Verdict of T-Mobile MyTouch 4G android smartphone

The T-Mobile MyTouch 4G is the latest addition to the carrier's MyTouch series of Android phones, and it brings a slew of design and feature enhancements. With a more solid build, the Android 2.2 smartphone feels like a premium device and has the goods to back it up, with HSPA+ support, Wi-Fi calling, mobile hot spot capabilities, and a second-gen 1GHz Snapdragon processor, just to name a few. Unfortunately, one of its hallmark features, video chat, doesn't work all that well, as we were ran into a number of issues. The good news is that there are plenty of other great things about the smartphone to occupy you until video chat is ironed out. The MyTouch 4G is fast, sleek, and delivers great call quality, making it a great alternative if you don't need a keyboard or dislike the bulkiness of the T-Mobile G2.

Design
The T-Mobile MyTouch 4G has a similar shape and look as the rest of the MyTouch family, but there's a noticeable difference in weight and feel. Unlike the previous models, the MyTouch 4G features stainless steel parts and in some instances, a soft-touch finish around the edges (only on certain colors) to give it a more solid and premium feel. As a result, the handset is a bit on the heavier side at 5 ounces. Though design is a subjective thing, we'd rather have a slightly heavier but more solid-feeling device than a light and cheap, plasticky phone. Plus, the MyTouch 4G is still thin and pocketable at 4.8 inches tall by 2.4 inches wide by 0.4 inch thick.

On front, you get a 3.8-inch WVGA touch screen with the option of five or seven home screen panels. Like the MyTouch 3G Slide, the MyTouch 4G uses a combination of T-Mobile's customized user interface and HTC Sense, including the company's widgets and Leap screen, which shows you thumbnail versions of all your home screens. Our stance on customized UIs is that as long as they're useful and don't interfere with software updates, we have no problem with it. Though the latter remains to be seen, as it is now, the MyTouch 4G's interface is helpful and user-friendly, particularly for consumers and first-time Android users.

As for the display itself, it's clear and sharp, though colors don't look quite as rich as those on the Samsung Vibrant's Super AMOLED screen. The touch screen is responsive. Apps launched as soon as we tapped the icon, and the scrolling and pinch-to-zoom actions were fast and smooth. The MyTouch 4G comes with the Swype keyboard installed, though if you don't like it, you can turn it off and peck away on a regular onscreen keyboard. Alternatively, you can use the phone's Nuance Dragon Dictation voice command system to dictate your messages.

Below the display, there's an optical trackpad and Android shortcuts for home, back, and menu. However, instead of a search button, you get T-Mobile's Genius button, which activates the aforementioned Nuance-powered voice command application where you can make calls, compose messages, search the Web, and launch applications with your voice.

On the left side, there's a volume rocker and a Micro-USB port; there's a sole camera button on the right side. The top of the device houses a power button and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The smartphone's main camera and flash are located on the back, but there is a front-facing VGA camera as well, just above the screen on the right side.

The T-Mobile MyTouch 4G comes packaged in a nice, reusable carrying case with an AC adapter, a USB cable, wired stereo headset, an 8GB microSD card, and reference material.

Features
The T-Mobile MyTouch 4G is the most advanced model in the MyTouch series to date. It's running Android 2.2 and also supports the carrier's HSPA+ network. The latter is T-Mobile's enhanced 3G network and not true 4G technology, though the product name and T-Mobile's marketing would certainly have you think otherwise. That aside, the network promises 4G-like speeds and we've certainly experienced that in our tests.

Here in New York, we averaged download speeds of 5.37Mbps and upload speeds of 1.31Mbps, peaking at 7.07Mbps down and 1.33Mbps up. (For comparison, Sprint's 4G network provided average download speeds of 3.42Mbps and upload speeds of 0.93Mbps on the HTC Evo 4G when tested in Philadelphia). With those speeds, the phone's browser was able to load CNET's full page in just 13 seconds, and CNN and ESPN's mobile sites in 6 seconds and 7 seconds, respectively. High-quality YouTube videos loaded within a couple of seconds and played back continuously with synchronized audio and video.

Unlike the T-Mobile G2, the MyTouch 4G can be used as a mobile hot spot with WEP and WPA encryption. We were also able to upload a 2MB photo in 15 seconds, and downloaded a five-track album (file size ranged from 4.7MB to 7.7MB) from iTunes in 50 seconds. The speeds were certainly more than adequate for us to get our work done and then some, though we did experience a drop off in speed in certain parts of Manhattan, such as Midtown.

Stepping back to some of the MyTouch 4G's more basic features, as a phone, it offers quad-band world roaming, a speakerphone, conference calling, voice dialing, text and multimedia messaging, Bluetooth, and GPS.

The phone book is limited only by the available memory (the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts), and there's room in each entry for multiple numbers, e-mail addresses, IM handles, group IDs, photo caller IDs, and so on. Similar to other Android phones, the smartphone will merge contact information, as well as calendar appointments, from multiple e-mail and social networking accounts, including Exchange, POP3, IMAP, Facebook, and Twitter.

After we set up our device with our various accounts, the smartphone actually presented a list of contacts that had multiple entries and gave us the option to link them on the spot, which was nice since we didn't have to go into the Contacts app and see where there were duplicates.

Aside from the standard Google services and Froyo features outlined in our article here, the MyTouch 4G comes preloaded with a number of extras, mostly entertainment focused, including Rock Band, Asphalt 5, Monopoly, and T-Mobile TV. The last app lets you stream live and on-demand content from channels such as CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, ESPN, and VH1.

All of your own music and video are stored in the phone's Media Room app, where you will also find the FM radio and a preloaded copy of Slacker. The MyTouch 4G has 4GB of internal memory and ships with an 8GB microSD card, though the expansion slot can accept up to 32GB cards.

Last but not least, the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G offers a 5-megapixel with flash, HD video recording, and numerous editing options, including white balance, face detection, ISO, and wide-screen resolution. You can also add effects to your photo, and the camera gives you a small example of what each effect does to the image, so you get an idea of what to expect, which is pretty cool.

Picture quality was good when we took photos outdoors, but they could be better for indoor shots. We could certainly make out the objects in the photo, but they just appeared a bit soft and colors could have been brighter. The MyTouch 4G does have DLNA support (called Screen Share on the phone) so you can stream content from your phone to a DLNA-compliant device like an HDTV.