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State of the Art

Android Phones Take a Power Trip

You know the old techie joke, right? If you don’t like the Android phones on the market, just wait a minute.

There are dozens of Android phones, and newer, better ones appear every few months. Google subscribes to the Microsoft Windows scheme: write the software, and let other companies build the phones.

The result is a lot of choice, but also a lot of fragmentation. There is no one Android phone. Some models can be updated to new Android software, some can’t. A certain app might or might not run on your particular version.

That master plan differs quite a bit from the iPhone’s.

Apple designs “the whole widget,” as Steve Jobs used to say: both the software and the phone. The result is clean, reliable and consistent — but you’re limited to the features Apple wants to give you. For example, if you want a 4G phone (one that runs on the new, very fast Internet networks in big cities), you’re out of luck.

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Credit...Stuart Goldenberg

And a new iPhone, accompanied by a major software release, comes out only once a year, or less often. In any case, there’s a lot of news in Androidland. The three biggest players are Samsung, Motorola and HTC, and all three are offering beautiful marquee Android phones. All three are Verizon 4G phones.

These phones are whopping big; that’s the trend these days. You can almost fit an entire iPhone in just the screen area of these Android monsters. Big is great for maps, movies, photos and Web sites — less so for holding up to your ear on a call.

All three phones have front and back cameras, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. Each can serve as a portable Wi-Fi hot spot for your laptop, for an added monthly fee. On the other hand, they come preinstalled with Verizon promotional apps that you can hide, but can’t remove.

The HTC Rezound ($200 with two-year contract) comes with a pair of Dr. Dre Beats in-ear headphones. Those, plus matching software, give music playback extra clarity and bass.

This thickish phone was the first in the United States with a true high-definition screen (1280 by 720 pixels, 4.3 inches) — sharper than even the iPhone’s Retina screen. Even the front-facing camera can film 720p high-def video, which is a rarity. The rest of the specs are the usual on high-end phones these days: 8-megapixel rear camera, 10 gigabytes of built-in storage for your apps and a memory-card slot if you need more room (a 16-gigabyte card comes with the phone).

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The Droid Razr Maxx from Motorola distinguishes itself through its lengthy battery life.

Then there’s the expansive Motorola Droid Razr Maxx ($300), whose claim to fame is its beefy battery. This may be the first 4G phone that gets you through a full day, or even longer, on a single charge. Yet it’s still as thin as an iPhone. The non-Maxx Droid Razr is nearly identical — but it’s even thinner and its battery doesn’t last nearly as long. The screen isn’t hi-def (960 by 540 pixels), but the storage is ample: 11.5 gigabytes inside, plus a 16-gig memory card.

Motorola continues to think outside the hardware and software boxes: you can buy a 10- or 14-inch laptop to accompany this phone, which becomes the brain and the storage when you connect it. And the Smart Actions app is pure brilliance: it lets you set up battery-saving rules like “dim the screen when the battery gets low” or “turn off GPS if I forget to plug you in at nighttime.” You can also set up convenience rules like “set the ringer to vibrate after 10 p.m.,” or “display my kids’ photo as the wallpaper whenever I’m at home.” It’s pretty wonderful.

But the Samsung Galaxy Nexus ($300) might be the most interesting phone. Not because of the phone itself, although it’s fine: 32 gigabytes of storage (no card slot), fast processor, removable battery, 1280 x 720-pixel hi-def screen, so-so 5-megapixel camera.

(Confusion alert: Google sells a different phone also called the Nexus. Apparently, any phone can be called Nexus if it offers “the pure Google experience”— no tweaks or overlays like the ones that Motorola and HTC have put onto Android. How bizarre, then, that the Nexus doesn’t work with Google Wallet, Google’s own swipe-to-pay app.)

No, the Nexus is significant because it’s the first phone to come with Android 4.0, code-named Ice Cream Sandwich, or I.C.S. (Google names its Android versions after sugary treats.) There’s a lot of excitement in this new software.

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The HTC Rezound comes with a pair of Dr. Dre Beats in-ear headphones and software to give music playback extra clarity and bass.

I.C.S. phones don’t have a row of physical navigation buttons anymore (like Home, Back and Menu); instead, they’re images on the screen. That eats away at the screen space, of course, but they disappear when you need the room — say, when watching movies or taking photos. And they rotate with the phone now, too, so they are always upright.

The Motorola and HTC phones reviewed here will get upgrades to I.C.S. later this year.

Plenty of I.C.S. features play iPhone catch-up. Now, for example, you can fire up the camera directly from the Lock screen. There’s a Dock at the bottom of the screen for your most-used apps. You can edit photos and videos right on the phone. The e-mail apps show the first few words of the message bodies. A spelling checker underlines questionable words. You can create folders by dragging one app atop another.

The new address-book app collects your friends’ information from Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus (although not Facebook, weirdly enough). All of their photos and news blurbs rest in one handy place, just as on Windows Phone and Palm/HP phones.

The Web browser lets you save Web pages for reading later when you’re offline; offers a stealth mode that leaves no History list; and lets you request the full version of a site if a subpar cellphone version is being forced on you.

Android’s speech recognition isn’t as accurate as Siri on iPhone, and it’s still best for dictation — it doesn’t take Siri commands like “What does my schedule look like a week from tomorrow?” But now the words fly onto the screen as you’re saying them; you no longer have to wait until you stop talking for the transcription to appear.

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The Galaxy Nexus from Samsung is the first phone to come with Android 4.0, code-named Ice Cream Sandwich.

The Camera app is a marvel. It offers zero shutter lag, face recognition and special effects like buggy eyes and background replacement. You can take a still photo while you’re recording video. Best of all, there’s a Panorama mode like the one on Sony cameras. You slowly swing the phone in an arc around you, and the phone creates a seamless superwide photo.

Then there’s Face Unlock, which instantly unlocks the phone when the front camera recognizes you. It’s cool, but it will thwart only the laziest bad guys; it’s easily fooled by a photo of you, or a blood relative.

The Beam feature lets you share an app, a video, an address-book card, map directions or a Web address, just by holding your phone back-to-back with another I.C.S. phone and tapping O.K. If it catches on, Beam will be a real hero.

That’s really only the tip of the ice cream sandwich. When the new software arrives on superphones like the Motorola Razr Maxx, it will be a truly delicious combination.

Android still feels disjointed in spots. Why do we still have to use different apps for Gmail and all other e-mail? And there’s no standard connector in a standard spot, so there’s no universe of docks, alarm clocks, car adapters as there is with the Apple gadgets.

Still, Android is coming on strong; all manufacturers considered, it’s outselling the iPhone. Android’s latest surge toward power and polish should thrill almost everyone. The possible exception: anyone whose three-month-old Android phone is suddenly obsolete.

A correction was made on 
Feb. 8, 2012

An earlier version of this column published online misstated the price of the HTC Rezound. It is $200, not $300, with a two-year contract. The column also referred incorrectly to Android’s speech recognition. While it is best for dictation, it is not solely for that purpose.

How we handle corrections

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Android Phones Take A Power Trip. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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