Pantech Burst

Pantech is probably better known for its cheap phones rather than outright performance. However, Pantech is not about to rest on its laurels and give up especially on the AT&T side of things. In two previous attempts to work with AT&T, they have not managed to come out tops. Both the Pantech Crossover and Pantech Pocket failed miserably when compared to its competition. However, now, in an attempt to make full use of AT&T’s 4G LTE network and at the same time give the end users a bargain, the Pantech Burst is released. The $49.99 on contract price tag would have got many thinking that the specs must of the lower end kind. Read on to find out if you are wrong or right on that one.

Design
Pantech phones are not known for being the prettiest phones in town, so if you expected another dull looking phone with the Pantech Burst, then you would go very wrong. Pantech has given a pleasant surprise by coming out with a good looking smartphone. The Pantech Burst albeit being sold for a low price attempts to emulate the looks of high end phones with its modern and appealing design. All these good looks were produced using sturdy plastic material that manages to give a metallic finish. At 4.98 x 2.46 x 0.45 it is hardly a big phone but neither does it qualify to be a small phone. Being averagely sized it fits well in the hand and feels really strong when held in the hand.

On the front of the phone sits a surprisingly big 4 inch WVGA Super AMOLED screen. Pantech Burst is definitely not one of your budget phones now is it? Right below the display are your trademark Android capacitive buttons that sadly lacks response. To exacerbate things, you find yourself making accidental presses now and then. Pantech also throws in a front facing VGA camera with the Pantech Burst. The left side of the phone is home to the volume rocker while the power key sits atop with the standard audio jack. Meanwhile, on the right is the microUSB port. However, we didn’t like these buttons too much as they were kind of flush to the chassis. On the back of the Pantech Burst sits a 5MP auto focus camera that comes with LED flash. The camera sits inside a chrome trim border.

Performance
If you weren’t impressed already with the display on this phone, you will now as the Pantech Burst is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. Now to make you say wow, listen to what we have to say next. The Pantech Burst scored approximately the same scores as the Samsung Galaxy S II in Quadrant. With the scores in hand, we tested the phone and found it to carry out most tasks flawlessly. However, there was one blip as lag is evident when you try to shift between various app panels. Nevertheless, this is still the fastest Pantech phone ever.

Features
Much like most of the competition out there, Pantech has also customized its user interface that runs atop the OS. Pantech Burst runs the Android v.2.3.5 Gingerbread and that’s obviously not the latest Android, but I guess we can deal with that. The UI looks very cheerful and maybe a bit cartoony, so it’s up to the individual whether they like it or not. You still have the lockscreen which loads directly to your favorite app. Other than that, the other stuff is as good as any other Android device. A generous four inch screen on the Pantech Burst means that you won’t have trouble typing out your texts on the on-screen keyboard. The keys are nicely spaced and you can switch between Android Gingerbread’s stock keyboard and Swype and still get a responsive keyboard.

Seeing how this phone is running an Android OS, it goes without saying that you would have a good experience when using Gmail. It provides you with desktop-like email experience right there in your Pantech Burst. Setup is painless too as it can’t get much easier than that. Since it’s on the AT&T network, you also get some AT&T apps out of the box. For instance, we have the AT&T FamilyMap, AT&T Navigator and AT&T Code Scanner. Apart from that you also have Live TV and myAT&T. For your social networking needs, you have Facebook and Twitter apps as well.

So as mentioned earlier, you actually get a four inch Super AMOLED screen with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels on the Pantech Burst! The reason for the excitement is that it’s really nice to see such a big screen on a low budget. It also produces nice colors and has wide viewing angles. However, bring the phone outside and you might not be able to make things out off the screen. We still think Pantech deserves a pat on the back for this screen.

On the back of the Pantech Burst is a 5MP camera with both auto-focus and LED flash. Sadly, from our tests, we find that the camera doesn’t take good pictures. To exacerbate things, it takes ages to take one picture and move on to the next one. The photos lack details and also the pictures taken have a slight greenish hue on them. Needless to say, when we moved indoors, photos turned out grainy as the LED flash was almost nonexistent. Moving on to video recording, it sure was able to record videos at 720p resolution but at 19 fps, the results were poor. Details were again lacking and color reproduction was bad too.

Internet connectivity will be one of the highlights of this phone as the Pantech Burst promises 4G LTE connectivity. Using AT&T, things can rarely go wrong and we got some good speeds using the 4G LTE network. Surfing the net using this phone was also a joy ride as it not only loads Flash content, it also tackles all those so-called complex websites with ease. Navigating through the websites was good albeit some lag using the controls at times. In terms of connectivity options, it’s a GSM phone so you can use it anywhere plus it offers the other common stuff like aGPS, Wi-Fi and mobile hotspot functionality.

We would have liked a better call quality on the Pantech Burst to say the least. Its earpiece produced low volumes and we heard our friend’s voice as crackly tones. Meanwhile, we also got some complains from our friends on the other end as they say our voice has some hiss in it. Under the hood is a 1650mAh battery that would give you a full day of battery life for an average user.

Pros and Cons
Super affordable at $50 on-contract and the Pantech Burst has some good specs like its dual-core processor and nice big screen. It was also built to last.

The camera quality must be the biggest downer on this phone.

Conclusion
We can’t say it enough number of times, the Pantech Burst is a really affordable phone. To provide 4G LTE Connectivity under AT&T at a price of $50 on-contract is definitely going to be a winning strategy.