps
The Droid Ultra, Droid Mini, Droid Maxx, and Moto X are all based on the same chipset, Motorola's X8. That's basically a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro dual-core Krait 300 processor running at 1.7GHz with an Adreno 320 GPU. On benchmarks, it holds its own with Snapdragon 600-based competitors.

All of these handsets effectively show the same performance, which is very good. The phone feels fast and responsive, with smooth scrolling and few delays. Like the Moto X, the Ultra is running Android 4.2.2; Motorola says an Android 4.3 update is coming.

The best way to think of the Droid Ultra's software is that it's the Moto X, with a bunch of useless Verizon preloads tacked on. Take a look at our Moto X review for a rundown of the thoughtful, useful things Motorola has added to Android: the twist-to-launch camera, the "touchless" Google Now voice controls, and Motorola Assist, for example.

Verizon had nothing useful to add here, but added things anyway. Droid Zap is yet another proprietary sharing protocol. Droid Command Center is a battery status widget. Then there's the undeletable niche-market content, like NFL Mobile and Ingress.

I'm also officially tired of Verizon's Eye of Sauron Droid graphics and sound set. It's grim and off-putting, in an era when HTC, Samsung and even Motorola (with the Moto X) are paying more attention to the human factor in phone UI design. It's time to retire the killer robots.

Multimedia Storage and Playback
The Droid Ultra comes with 11.03GB of available storage, down from the Moto X's 11.88GB because of the additional Verizon preloaded apps. There's no memory card slot. I prefer more free memory on a flagship smartphone: The Droid Maxx delivers with an additional 16GB for another $100, making it a better choice. 

Music and video playback do well on the big, almost bezel-free screen with the surprisingly powerful back-ported speaker. It's no HTC One Boomsound speaker, but it's higher quality than the Samsung Galaxy S4's.

The Droid Ultra handled all of our music playback formats, but just like the Moto X, it struggled with WMV and Xvid video files; the WMV support topped out at VGA resolution, and one of my Xvid files lost lip sync when I scanned through it. Like on the Moto X, there's an equalizer buried in Settings so you can adjust bass to your taste.

The 10-megapixel camera uses Motorola's new, very simple camera interface with few options. There's HDR, slow-motion video and a flash option, but not much else. Most annoyingly, you can't cut down on the photo or video resolution to save space. But I really like Motorola's Quick Launch camera trick, which lets you wiggle the phone to launch the camera in about 2.7 seconds; after that, the shutter is instantaneous.

The Droid Ultra has the same camera module as the Moto X, but I had trouble coaxing consistently good pictures out of the camera. This feels like something a firmware update would handle. Some HDR images had a very dim foreground, showing a bug in the HDR algorithm, and images taken with bright light looked a little soft, and a little washed out. The 2-megapixel front camera got very soft in low light.

Both the front and rear cameras took 1080p videos at 30 frames per second indoors and out; as the lights went down, the color noise level went up.

The Droid Ultra, like the rest of Motorola's recent phones, has no wired way to connect to a TV. Instead, you need to use a wireless Miracast adapter like the Netgear Push2TV ($59.99).

Conclusions
There is no reason to buy the Motorola Droid Ultra. Period. The Moto X offers all of this phone's advantages in a more pleasant form factor, without the Eye of Sauron graphics and with a little more available storage space.

Want a 5-inch screen for your aging eyes? Go for the even more powerful, Editor's Choice Samsung Galaxy S4, with its 1080p screen and higher-quality camera, or the Droid Maxx, with its larger battery.

The Droid Ultra could even hurt consumers: Because this is a Verizon-branded phone, Verizon will market the heck out of the Ultra rather than the superior Moto X. The carrier should know when enough is enough and let this one go.

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