I ordered a ZTE Warp last week when my Droid Eris started to die in the 23rd month of my 2 year contract. It was a gamble, but not a big one--even with the $199 outlay up front, I figured out that with Boost Mobile's $55 for "unlimited" everything I'd be saving money ahead of the game after four months compared to my Verizon contract. So if I absolutely hated the phone I could start over again with something else in March or April and not have lost a cent.

Anyway, my ZTE Warp arrived today, and after six hours of playing with it, I don't think I'll be shopping for another phone for a long time. It's a really nice phone--much more of an upgrade over the Eris than I expected.

Beyond the appeal of a contract-less carrier, I wanted a bigger screen, better web browsing experience, and better overall performance. The ZTE Warp delivers on all three, and more.

At 5.10 x 2.70 x 0.45 inches, the phone's height and width match those of the Droid Razr (5.15 x 2.71) almost exactly. It's a lot thicker than the Razr, and probably than other state-of-the-art devices, but it's .45" depth exactly matches that of the Nexus One, so it's not all that terrible. The 4.3" 800x480 display is bright and clear, and the web browsing experience is fantastic compared to what I was used to on the Eris (where I'd pretty much given up on browsing the web.)

I've installed a lot of software this afternoon from the Android and Amazon markets, and the Warp seems to be compatible with everything. Angry Birds, Google Music, Netflix, Google+, even Google Earth--all work smoothly without any lag or glitches. Oddly, the only lag I've experienced at all has come when I've tried to back out of the settings screens of a few applications -- I suspect that I've overwhelmed the 512MB RAM and there may be too much swapping going on in the background. I can't wait to see this phone rooted so I can run with zeppelinrox's supercharger script to optimize memory management.

The Warp's camera has taken a lot of hits in early reviews, and rightly so. I haven't used it much, and only indoors, but one thing I've learned quickly is that the flash is worse than useless if there's any light at all in the room. The default camera software is very slow too. I've had much better results though with Vignette and Camera by Lightbox, and suspect that the camera will be just fine as long as I avoid using the flash.

In order to confirm my impression that "man, this is fast", I ran Quadrant Standard benchmark on the Warp, and over three runs, the phones scores averaged 2393--or about a 1000 points higher than a stock Nexus One. Pretty impressive, I think, for a $200 off-contract phone.

The one thing I haven't been able to test is the Warp's performance as a phone. As noted above, my Verizon contract still has a month to run, and I'm facing a $110 ET fee if I switch my number over to Boost Mobile before the contract expires. So I think I'll use the Warp as a mini tablet for the next three weeks and test out its capabilities as a phone after my contract expires.