Let's cut to the chase - 4G is a bleeding edge technology. It promises fast communication speed on the new LTE network. But, as we recently noted the Velocity has shipped with the older Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread rather than Ice Cream Sandwich - the best mobile OS on the market in our view.
An upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich is being tested by Telstra at the moment so this serious deficiency will be rectified soon.
In the hand
With its tapered body, the Velocity is comfortable to hold and feels narrower than its 129 by 67 by 11mm would suggest. Buttons are well placed and easy to reach. As a handset that's designed to run Android 2.x, there are four, fixed touch-sensitive buttons running along the bottom edge of the 4.5-inch display for accessing the homescreen, context menu, back and search functions.
The 4.5-inch S-LCD capacitive display is clear but runs at just 540 x 960 - quite a low resolution for such a large screen. There was a time when such a screen would be considered bleeding edge but this is just one of several contradictions we found with the Velocity.
Storage
Memory is capped at 16 GB with 13 GB available for use. We'll be interested to see what happens when the ICS update comes. There's also a microSD slot to add storage and, like all the Android devices we've tested, the Velocity can be connected to a computer using a micro-USB cable and used as an external storage device.
