LG Escape (AT&T)

At this moment, AT&T is not lacking for quality smartphones under $100. You can get anything from the LG Nitro HD ?to the HTC One X ?to the Apple iPhone 4S ?for less than a Benjamin. But all of those phones started out with a much higher price, unlike AT&T's latest budget smartphone, the LG Escape, which is available for just $49.99 with a two-year contract.? Thankfully, this affordable price tag doesn't come at the cost of performance or features. The LG Escape has a powerful processor, blazing fast LTE data speeds, a bright, attractive display, and a thin design. Along with our Editors' Choice, the Pantech Flex, it's the model for what a new budget smartphone should look like.

Design, Connectivity, and Call Quality
Attractive in a slim, minimalist way, the Escape measures 4.96 by 2.54 by 0.37 inches (HWD) and weighs just 4.5 ounces. It's made of shiny black plastic with a light pattern printed on the back and a smoked chrome ring around the battery cover and display. The only false note is the textured, matte plastic band around the middle that looks a bit tacky. Otherwise, this looks and feels like a quality device.

The rest of the phone's design is understated as well. There's a volume rocker on the left edge, a Power button on the right, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, and a microUSB port on the bottom. That's it. There's about half an inch of bezel on either side of the 4.3-inch, 960-by-540-pixel IPS LCD, which looks beautiful. It gets very bright, and its 256 pixel-per-inch density makes for sharp text and images. The phone is light and comfortable to hold, and typing in both portrait and landscape mode is fast and fluid.

The Escape runs on AT&T's EDGE, HSPA+ 21, and LTE networks, and features 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. Reception is strong, and like most AT&T LTE devices we've tested so far, the Escape pulled in some incredibly fast data speeds, with downloads averaging 18Mbps, and uploads just over 12Mbps. If you take a look at our Fastest Mobile Networks?survey, you'll see that AT&T's LTE can exceed Verizon's LTE speeds, though Verizon's LTE is more consistent and covers more of the nation.

Call quality is mostly good. In my tests, voices sounded a little crackly in the earpiece, with a slight echo in the background, but were otherwise loud and easy to hear. Calls made with the phone are extremely clear, and average noise cancellation helps to block out some, but not all, background noise. Calls sounded great through a Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset and the stock Android voice dialer worked fine. The speakerphone sounds okay, and is just about loud enough to hear outside. Battery life was average at 6 hours and 27 minutes of talk time.

Processor, Android, and Apps
The dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8960L processor is no slouch. It isn't quite as scorching as the dual-core 1.5GHz S4 in the Samsung Galaxy S III, but it's fast enough to keep all the apps and games you want to play running along at a nice clip. You also don't have to worry about it becoming totally obsolete in the next few months.

The LG Escape is running Android 4.0.4 "Ice Cream Sandwich," along with LG's Optimus UI overlay. It's a fairly light skin, but it makes the phone feel a little more accessible and user-friendly than stock Android. Unfortunately, there's no word on an update to Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean," which seems to be the case for most current Android phones.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/pdIbIwiLsE0/0,2817,2410209,00.asp

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