I bought the Rezound as my first smart phone on Launch day 11/14 after waiting a couple of weeks. That delay to launch allowed me to research the big 3 phones launching in November...Galaxy Nexus, Razr and Rezound. To me the Rezound won on a couple of points over the other two devices.
Impressions -
Aesthetics - I like the red accents, and the capacitive buttons in red. It just does look better to me than HOME buttons in bright white...I do like the soft back but then the Rezound-speific VZW clip/holster negates some of that. It definitely should not drop into a toilet either bare or in the case..
Screen- The 720p screen is beautifully sharp...Retina display is falling behind I'd say! No earlier phone I can compare but a few friends have a Thunderbolt, Sammy Stratosphere and a Bionic and I like the S-LCD better than SAMOLED penTile on those...at least for clarity. Richer colors and blacks on SAMOLED but to me they are just blurry compared to Rezound's 342 dpi. Yes the fonts appear tiny on some sites but "pinch to zoom" usually resolves that! The GNex may fix the blurry but I would say the 1280x720pscreen at 4.3" inches is a better looking display than my Nook Color at 1024X600 even though that is an IPS LCD.
Hardware - I love the red-plastic see-through under the battery cover, it just looks neat. I have seen the 2700 mAh battery which requires a new back cover but at least it doesn't need a rubber band to hold that in like the T-Bolt does.
As it is, it fits my hand better than the Razr, that phone was just too "wide" side-to-side for me. The GNex may be a better fit but the Rezound just feels natural to me. Easy to reach across the screen with either hand.
Phone - LG Bluetooth paired fine, very good call quality. I love the voice-to-dial over BT except if the kids are too loud and they hadn't realized that talking about Siri they had played with a VZW made the phone try to CALL Siri at some strange number
I have to teach them not to say "Call Police" where the BT can hear them.
Overall User Interface (including HTC Sense) - The buttons for power and volume are almost too recessed. Hard to find by touch, even more so in the case.
Widgets - Once I got updated HTC drivers to load then HTC Sync, then the Backup Assistant stopped bugging me, and was able to load the music/video gallerys direct from PC. I like Sense with multiple homes, and swiping through all the screens is a lot easier than on Rzar, where you can go 3 screens to the left then have to go back to the right where in Sense you roll over without having to "back up".
The ALL APPS capacitive button is kind of redundant and can't be edited..
Signal quality (Compared to other devices) - Wifi-N was seamless and was giving DL speeds over 25 Mbps. 4G is close to that in my area but at work it does tend to flip from LTE to 3G depending on where I am in the building. No DEATH GRIP!
GPS - Quick, and works well with the compass in Google Maps, watching it change to match orientation!
Social Networking - Facebook widget is nice, and even better is FriendStream widget as its own "screen".
Email/Calendar - I liike the Notifications bar, and YahooMail integrates well with it.
Battery Life - Still testing, but the BT headset battery seems a shorter life. Im still learning location-based "actions" settings to turn off BT / Wifi / etc when leaving house / going into work. I need an APP for that (SmartActions would be nice. I did like that part of Blur during comparison..)
Performance - Very fast, no stutters I have seen, I like the Ring to unlock and photos on the lock screen customized. No problems opening apps but it does seem to use a lot of the 1GB phone memory even being aggressive with task manager. 186 MB free memory with not that many widgets opened, maybe a few live notifications pulling down data.
Media (music, movies, DLNA) - Awesome youTube streaming even at 720p resolution. And video caches invisibly to me...ibeats really pounds the bass...
Keyboards - Kind of small fonts to pick at but I'm learning..new to smartphone keys.
Camera (both still & video) - stills seem yellowish in dimmer lighting and somewhat blurry, so I am disappointed since I heard the f2.2 camera was really good. It did seem to clear up after a few pics so I am still evaulating. Havent tried much video capture yet.
Speed - Quadrant test and Speed test along with nenaMark1 and 2 were somewhat impressive, just not TOP of the line like a SGS2... must be the Snapdragon. It appears to be in the top 10-20 in results and that's good enough for me...
Can't wait for ICS though. GNex almost sold me on that but the specs for Rezound carried the day...for me.