HP Veer 4G Review - Getting Us Excited for Pre 3
by Brian Klug on June 7, 2011 5:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HP
- AT&T
- Palm
- veer
- webOS
- HSPA+
- Mobile
- HP Veer 4G
The Veer continues the WebOS tradition of having a fixed focus 'enhanced depth of field' camera. The Veer is simultaneously an improvement and step backwards from the Pixi just on paper. The Veer has a 5 MP camera with no LED flash. For comparison, the Palm Pixi has a 2 MP camera with LED flash.
Both cameras are of the fixed focus sort. The Veer captures still images at 2592 x 1952 with filesizes of just around 2 MB in JPEG format. WebOS continues to take the minimalist approach in the camera application with virtually no toggles other than a link to the gallery, a capture button, and a switch for changing between video capture and stills. For being such a basic camera, the Veer produces some surprisingly decent stills when you're outside in good daylight. Beyond the camera's admittedly close hyperfocal distance, there's good focus and sharpness.
Indoors or inside that hyperfocal distance, the Veer's camera is very disappointing. You can see that behavior in a few of the gallery shots that aren't part of our test suite but just taken in daily use. In those situations that are low light, at night, or close to the device, the Veer doesn't perform well. That's to be expected however given the camera constraints.
The camera application on the Veer is far and away the most buggy part of the experience. With geotagging enabled, I suffered a number of constant problems. Sometimes I'd get errors like this:
Other times I'd simply get a complete abrupt reboot of the device, or some very troubling screen corruption followed by a reboot either immediately or a few minutes later. When things were going very badly, the Veer would capture a ton of 0 KB images - lovely. Disabling geotagging fixed the problem entirely - just don't enable it if you want a functioning camera.
Videos on the Veer are captured at a decidedly last-generation 640 x 480 (VGA), and are encoded with MPEG-4 at a bitrate of exactly 1 Mbps with one AAC audio channel. I'm disappointed that there isn't 720P video capture on the Veer - MSM7230 should be more than capable of doing that instead of low bitrate VGA.
The nice thing is that for the most part you can still mash the capture button or spacebar endlessly and capture tons of images quickly. This is one thing WebOS still has on everyone else - stupid fast capture with virtually no input lag. The downside is again that WebOS hasn't caught up in the video or camera side of things - everyone else is busy duking it out over 720P and 1080P capture quality, while the Veer putters on with VGA. For those interested, I've uploaded the two video samples taken from the Veer here.
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ClockerXP - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link
Dial ##3-836# to get to the menu where you can disable 3G. Works on my Pre+ on Verizon!ClockerXP - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link
I mean ##3836# (no dash)dananski - Sunday, June 12, 2011 - link
I agree that the hardware is better than people say. I haven't had any problems with mine and it only has minor scratches from all the times I've dropped it. But the OS is good too. Cards and synergy are two things I couldn't go without, and I like the simple gestures.ioannis - Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - link
Brian, thanks for the comprehensive review, delivered in the usual Anandtech quality.The App Catalogue compatibility seems to be the only major complain I'd have over this phone. My question is, will WebOS 3.0 with the Enyo framework come to the Veer? And assuming that all the apps eventually get ported to it (or at least all apps released from the time 3.0 is out will be based on it), would that solve the 'pixel density'/resolution-dependent apps problem?
softdrinkviking - Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - link
Hi Brian. Great review. I especially liked your explanation of HSPA+, nice work there.I had one question. You again referred to Super LCD as (IPS) in this article, as you did in the article a few days ago (HTC evo 3D). In that article you crossed out the (IPS) and I assumed that meant you were reassessing that. Have you come to any conclusions about Super LCD and what process it is made with?
Brian Klug - Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - link
So I was mistaken earlier about Super LCD being IPS, I went over my notes and have written down that Super LCD is just PVA. I'm going to try and do some more digging to find out why I have that here and what the implications are. Honestly though the SLCD display on the Sensation looks quite good.-Brian
Solidstate89 - Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - link
I haven't owned a WebOS phone because of the flakiness of the hardware, but the OS has always appealed to me. Similarly although the Veer isn't for me, I do like just how much better WebOS 2.0 is looking.I sincerely wish them the best in the market as it is quite simply a brilliantly designed OS. However it's just taken too long to get to market. I wanted to get a Pre 3 on Verizon, but realized it would be too late with Verizon Wireless nixing its Unlimited Data plans before it could be released so I went to sprint and picked up a WP7 device.
Quite happy with it, and although it's a blatant rip-off, I can't wait for the card-style multitasking to arrive with the Mango Update :)
Best of luck to WebOS.
softdrinkviking - Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - link
cool, thanks for the reply & info. i have seen plenty of PVA screens in the store and they look pretty good to me, maybe not as good as the high-end NECs and other professional monitors, but i had a hard time telling the difference between the led backlit LG IPS and the similar sized BenQ with a PVA. (this is in Japan, so i can't say what models you have in the states).As long as they are good quality, and a decent resolution, I can't imagine that PVA would be unacceptable on a cel phone. they are undoubtedly better than TN.
jamawass - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 - link
I think the veer makes sense if you take into consideration hp's tablet strategy. A veer with mobile hotspot would be an excellent combo with a 7 in touchpad ( to be released after the 10 in later this yr). I have a 7 in sony reader which fits in all my jacket's pockets. That's my device of choice when I'm waiting at the auto shop, etc and I always receives glances when I whip it out of my jacket. It's light, and much more portable than an ipad.I suspect this is one of hp's strategies with the veer and I wouldn't be surprised if they market them as a combo deal in the future.
I've used webos for a year now and generally like it's efficiency, but Apple and other companies have been cannibalising their innovations. As stated above, hp needs to accelerate the upgrade cycle in both soft and hardware to survive.
marc1000 - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 - link
Brian and Anand, I could not find a way to contact you. So I will write this down on the comment section.Microsoft is killing the only thing cool on all older WindowsMobile phones (6.5 & below): the MyPhone service will die in a couple months.
please read this thread at XDA where some users reported receiving the same MS email with the news.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1...