Over the past few years, we’ve seen numerous phones from Pantech that are budget friendly, including the Pantech Breakout. But until now, if you wanted a 4G LTE smartphone with a physical QWERTY keyboard, your choices were limited to the Samsung Stratosphere, or the higher-end (and higher priced) Motorola DROID 4. Verizon now gives a new option with the Pantech Marauder. Not only does it have a sliding QWERTY keyboard, but is running Android Ice Cream Sandwich, and is reasonably priced at $49 with a 2-year contract.
Included in the retail package is the Pantech Marauder ADR910LVW smartphone, 1680 mAh battery, wall charger with detachable microUSB cable, and user guides.
Design:
The overall appearance of the Pantech Marauder is basic and simple with its all black plastic construction. It fits well in the hand and is comfortable to hold, thanks to the texture on the back that provides a firm grip, but after a few minutes you can start to feel its 6.1 oz weight.
You can compare the Pantech Marauder with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.
Below the display are four touch sensitive buttons for Back, Home, Recent Apps, and Settings. Along the left side is the volume rocker and microUSB port, while up on top is the power/lock key and a 3.5mm headset jack. On the back is a 5MP camera, but to gain access to the microSD card slot, you have to remove the battery.
Display:
Due to the low price of the Marauder, we are not surprised that the device is equipped with a smaller 3.8” LCD display with WVGA 480x800 pixel resolution. This combination actually isn’t bad, as text and images do look sharp in most circumstances, but looking close-up we did see some minor jagged edges. Our only issue with the display is that it is difficult to view in sunlight, and that off-axis viewing angles are poor.
QWERTY keyboard:
Naturally, one key feature of the Marauder is its physical QWERTY keyboard, but we found that sliding it open requires more force than what is needed to open the keyboard on the DROID 4, and we could also hear the plastic panel behind the display rub on the keyboard. But once it is open, there is a 5-row layout with dedicated number keys across the top. Unfortunately, we found that using the QWERTY keyboard isn’t very pleasant, as the keys are virtually flat, making them indistinguishable from the surrounding plastic, and have almost no space between them. Because of this, we had several mistypes if we weren’t carefully. But we were shocked to see that there is no auto word correction when using the physical keyboard, as it is only activated when using the on-screen virtual keyboard.
Because of these issues, we can’t see someone that does a lot of typing using the QWERTY keyboard on the Marauder on a daily basis, but it would be OK for the occasional email or message. We found that keyboards on the Samsung Stratosphere and Motorola DROID 4 are easier to use for prolonged periods.
Pantech Marauder 360-degrees View:
Drag the picture or use the keyboard arrows to rotate the phone. Double click or press keyboard
Space to zoom in/out.
Drag the picture in the desired orientation to rotate the phone.
User Interface:
One thing that Pantech hopes to accomplish with the Marauder is to make it easy-to-use for beginners that haven’t used an Android smartphone before by introducing a Starter Mode. When using this, you have a basic 5 home screen layout with large text and big icons. The app drawer is also laid out in specific groups. For example, “Tools” lists the alarm, calculator, calendar, clocks, and voice recorder, and “Media” lists the doc viewer, gallery, music player and video player. We found the Starter Mode very simplistic for someone that may have never used a smartphone before, and is nice touch. Once you are more comfortable with using the device, or are experienced with Android, you can change over to the Standard Mode. It comes with 7 home screens (with normal sized text and icons) and the app drawer also lists everything alphabetically instead of placing them into groups. Regardless of which mode you are using, you will see nothing of the stock Android Ice Cream Sandwich interface, as Pantech has placed their layer over top, but we’re still glad ICS is on board.
There also comes along a basic selection of Widgets, such as different clocks, weather, calendar, music, and friend feeds. Missing are the four themes that are on the Pantech Breakout, which is similar to what HTC does with its Sense UI, but we feel that this was left out as to have the Starter and Standard Mode.
Processor and Memory:
The Pantech Marauder features a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 processor and has 1GB of RAM, which is excellent hardware for the price.
Quadrant Standard
AnTuTu
NenaMark 2
Pantech Marauder
4882
6601
56,3
Samsung Galaxy S III
5022
6369
58,7
Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX
2895
6178
36,7
HTC Rezound
2490
5603
33,9
As you can see from the numbers, the Marauder does well with benchmarking, even slightly beating the Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III with AnTuTu. But despite this, the Marauder does feel a bit slow and lagging at times, mostly when using the User Interface, as there is some delay when moving between the home screens and when opening apps, while the Galaxy S III feels much faster with its UI and opening apps.
The Marauder comes with 4GB of internal memory, but since it is used by apps, files, and the OS, you are left with only about 1.5GB free. Thankfully, there is a microSD memory card slot that can accommodate cards up to 32GB.
Internet and Connectivity: Despite its low price, we’re glad to see that the Pantech Marauder can make use of Verizon’s 4G LTE data network. Even though using the 3.8” display can feel a bit cramped at times when viewing large web sites, pages are still properly rendered and are easy to navigate.
When using the SpeedTest.net app, we were able to get download speeds of 5.07 Mbps and uploads of 4.27 Mbps. This is not as fast as what we’ve seen with most other Verizon 4G smartphones, but still good enough for most web sites. Naturally, you can connect to Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n as well.
Camera:
The included 5MP camera is easy to operate using the on-screen icons, and there are also a variety of scene modes and effect that you can add. The tap-to-focus is a bit slow, taking 3-4 seconds, and then another 2 seconds to capture the picture. Images that we took outside look OK – just OK – as they aren’t very sharp, and occasionally had issues with the auto white balance, which can cause colors to not look their best. There also isn’t an LED flash, so low-light images are tough to take. Videos can be recorded at 1280x720p resolution, but the real issue is that it’s limited to only 19 frames per second. When playing back the video, not only are the detail and colors poor, but anything moving has a stutter due to the low FPS. Even though the price of the phone is low, and the camera isn’t high-end, we’d still like to see 30 FPS for recording video.
Pantech Marauder Sample Video:
Multimedia:
As with any smartphone, there is a music player, and the layout of the one on the Marauder is pretty basic to keep things simple, but does come with a nice selection of settings for the Equalizer, Bass Boost, Virtualizer, and Reverb. The music quality through the rear speaker isn’t that great, but with a good set of earbuds connected, it sounds just fine.
The standard Android Gallery will show all of your pictures and videos categorized into folders for easy viewing. We were able to playback all of our MP4 H.264/263videos from 320x240 to 1280x720 resolution without any problems, but DivX and XviD videos could not be played with the default player.
Call Quality:
The overall call quality on the Pantech Marauder was adequate, as there was no background noise or static, and we didn’t drop any calls, but voices on our end sounded a bit “digital” and “choppy” at times, instead of sounding full and natural. People that we called also reported this on their end and could easily tell we were using a cell phone.
Battery:
The included 1680 mAh battery is rated at 8 hours of talk time or 22 days of standby time. In our testing, we were able to get 7.5 hours of continuous talk time on a full charge, or about 2 days of mixed usage (which includes some talk, email, internet, app usage and standby).
Conclusion:
When we recently reviewed Verizon’s BlackBerry Curve 9310, we mentioned that for the same price of $49 on-contract, there are better options. The Pantech Marauder is one of them. Not only does it have the advantage of running Android ICS, but also can use Verizon’s 4G LTE data network. Overall, the Pantech Marauder fits in the $49 price category just fine, but keep in mind that some of its features, such as the display and camera, can’t compete with devices costing $200+. Our only real let-down with the Marauder is with its QWERTY keyboard. It had the potential of being really good, but with its flat keys that have very little spacing between them, anything more than a short email or message will be a challenge to type without pressing a wrong key. For the same price, the Samsung Stratosphere has a better designed keyboard and a 4” Super AMOLED display, so keep that in mind.
Sam Earley, is a former reviews and news writer at PhoneArena. His incredibly productive run included numerous reviews and comparison articles of breakthrough products, such as the Motorola DROID X, Verizon Pre 2, HTC Thunderbolt and many others.
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