The ZTE Anthem 4G ($199) deserves less of a trumpet fanfare than it does a sad trombone. It's a brand new?cell phone that feels old, and certainly not in a good, "vintage" sort of way. The Anthem is ZTE's first 4G LTE phone, but it looks like everyone else's first LTE device two years ago, back when they were thick and heavy, with poorly performing batteries. Two-year-old Android software and poor camcorder performance don't help matters, either.
Design, Connectivity, and Call Quality
A big, heavy phone, the Anthem measures 5.12 by 2.68 by 0.54 inches (HWD) and weighs 6.7 ounces. You'd think it would have a slide-out keyboard, but it doesn't. It's more than two ounces heavier than competing devices on major U.S. carriers, but at least the soft-touch back panel makes it comfortable to hold.?The 4.3-inch, 800-by-480-pixel, capacitive touch screen isn't bright enough and has poor viewing angles. Typing is fine because of the larger panel, though there's a bit of lag to the screen and keyboard response.
The ZTE Anthem 4G runs on MetroPCS's 4G LTE network. It drops to 2G when you're not in an LTE coverage area, since MetroPCS has no 3G network, but you also get 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. Even on 4G LTE, the phone is roughly as fast as AT&T's 3G network; it's not at the same performance level as AT&T or Verizon, but given MetroPCS's mission, that's okay. Download speeds averaged a peppy 6-7Mbps in Manhattan, which is quite good for MetroPCS, with 4Mbps upload speeds. You can also use the Anthem 4G as a mobile hotspot with the appropriate plan.
For voice calls, the Anthem 4G includes two microphones with noise cancellation for better call quality. The design really works; calls sound clear, full, and punchy in both directions. Transmissions were particularly distinct through the microphone, with no noise, even on a loud Manhattan street with construction in the background. Reception was also good. Calls sounded fine through a?Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset. I couldn't trigger voice dialing over Bluetooth, a glaring omission that should be table stakes by this point. The speakerphone is weak and has prominent background hiss at higher volume settings.
You'd think a 6.7-ounce phone with no keyboard would at least pack a huge battery?and at 1780mAh, the Anthem 4G does. But it only lasted 2 hours and 59 minutes over LTE on our continuous talk time test, which is one of the worst scores we've seen in recent memory.
Interface, Apps, and Plans
ZTE made some fairly heavy customizations to an otherwise standard Android build. There are five home screens you can swipe between and customize. Most of the default apps look different, and feel sluggish, but don't work much differently. Underneath the hood, there's a dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 512MB RAM on board. That's promising, but don't let the specs fool you. Thanks to the two-year old Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) OS, overall performance is disappointing, with choppy menu transitions, extra dialog boxes, and just a strong sense of old-school, unrefined Android, before all of the various Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean-related refinements made the OS so much better.
MetroPCS also buries the app drawer in bloatware. None of it is desirable, but you can delete most of it.?Google Play is on board, which lets you browse, buy, and download from a selection of more than 600,000 third-party apps.
As always, the great part about MetroPCS?which should at least remain intact for a while, post-merger with T-Mobile?is the plan pricing. You can get the Anthem 4G with any of the carrier's $40 to $70 per month plans, which are all inclusive and have no extra taxes or other fees. Even more enticing is the $55 unlimited 4G LTE promotional plan.
Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
The phone comes with 2.3GB of free internal storage, and there's a microSD card slot underneath the battery cover that accepts up to 32GB cards; my 32GB SanDisk card worked fine. MetroPCS throws in a 4GB card preloaded with Kung Fu Panda 2, plus a picture of Kung Fu Panda on the front face; that was a bit of a surprise to see when I popped the battery cover off.
Music tracks sound a little thin through Plantronics BackBeat Go Bluetooth earphones, and navigating the music player takes extra taps and is generally stubborn to use. Standalone MP4 and H.264 videos play smoothly at resolutions up to 1080p, but the phone won't play DivX or Xvid files, and audio was slightly out of sync over Bluetooth with larger size files.
The 5-megapixel autofocus camera has an LED flash and records 1080p video, but there's less here than it appears, too. Test photos looked just okay overall, and even had good noise suppression. But most were simply too soft, thanks to slow shutter speeds, and there's little color vibrancy and mediocre white balance. The camcorder mode is also a disappointment; recorded 1,920-by-1080-pixel videos were heavily pixelated, lacked detail, and looked choppy at 15 frames per second. Recorded 1,280-by-720-pixel videos aren't as pixelated, but are just as choppy, and there's no image stabilization either.?You also get a weak VGA front-facing camera for video chats.?
ZTE wants a stronger foothold in the U.S. wireless market, but underachieving phones like the Anthem 4G aren't helping. Two much better options: The $149 LG Motion 4G delivers the same 4G LTE and dual-core 1.2GHz CPU as the Anthem 4G, but it also has Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, weighs less, costs less, lasts much longer on a charge, and has a better camera and camcorder. Its only demerit (and it's a big one) is the lower caliber 3.5-inch, 480-by-320-pixel screen. Our favorite MetroPCS smartphone overall remains the $349 LG Connect, which looks a lot like the Anthem 4G on paper, but it's a higher-quality build with a nicer screen and much better performance across the board.
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