question Mobile Phones

Striker said:
You could change launchers on any android phone as far as I know.
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The launcher can be replaced, but HTC sense extends beyond the launcher in some way and it seems to continue to have a performance impact even when you're not using the HTC launcher. Samsungs TouchWiz, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have any great affect beyond the launcher. Which isn't to suggest that Samsung phones don't have problems all their own, but just that TouchWiz is generally pretty innocuous compared to things like Sense and Motoblur (With which I've had no direct experience, one or two people in the office decided that a BlackBerry was the best phone for them (I think they've subsequently changed their minds), not a single one went for a Motorola). It's not that it's necessarily any better but I would say it's a lot easier to ignore if (when?) you decide you prefer something else.
 
We got the Galaxy S II. It's way better in the flesh than the already impressive specs suggest. Battery life is great so far and the screen is to die for. I don't know what people who claim they prefer LCD have been smoking - this is easily the best phone display you can get, a very significant improvement over previous AMOLED.

One of the surprises is how good the Samsung software and customizations are. There's a lot of attention to detail all the way through. For instance, you can access the music player even while the screen is locked.

The reviews are right, it's an awesome phone.
 
One of my students was showing me a Droid Bionic yesterday. It comes with some kind of complete ridiculous streaming video VPN client. We were able to live-stream a BD rip over his LTE connection.

I have to admit I was pretty impressed by that.
 
I warned about data roaming charges in an earlier post. But this bill for $201,000 takes the cake. Note that it was run up with just 2 weeks roaming in Canada, with fairly standard charges of $10/MB.

This is why in the iPhone Syndrome thread, I muttered about sticking with a Blackberry if you do a lot of international travel.
 
Any thoughts/reactions from the vocal group here regarding the new phone announcements in the past 24+ hours?

I had said that once Apple announced their new phone I'd consider it and also the competition. I'm currently leaning towards yesterday's announcement for the (Samsung) Google Galaxy Nexus phone which will be the first to showcase ICS (or Android 4.0). It's not perfect in every regard, but it has a lot that I would like. I really like the specs on the display and also from what I've read, it's a very smooth-operating phone.

The newly announced Motorola RAZR has some nice features, but it's already behind in not having ICS. There is claim that sometime in early 2012 there will be an upgrade, but given the impression I've read about Motorola and updates, I won't hold my breath. I also don't like that Motorola has locked the bootloader. There is no user-changeable battery, which I know you could argue that I'm coming from an iPhone, so what gives...well, moving away from an iPhone, I would expect a user-changeable battery...especially for a battery-draining LTE device. I do like their gps-fence alert management interface. I find that to be a really nice feature. I also like that the phone is waterproof to help guard against accidental damage.

The last contender I was considering would be the Samsung Galaxy S II, but the TouchWiz interface is something I'm not interested in. I'd rather a native Android phone without rooting or having to load my own distro on it. Who knows how long it will be before this phone has an ICS upgrade. I expect sooner than Motorola simple because Samsung was privileged to the updates and info for the Galaxy Nexus.
 
As I understand things, there's a strained relationship between Samsung and Google right now.

SenseUI on my HTC phone isn't horrible, but I can't stand Touchwiz. The Samsung versions of applications seem horribly unpolished to me.
 
Hopefully Google will sort out Motorola's update schedule, but the fact that the bootloader will be locked suggests that's not going to happen in the short term.

I like the look of the Galaxy Nexus but I don't get why it doesn't have a microSD card slot. The screen looks like it'll be incredible though. The RAZR does at least get the card slot and still has a really nice screen. Not as nice, but still. I saw no mention of Motoblur on the announcement for the RAZR, if that means it's dead then great, if not a combination of the reputably terrible Motoblur UI and a locked bootloader just makes an otherwise really nice looking phone a thing to be shunned.

The Galaxy S II is faster running TouchWiz than any other phone running any other brand of Android so TouchWiz isn't costing you in terms of speed. In terms of UI TouchWiz doesn't seem to affect very much other than the home screen and there is nothing stopping you from replacing the home screen. (It does not require rooting, loading a custom ROM, or even side loading an app, you can download home screen apps from the Android market place). So TouchWiz shouldn't really be a reason to avoid the S II. Samsung seem to have come a long way when it comes to getting updates out promptly so I wouldn't be surprised to see ICS on the S II by the end of the year/ early next year.
 
Mercutio said:
As I understand things, there's a strained relationship between Samsung and Google right now.

SenseUI on my HTC phone isn't horrible, but I can't stand Touchwiz. The Samsung versions of applications seem horribly unpolished to me.
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What part of TouchWiz don't you like? Or perhaps more to the point which do you use? I'm running a custom ROM based on Samsungs so I'm not really sure which bits are TouchWiz and which aren't, but I don't think Samsung have done anything worth mentioning to any applications I would actually expect people to use. (But then my usage may not be typical).
 
I remember being particularly annoyed at Samsung's Email program. For some reason, it doesn't guess or apparently try to guess the connection settings for non-Gmail mail services. I can't tell you how many times I've had to manually type in SSL ports so that someone can use their ISP's email service with a Samsung Galaxy.

It's little stuff like that which is most aggravating.
 
As much as some of you guys damning Apple and there evil ways, there certainly isn't this continuity/consistency problem with their platform. My head spins after looking at a dozen Android phones, all with their own family problems, and different names on different carriers. It really becomes picking the lesser of 12 evils.

Sol, I agree with you that I don't understand why the Galaxy Nexus does not have an SD card in this day and age. What's the largest MicroSD one can buy today, 16GB? I guess that's better than nothing, but still, I'd like a regular SD if possible. Some comments I read have hinted that Samsung used up the room for the SD card by putting in a barometer and external contact leads. I haven't yet figured out why a barometer would be useful, but there's probably something fun that can be done with it. I'd probably rather have a 32GB SD card in there though.
 
Handruin said:
. I'm currently leaning towards yesterday's announcement for the (Samsung) Google Galaxy Nexus phone which will be the first to showcase ICS (or Android 4.0). It's not perfect in every regard, but it has a lot that I would like. I really like the specs on the display and also from what I've read, it's a very smooth-operating phone.
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These guys didn't seem to think it was so smooth.
http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/18/galaxy-nexus-android-ice-cream-sandwich-pictures-video-hands-on/
As to overall performance, we saw a good deal of stutter in the Galaxy Nexus before us. Taps were not always recognized and there were occasional delays in performing an instruction, though in Google’s defense, it was a phone fully loaded with running tasks and the software is being continually improved and optimized (i.e. it’s not yet fully baked). That having been said, it unfortunately remains the case that Android isn’t as swift and responsive as iOS or Windows Phone (or even MeeGo Harmattan on the N9). Or at least it wasn’t on the demo phone we got a look at. The subtle, pervasive lag that has characterized the Android UI since it inception is still there, which is not a heartening thing to hear when you’re talking about a super-powered dual-core device like the Galaxy Nexus.
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The inconsistency in Android comes from the handset manufacturers and carriers trying to distinguish themselves from one another, just like the inconsistency in the PC experience comes from OEMs trying to distinguish their products from one another. Some products are more successful than others. It would be nice if we could optionally step back to the default Google-approved Android experience, but we can't quite do that. We can install 3rd party firmware that accomplishes the same thing, but generally not without voiding the warranty on our phones.

And the biggest microSD cards are 32GB. I have three of them sitting here.
 
But in that shot what's up with the web page rendering? Why is that line of text crammed all up on the left side? My blackberry mangling pages like that is why I hate the BB browser. That crap is not ok.
 
I was unsure about a 4.3" screen when I got my Evo. I knew I wanted as much real estate as I could get, but I thought perhaps it might be awkward to hold or put it in my pocket. It's not. It's fine. 5" screens would probably also be just fine. 7", the size of my Galaxy Tablet, yeah, that's too much for a phone. But north of 4" is fine for sure.
 
MaxBurn said:
Why is that line of text crammed all up on the left side?
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At a guess, I'm going to say there might be a CSS fail going on there. The rest of the page is fine. There's clearly more text on the Nexus screen even in spite of the weirdness in that one part of the page.
 
MaxBurn said:
These guys didn't seem to think it was so smooth.
http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/18/galaxy-nexus-android-ice-cream-sandwich-pictures-video-hands-on/
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Bummer to read. That's always been something I've not enjoyed when I've seen or played with Android phones. The Engadget preview I read said it was smooth, but perhaps they weren't able to play with it long enough to see the true performance of the phone.

In any case, my iPhone is no longer as smooth as it use to be after updating to iOS 5. It has its moments of being tired and needing a rest when opening simple menus and scrolling.
 
Mercutio said:
I was unsure about a 4.3" screen when I got my Evo. I knew I wanted as much real estate as I could get, but I thought perhaps it might be awkward to hold or put it in my pocket. It's not. It's fine. 5" screens would probably also be just fine. 7", the size of my Galaxy Tablet, yeah, that's too much for a phone. But north of 4" is fine for sure.
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The only argument I have heard that makes the slightest sense is you can hold it in one hand and reach the whole screen with your thumb with a 3.5". I don't care. Can still make the stretch on a 4 or 4.5 mostly anyway. Having 4.5" screen doesn't do much to the overall size anyway.
 
Yes. It's not available yet, so I can't do that. I'm just trying to narrow down what I might want and see what others thoughts are.
 
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/iphone-4s-day-1-with-an-android-phone-owner/5014

What I am looking for from android, slow down a bit and deliver a completely polished product. Cut out the manufacturer and even more importantly the carrier customizations, or at least have them uninstallable. Realize most people have the handset for two years and make a commitment to getting them updates quickly for that period of time. Really all that frustrates me with android.
 
Looks like Sprint is having some issues with their network now that lots of iPhones have begun using it. Either Sprint is artificially limiting iPhone users in order to preserve whatever QoS they may have, or they're facing the same battle AT&T had to solve. In either case, it's making headlines now.
 
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