 This is David with The Verge and this is the LG Nitro HD. It's the first AT&T phone to have a 720p display and it's only the third to connect to AT&T's new LTE network, joining the Samsung Skyrocket and the HTC Vivid. The Nitro has a 1.5 gigahertz dual-core processor, a gig of RAM, 4 gigabytes of internal storage. It's good looking, it looks just like the Samsung Galaxy S2. It's got the same textured back and the same kind of look and feel all over. It's plasticky but well made and looks pretty good. Most of the ports are up top. There's the power button, the micro USB port, and the headphone jack. And they're all a little crowded up there, plus the micro USB port is covered by the most ridiculously breakable piece of plastic I've ever seen. You're better off probably just breaking it as soon as you get the phone and not dealing with it anymore. There are three capacitive buttons down at the bottom instead of the usual four. They've also been redesigned and the menu button and search button were combined so that if you long press on the menu button, it'll search for you instead. LG actually customized pretty much everything about this phone and it almost never works out in LG's favor. The phone's running Android 2.3.5, so you're not getting the latest version of Android anyway. And it's just really heavily modified for mostly kind of pointless reasons. It has icons in these weird kind of glossy containers. It has a light blue and white color scheme that doesn't look very good. And even the app drawer is designed in a way that makes it much more confusing. There's three different layouts and one of them groups things funny and another puts them in the wrong order and it's just really hard to navigate. The browser's fairly average for a gingerbread phone. It has some issues with image-heavy sites, but for the most part works fine. LG did add a navigation bar to the bottom of the screen, but it's not such a huge problem because you get so much real estate on the 720p display. It's a 4.5 inch IPS display and it looks really, really good. It has really accurate colors and it's bright and you can't really see individual pixels like you can on some other big screen phones. But the best thing about the Nitro HD has to be its LTE performance. We got our review unit right as AT&T's LTE network went live in New York City and we got speeds as fast as 60 megabits per second down and 15 megabits per second up. Once the network is officially live, speeds won't be as fast, but it's certainly much better than the HSPA Plus that AT&T's been trying to pass off as 4G until now. The great display and LTE both bring the same downside and that's really bad battery life. I never got a full day out of the Nitro HD and it was really more like a few hours as long as I was using it heavily. Streaming video through Netflix in particular just destroys the battery. Otherwise it's a pretty average smartphone. Call quality is good but not great and speakerphone performance isn't very good because the speaker is quiet anyway and it's located right where you naturally put your hand on the phone so it mutes it even more. There are two cameras, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a 1 megapixel camera on the front and both are fine for what they're supposed to do but neither is particularly great. It does shoot 1080p video from the rear camera which looks better than most smartphones but again nothing to write home about. At $249, the LG Nitro HD is the best phone you can currently buy to connect to AT&T's LTE network. But LTE's not everywhere yet and if you're outside the test markets you'll be better off with a phone like the iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy S2 which offers better software, better battery life and slightly better performance.
 This is David with The Verge and this is the LG Nitro HD.
 It's the first AT&T phone to have a 720p display and it's only the third to connect to AT&T's
 new LTE network, joining the Samsung Skyrocket and the HTC Vivid.
 The Nitro has a 1.5 gigahertz dual-core processor, a gig of RAM, 4 gigabytes of internal storage.
 It's good looking, it looks just like the Samsung Galaxy S2.
 It's got the same textured back and the same kind of look and feel all over.
 It's plasticky but well made and looks pretty good.
 Most of the ports are up top.
 There's the power button, the micro USB port, and the headphone jack.
 And they're all a little crowded up there, plus the micro USB port is covered by the
 most ridiculously breakable piece of plastic I've ever seen.
 You're better off probably just breaking it as soon as you get the phone and not dealing
 with it anymore.
 There are three capacitive buttons down at the bottom instead of the usual four.
 They've also been redesigned and the menu button and search button were combined so
 that if you long press on the menu button, it'll search for you instead.
 LG actually customized pretty much everything about this phone and it almost never works
 out in LG's favor.
 The phone's running Android 2.3.5, so you're not getting the latest version of Android
 anyway.
 And it's just really heavily modified for mostly kind of pointless reasons.
 It has icons in these weird kind of glossy containers.
 It has a light blue and white color scheme that doesn't look very good.
 And even the app drawer is designed in a way that makes it much more confusing.
 There's three different layouts and one of them groups things funny and another puts
 them in the wrong order and it's just really hard to navigate.
 The browser's fairly average for a gingerbread phone.
 It has some issues with image-heavy sites, but for the most part works fine.
 LG did add a navigation bar to the bottom of the screen, but it's not such a huge problem
 because you get so much real estate on the 720p display.
 It's a 4.5 inch IPS display and it looks really, really good.
 It has really accurate colors and it's bright and you can't really see individual pixels
 like you can on some other big screen phones.
 But the best thing about the Nitro HD has to be its LTE performance.
 We got our review unit right as AT&T's LTE network went live in New York City and we
 got speeds as fast as 60 megabits per second down and 15 megabits per second up.
 Once the network is officially live, speeds won't be as fast, but it's certainly much
 better than the HSPA Plus that AT&T's been trying to pass off as 4G until now.
 The great display and LTE both bring the same downside and that's really bad battery life.
 I never got a full day out of the Nitro HD and it was really more like a few hours as
 long as I was using it heavily.
 Streaming video through Netflix in particular just destroys the battery.
 Otherwise it's a pretty average smartphone.
 Call quality is good but not great and speakerphone performance isn't very good because the speaker
 is quiet anyway and it's located right where you naturally put your hand on the phone so
 it mutes it even more.
 There are two cameras, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a 1 megapixel camera on the
 front and both are fine for what they're supposed to do but neither is particularly great.
 It does shoot 1080p video from the rear camera which looks better than most smartphones but
 again nothing to write home about.
 At $249, the LG Nitro HD is the best phone you can currently buy to connect to AT&T's
 LTE network.
 But LTE's not everywhere yet and if you're outside the test markets you'll be better
 off with a phone like the iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy S2 which offers better software, better
 battery life and slightly better performance.