Related
Well I said when I had the time I would write a review comparing the HTC Touch HD and Toshiba TG01. I got the TG01 as an insurance replacement for the HD, so was not a purchasing choice, but I liked the sound of the spec and agreed to the swap (they had no HDs in stock!). Sorry the review's not exactly comprehensive and is a bit all over the place, but is an immediate reaction having owned the TG01 for a couple of weeks and just a list of things which spring to mind!
The Toshiba is big. If you're used to bigger smartphones (Which I was with the HD) then it will still feel big. It's not thick though, it's decidedly thinner than the HD (slim enough to slip through the gaps in my decking it seems... but I caught it in time!), and does slip into an average trouser pocket without poking too much from the top. However, its sheer size makes it hard to use with one hand. The screen is a great size though, and is lovely and clear. It has a built in light sensor also to help with battery life so you may think the screen's a bit dull to start with - go outside and try again or switch the option off and you'll see how vibrant it is.
The hard buttons are laid out slightly differently and aren't too bad - with the HD I did suffer from turning on the phone by accident in my pocket quite often as that button is located on the top of the phone. On the Toshiba, it's on the side and it hasn't activated itself yet. The HD had touch sensitive buttons (as does the TG01) on the screen side at the bottom for 'Home' and 'Back', which are useful... though they don't give the reassuring 'mini vibration' feedback that you got with the HD - I'm guessing that could be rectified in software though.
Battery life - the TG01, quite frankly, sucks in this department. It goes down 3 bars during an average day of a few texts and small amount of calls, maybe a bit of data and needs charging each night. I also think when the charge cycle finishes, it fails to provide power to the phone through the adapter. I could be wrong, but when I charged it at 10pm one night, by 11am the next day it decided it had run out of battery already. The HD could go at least two days with the same amount of use.
The camera on the TG01, although only 3MP (compared to the HD's 5MP) feels less jerky, and it appears better quality than the HD, despite the max resolution. The autofocus works well, though there is a considerable gap between the shutter press and the picture being taken - I'd say almost a full second. The HD was quicker, but not considerably so. Video on the TG01 can be taken at 640x480 and at 30fps - something the HD would really struggle with. And it plays back well, I'm actually impressed with that! I can imagine the next generation will all be 720p, which is exciting.
The software makes all the difference between the phones. I shudder to think how awful the TG01 would have been with the original Windows Mobile 6.1 OS running. Thankfully the one I have is running 6.5 and makes things a little nicer. However, HTC really have trumped this phone with their Touchflow system which is so intuitive and nice to use... in comparison to the basic MS offerings. The keyboard on the TG01 (though made 'better' by Toshiba) is hard to use... easier than the built in Windows one, but still makes producing texts and emails a slow arduous chore. Somehow the HTC one was just better - probably to do with the differences in the type of touchscreen they use (I believe this one is resistive and the HD was capacitive... correct me if I'm wrong). I'm not a fan of predictive text but the TG01 does have it and it seems pretty good.
My TG01 is Orange branded, but it's just a case of switching the Today screen theme to Windows Default to get rid of their horrible attempt... then you get the usual WM6.5 options, which scroll smoothly up and down, and left and right... putting all that processor power to good use. The start menu is better than before - treating everything like 'Apps'... so you can move your most used ones to the top and have everything you want within a couple of clicks, which is good.
The TG01 feels faster and indeed it should, given the 1GHz processor which is a step up from the HD's older, slower one. Running Slingplayer is nice and zippy, though still a little choppy but you can't have everything. It's certainly more responsive flicking through channels and suchlike.
I'd say use Opera for your web browser, not IE because it's definitely suited to this phone - lovely to use with a great start screen for 9 of your favourite websites... and runs so quickly and smoothly, I don't think the HD could cope as well.
The Gyroscope is a little funky on the TG01. Many times I have to shake it up and down to get it to go into portrait mode having picked it up. Although I have calibrated it to try and fix it, quite often it thinks I want to see things sideways when I don't. A gentle twist 90 degrees and back normally fixes it but I can't help shake it when it doesn't! Never had that problem with the HD - but I'm not sure if this is WM6.5 creating problems that didn't exist in the Touchflow environment on top of 6.1.
I still can't get a 'Comm Manager' which rivals that on the HD, on the TG01. All I want to do is momentarily turn off the data connection - not disable it permanently or anything, and the HD had that really easily accessible. The TG01, as mentioned previously, just has 'Phone', 'Bluetooth' and 'Wifi'... turning off 'Phone' is the only way to stop the data connection. This I want to do in the situation where I'm on Wifi but for some reason the phone continues to use the 3G connection... so is annoying!
Next, until I found an option in the TG01 to disable the screen from coming on whenever it was touched, I was having a nightmare in phone calls with blips and beeps in my ear... presumably my cheek trying to go through my calendar etc. That really should have been off by default. It still happens too, even with the option off, when I cradle the phone between my neck and ear... so now I have to hold it, and be careful not to press the side button with my hand too!
The sound quality of phone calls on the TG01 is pretty bad in my ear compared to the HD - anything 'loud' - even with the speaker turned down - gets distorted. But it's useable.
Now to my current bugbear. The TG01 can't travel at speed and do anything useful. I'm writing this on a train, in Notepad. I have taken this particular train journey (Sheffield to London St Pancras and back) several times with the HD and enjoyed being able to use the internet throughout most of the journey. The TG01 can't even hold onto a network at speed for more than a few seconds at best, so tethering is out of the question and, yesterday, trying to call my bank took 18 attempts to get to the bit where I could hear my balance, I'm not joking. It is bluntly speaking, rubbish.
Unless Orange have moved every mast along the way so they're hardly ever in range, I'm putting this one down to the phone. I mean, we were still in North London at the start of this journey when it lost the signal and it hasn't regained it yet. I'm hoping to upload this review when we're stood still in Leicester, but even then it takes forever for the phone to find the network...
So... yes, you can imagine I'm overall less than impressed with the TG01.
But then it is a cheaper phone, and it is definitely a case of "If you never had an HD, you'd never know". Because overall, it's a good, and fairly amazing piece of technology. But I'd take back an HD tomorrow if offered I'm afraid.
I've decided now I'm going to the dark side anyway and waiting for the launch of the iPhone 4/HD, sorry to say!
Hope this was useful anyway. Any questions, I'll be pleased to answer!
patc said:
Well I said when I had the time I would write a review comparing the HTC Touch HD and Toshiba TG01. I got the TG01 as an insurance replacement for the HD, so was not a purchasing choice, but I liked the sound of the spec and agreed to the swap (they had no HDs in stock!). Sorry the review's not exactly comprehensive and is a bit all over the place, but is an immediate reaction having owned the TG01 for a couple of weeks and just a list of things which spring to mind!
The Toshiba is big. If you're used to bigger smartphones (Which I was with the HD) then it will still feel big. It's not thick though, it's decidedly thinner than the HD (slim enough to slip through the gaps in my decking it seems... but I caught it in time!), and does slip into an average trouser pocket without poking too much from the top. However, its sheer size makes it hard to use with one hand. The screen is a great size though, and is lovely and clear. It has a built in light sensor also to help with battery life so you may think the screen's a bit dull to start with - go outside and try again or switch the option off and you'll see how vibrant it is.
The hard buttons are laid out slightly differently and aren't too bad - with the HD I did suffer from turning on the phone by accident in my pocket quite often as that button is located on the top of the phone. On the Toshiba, it's on the side and it hasn't activated itself yet. The HD had touch sensitive buttons (as does the TG01) on the screen side at the bottom for 'Home' and 'Back', which are useful... though they don't give the reassuring 'mini vibration' feedback that you got with the HD - I'm guessing that could be rectified in software though.
Battery life - the TG01, quite frankly, sucks in this department. It goes down 3 bars during an average day of a few texts and small amount of calls, maybe a bit of data and needs charging each night. I also think when the charge cycle finishes, it fails to provide power to the phone through the adapter. I could be wrong, but when I charged it at 10pm one night, by 11am the next day it decided it had run out of battery already. The HD could go at least two days with the same amount of use.
The camera on the TG01, although only 3MP (compared to the HD's 5MP) feels less jerky, and it appears better quality than the HD, despite the max resolution. The autofocus works well, though there is a considerable gap between the shutter press and the picture being taken - I'd say almost a full second. The HD was quicker, but not considerably so. Video on the TG01 can be taken at 640x480 and at 30fps - something the HD would really struggle with. And it plays back well, I'm actually impressed with that! I can imagine the next generation will all be 720p, which is exciting.
The software makes all the difference between the phones. I shudder to think how awful the TG01 would have been with the original Windows Mobile 6.1 OS running. Thankfully the one I have is running 6.5 and makes things a little nicer. However, HTC really have trumped this phone with their Touchflow system which is so intuitive and nice to use... in comparison to the basic MS offerings. The keyboard on the TG01 (though made 'better' by Toshiba) is hard to use... easier than the built in Windows one, but still makes producing texts and emails a slow arduous chore. Somehow the HTC one was just better - probably to do with the differences in the type of touchscreen they use (I believe this one is resistive and the HD was capacitive... correct me if I'm wrong). I'm not a fan of predictive text but the TG01 does have it and it seems pretty good.
My TG01 is Orange branded, but it's just a case of switching the Today screen theme to Windows Default to get rid of their horrible attempt... then you get the usual WM6.5 options, which scroll smoothly up and down, and left and right... putting all that processor power to good use. The start menu is better than before - treating everything like 'Apps'... so you can move your most used ones to the top and have everything you want within a couple of clicks, which is good.
The TG01 feels faster and indeed it should, given the 1GHz processor which is a step up from the HD's older, slower one. Running Slingplayer is nice and zippy, though still a little choppy but you can't have everything. It's certainly more responsive flicking through channels and suchlike.
I'd say use Opera for your web browser, not IE because it's definitely suited to this phone - lovely to use with a great start screen for 9 of your favourite websites... and runs so quickly and smoothly, I don't think the HD could cope as well.
The Gyroscope is a little funky on the TG01. Many times I have to shake it up and down to get it to go into portrait mode having picked it up. Although I have calibrated it to try and fix it, quite often it thinks I want to see things sideways when I don't. A gentle twist 90 degrees and back normally fixes it but I can't help shake it when it doesn't! Never had that problem with the HD - but I'm not sure if this is WM6.5 creating problems that didn't exist in the Touchflow environment on top of 6.1.
I still can't get a 'Comm Manager' which rivals that on the HD, on the TG01. All I want to do is momentarily turn off the data connection - not disable it permanently or anything, and the HD had that really easily accessible. The TG01, as mentioned previously, just has 'Phone', 'Bluetooth' and 'Wifi'... turning off 'Phone' is the only way to stop the data connection. This I want to do in the situation where I'm on Wifi but for some reason the phone continues to use the 3G connection... so is annoying!
Next, until I found an option in the TG01 to disable the screen from coming on whenever it was touched, I was having a nightmare in phone calls with blips and beeps in my ear... presumably my cheek trying to go through my calendar etc. That really should have been off by default. It still happens too, even with the option off, when I cradle the phone between my neck and ear... so now I have to hold it, and be careful not to press the side button with my hand too!
The sound quality of phone calls on the TG01 is pretty bad in my ear compared to the HD - anything 'loud' - even with the speaker turned down - gets distorted. But it's useable.
Now to my current bugbear. The TG01 can't travel at speed and do anything useful. I'm writing this on a train, in Notepad. I have taken this particular train journey (Sheffield to London St Pancras and back) several times with the HD and enjoyed being able to use the internet throughout most of the journey. The TG01 can't even hold onto a network at speed for more than a few seconds at best, so tethering is out of the question and, yesterday, trying to call my bank took 18 attempts to get to the bit where I could hear my balance, I'm not joking. It is bluntly speaking, rubbish.
Unless Orange have moved every mast along the way so they're hardly ever in range, I'm putting this one down to the phone. I mean, we were still in North London at the start of this journey when it lost the signal and it hasn't regained it yet. I'm hoping to upload this review when we're stood still in Leicester, but even then it takes forever for the phone to find the network...
So... yes, you can imagine I'm overall less than impressed with the TG01.
But then it is a cheaper phone, and it is definitely a case of "If you never had an HD, you'd never know". Because overall, it's a good, and fairly amazing piece of technology. But I'd take back an HD tomorrow if offered I'm afraid.
I've decided now I'm going to the dark side anyway and waiting for the launch of the iPhone 4/HD, sorry to say!
Hope this was useful anyway. Any questions, I'll be pleased to answer!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice post!!
Great comparison, however to correct you, they are both resistive touchscreen but somehow the HD is slightly more sensitive.
You seem dissapointed by the device. I highly recommend installing a HTC Sense custom rom. It will really make it superior much better than the HD and almost in the same league as the newer HD2!
Also i have also somehow found the Toshiba Keyboard to be less responsive aswell. If you are still use to the HTC Touch HD keyboard, search for HTC Ezinput 1.5 WVGA on one of XDA developers threads. Or you can try the new HTC Keyboard 2.0/2.1 found on newer HTC devices.
Anyway, i recommend flashing a HTC Sense Debranded custom ROM
Best of luck
What do yo guys like and dislike about the phone?
Being the first dual core phone from sprint, being this fast is a huge leap forward. Love the qHD screen, and HDMI out. The radio in this phone is ridiculously powerful, have full service where I has 0-1 bar previously. The only downside, which isn't that bad, is playing all the new tegra zone games. I am burning through battery life...so time to carry a second battery. So far best phone I've had yet.
second dual core.. i believe the EVO 3D is the first that Sprint has offered. That being said, I definitely prefer Sense 3.0 to BLUR, but that will be short lived until the ulocked bootloader is released.. i'm looking forward to rooting this beastly device.
Likes:
qHD screen
Double yellow flash LEDs make a great flashlight
All the stuff you already know about from the specs, like GSM world phone, kickstand, etc.
Dislikes:
Pixelation caused by PenTile display
Tegra 2 is smooth, but could be smoother
Locked bootloader
The artist formerly known as Motoblur is still only okay, and was quickly replaced by Launcher Pro by me
No 5Ghz 802.11n
Received the phone first thing Friday morning, have a early launch day EVO 3D as well. Purchased this for travel use, so will be using it for a while before I re-activate the 3D - even longer if it grows on me more than the 3D did. Initial impressions from weekend of use:
Like:
- Kickstand is back (original EVO owner). It's still a bit "wobbly" but the bonus is that it's software functional (pulling it will activate landscape viewing and even bring the phone out of sleep) and the phone can be flipped horizontally on either side - the stand will not collapse (but the surface + volume rocker + camera button may get scraped up)
- Camera shutter button
- Data encryption options (have to look into this more, though)
- LED lights up in multiple colors
- GPS radio is faster than my 3D - can get an accurate lock in moments.
- Reception/antenna seems stronger. Many more bars showing, and downloads seem faster (than my 3D).
- Lots of built in memory (weird that it appears as SD Card, though)
- Speakerphone is loud as hell.
- Ear speaker is clearer than my 3D.
- Grooved/textured volume rocker and camera button.
- Back cover snaps on TIGHT, has soft touch 'rubbery' finish
DISLike:
- Kickstand is a pain to "kick out". On the upside it's snug in there and won't flip out unintentionally. Then again, the EVO's never did, either.
- Camera shutter button is one-stage only
- CANNOT shut off shutter sound. WTF.
- The stock gallery app is pure garbage. You can't even view the folders that contain photos in an overview. It's literally view all photo files, view all camera photos, view by location or view by tag.
- LED does not light up when charging. WTF?
- No included SD card
- Back cover is HARD to get off. You'll feel like your nail is going to flip off or you're going to damage the slot you're pulling on.
- Even with the soft touch back cover, phone still feels very slippery...
- Pentile display is horrible. Just pixels - all I see are pixels. I didn't even know what pentile was until I Googled to find out what the heck was up with this display. Colors seem "off" and all edges I see are jagged. Text appears blurry due to 'pixelation'.
- Stock launcher seems choppy/laggy. Is this a frame-rate issue? Not sure but using something like Go Launcher is smooth as butter.
Coming from an Epic, so some of my observations are from that perspective...
Bugs:
- Only one I've run across so far is I'm not sure if my light sensor is doing what it's supposed to do. It works according to various sensor tests, but the phone doesn't seem to automatically change brightness as it should, and the "in-pocket protection" thing doesn't lock my phone when I, well, stick it in my pocket.
Pros:
- Call quality is excellent, much better than the Epic and probably the best I've ever had. Incoming audio is great on both the earpiece and speakerphone, and I'm being told I sound great on the other end.
- Speed seems outstanding. I'm not experiencing any lag whatsoever, on the home screens, opening apps, scrolling, etc. Everything just happens exactly as I expect it to. Many of the frustrating lags I experienced with the Epic, like the switch from portrait to landscape and back, are smooth as glass on the Photon. Absolutely loving performance so far.
- Screen is fine for me. Plenty bright, more natural colors than the Epic, and I see absolutely none of the PenTile weaknesses others are hating. I really think this is a person-by-person thing, because I've heard people complaining about the same thing on the Epic and I never saw it there, either. For me, the screen is not only good enough, but downright pleasant to use. Oh, and Netflix looks fine to me, not sure what others are seeing. I played Toy Story 3 as a test, and it was lovely.
- I like the software better than on the Epic. Email, messaging, social network integration, transitions (I like the flow in changing orientation rather than Samsung's abrupt switch), etc. is all nice and makes me happy with my decision to go with the Photon. I really don't like Samsung's flavor, I'm finding, and simply like Motorola's better. This makes me very hesitant indeed to even consider switching to a Within if it's out within (no pun intended) 30 days no matter what kind of crazy specs it has.
- Love how you can dismiss individual notifications.
- Configuration options are better on the Photon, such as the ability to define battery states and such. The Epic was lacking in some things I didn't know were possible on Android devices.
- The Photon car dock is heads and shoulders better than the Epic's equivalent. There's far less interference when nothing's playing (just a tiny bit that I have to listen for, vs. the screech-in-my-ear interference with the Epic's dock), and I like that the Photon dock can be customized a bit. It's nice to be able to add my music apps and launch them directly from the dock, rather than going through the launch-first-then-start-dock gyrations I had to go through with the Epic. The Photon is also easier to add to the dock than the Epic was, in terms of getting the USB port lined up.
- It's a small thing, but I love the kickstand mode. I'm actually using it when the phone sits on my desk, which I didn't reall expect. Kind of nice.
- Phone and 3G radios seem roughly equivalent to the Epic, maybe a bar better in most cases on the Photon. Although I've been noticing better service in some place where I got no service at all with the Epic (like my favorite place for Indian food, which is in a black hole for the Epic but where the Photon got three full bars and 3G).
Cons:
- Can't turn off the shutter sound on the camera. I hate that.
- Motorola widgets are kind of plain and 2-dimensional.
- Getting worse wifi reception with the Photon. Where I had a single bar of wifi in my home office in the garage with the Epic, I'm not getting a single bar with the Photon. And it translates to performance, where I get some disconnects with the Photon that I never saw with the Epic. It's not a dealbreaker by any means, but something to keep an eye on.
- The battery only increments by 10% until you get to 15% left, then it goes in increments of 5%. Seems silly to me to not know if I'm at 99% remaining or 91%. So, yes, that should be fixed.
Bottom line:
I'm probably missing some things, but those are my initial impressions.
Overall, I like the Photon MUCH better than the Epic so far, and if the Within will have the same basic software features as the Epic, then I'm not interested in it even if it has a theoretically faster processor. I like the screen on the Photon well enough to not make me salivate for the SAMOLED Plus screen on the Within. Very happy with the Photon.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
fordhighlander said:
Being the first dual core phone from sprint, being this fast is a huge leap forward. Love the qHD screen, and HDMI out. The radio in this phone is ridiculously powerful, have full service where I has 0-1 bar previously. The only downside, which isn't that bad, is playing all the new tegra zone games. I am burning through battery life...so time to carry a second battery. So far best phone I've had yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doiiii. Evo 3d.
Sent from my Xoom using XDA Premium App
I love it, I work for sprint and played with it over the weekend and it performed much better then my 3d. The netflix app works perfect no bad picture like I have on my evo 3d. The kickstand is hard to open but I hope over time it will get easier. The speaker volume is a lot better then the 3D. Con is motoblur is not that great yet, but with launcher pro not that big a deal. Also I miss the quick settings in notification bar like the 3D has. Also Sprint ID but its optional on this phone. And all the junk widgets on it when you first get it takes a few mins to remove and put up what you want. The optional dock to use is amazing and with the bluetooth keyboard makes it a computer on your big screen. The lack of SD isn't that big a deal to me since I always use the 16gb one I have had for awhile, if it had one I would just take it out and replace it with mine anyway. Over all in my personal opinon its the best phone sprint has and best phone I have played with.
predwing said:
I love it, I work for sprint and played with it over the weekend and it performed much better then my 3d. The netflix app works perfect no bad picture like I have on my evo 3d. The kickstand is hard to open but I hope over time it will get easier. The speaker volume is a lot better then the 3D. Con is motoblur is not that great yet, but with launcher pro not that big a deal. Also I miss the quick settings in notification bar like the 3D has. Also Sprint ID but its optional on this phone. And all the junk widgets on it when you first get it takes a few mins to remove and put up what you want. The optional dock to use is amazing and with the bluetooth keyboard makes it a computer on your big screen. The lack of SD isn't that big a deal to me since I always use the 16gb one I have had for awhile, if it had one I would just take it out and replace it with mine anyway. Over all in my personal opinon its the best phone sprint has and best phone I have played with.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed! The build quality on this phone is top notch. The speaker is loud and sounds great. Volume and power buttons are clicky and love the ridges. The beveled glass is a beautiful touch. Gives the screen depth and you can tell its gorilla glass
Sent from my MB855 using XDA Premium App
Biggest problem I have are three things
1st. Battery percentage is only in increments of 10 percent, wtf?
2nd SwiftKey x I can't get the audible key press to work
3rd the pentile screen is pixel hell
Other than that it's better than the 3d
Sent from my MB855 using XDA App
I went from an Epic to the Evo 3D and decided to do the 30 day swap to the Photon to give it a try while I wait on the galaxy s II.
PROS:
Tegra 2 processor is very powerful. Access to the Tegra Zone games on a phone is really cool. Most of the games I have on my Xoom run on the Photon.
As said before, the speaker on this phone is really good. The Evo 3D was whisper quiet.
I really like the shiny, glossy smooth finish although it is a bit slippery
The display is extra dark somehow. I believe there is a filter in there making it darker. OLED > LCD but this phone eases that pain.
Moto blur or whatever it's called is garbage but then again Sense is a memory hog and touchwiz sucks. In any case it's all about ADW for me anyway.
The kickstand and docking options are really nice to have. Most manufacturers overlook the dock aspect but Moto has been really good about it.
Lots of memory available. Thankfully they also included an sd slot.
CONS:
No access to quick settings in the notification tray. This really bothers me. I guess I've been spoiled by having this. If you are in the middle of using an app it's such a pain to have to go back to the home screen to bring up the app drawer to find settings - wireless - and turn on wifi.
Video compatibility is lackluster. Don't expect to encode an mp4 and just have it work. I have to spend some time figuring out what is wrong. The Galaxy S played anything I threw at it. This photon and my xoom are both very fickle about codec support.
Google music bug. My (cloud) songs will just keep playing after they reach the end. So a 3 minute song will have played twice once it hits 6 minutes and so on until I skip the track. This happened on my Epic but was not a problem on the Evo3D.
I love the phone other than one thing:
The location of the HDMI and USB port. If I want to use the kickstand and charge at the same time, no go. Pretty much forces you to buy the dock.
pajinki said:
I love the phone other than one thing:
The location of the HDMI and USB port. If I want to use the kickstand and charge at the same time, no go. Pretty much forces you to buy the dock.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not true. Flip out your kickstand, and try setting it down with the volume rocker and camera shutter button on the bottom. You will see that you can, which allows you to have the two ports plugged in.
Really? That is one firm kickstand if that's the case! I just tried flipping my Evo like that and the kickstand snaps back into the phone.
dfin13 said:
Really? That is one firm kickstand if that's the case! I just tried flipping my Evo like that and the kickstand snaps back into the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya when it's open, it's open. Works GREAT
Sent from my MB855 using XDA Premium App
Digitaltigre said:
[*]No access to quick settings in the notification tray. This really bothers me. I guess I've been spoiled by having this. If you are in the middle of using an app it's such a pain to have to go back to the home screen to bring up the app drawer to find settings - wireless - and turn on wifi.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Give Quick Settings in the market a try, works great, other than the 3G/4G toggles not working yet.
I can't believe Google hasn't built this in yet. It's a really horrible user experience having to go into settings to deal with wifi and other frequently toggled settings.
Which is all the more reason I'm stunned HTC didn't include a kickstand on the 3D. Considering the EVO 4G with kickstand was the flagship device, it seemed pretty bizarre to me to remove the one thing that differentiated it from other devices.
The Photons kickstand is super strong. It doesn't flip out as fast as the EVOs but I haven't had the phone long enough to find a quick way to do it or a one hand approach.
As far as the Pentile screen or screen door affect as others call it; I haven't seen that. Its been reported if you turn screen brightness down, the screen becomes bearable. Out-the-box, I thought my screen was pretty decent.
Its hard to know a phones pro/cons based on 5-10 minutes play time in a store. I purchased the EVO 3D so I could decide for myself if it was the next best thing...IMO, it wasn't. Got the Photon for same reason. Currently the Photon is a keeper but on the other hand, I've only had mine since last night- not long enough to give detailed opinion on.
I did have ONE issue which turned out to be user error. My pics were all dark and blue. I forgot to remove the blue protective strip off the back of the lens.
Digitaltigre said:
Video compatibility is lackluster. Don't expect to encode an mp4 and just have it work. I have to spend some time figuring out what is wrong. The Galaxy S played anything I threw at it. This photon and my xoom are both very fickle about codec support.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What issues are you having? Mine has played almost everything I've thrown at it that doesn't have anything over 2 channel audio. It will not play 5.1 or DTS encoded files. Also, it doesn't seem to like high profile encodes (4.1) either.
Additional Pros:
Gingerbread UI elements are here. The old tube television screen off animation I had on the Nexus S but they took away from the Evo 3D is here.
Additionally, the subtle color cues when you hit the edge the screen or menu - if you continue to pull or push the screen the color cue fades more into the screen real estate.
Encryption option is awesome. I tested it for a while today on both the internal and SD card memory.
Additional Cons:
The color scheme is unfortunate - light/baby blue? Really? It's this way on the Verizon Droid X2, also. I wish they at least allowed a way to change it to something else. It's not even that it's not a masculine color - it's that it's hard to see. The color cue I mentioned above when you hit the edges of screens and menus is BARELY visible when it's baby blue.
Encryption is seemingly all or nothing. If you want to simply copy photos you've taken to your desktop for backing up... well, I don't know how you'd handle this yet. Once you encrypt, everything to move to and save to one ot he encrypted locations is locked up tight.
The trick on the kickstand is to push down on the hinge end with the grooves cut in it with your thumb nail...this pops out the other end to grab with your index finger
(motorola photon rule seem to be "grooves cut in it" = "push here")
Hello,
I thought I'd post a quick review for anyone considering a Verizon G3. I'm sure others have reviews to give as well. My last 2 phones were the Verizon S3 and Verizon S4. I also had many HTC phones going back to WM.
Battery life - at first I'd say it was comparable to my S4 but then I went to all applications and disabled a bunch that were on after I activated my phone - now the battery life is great - I've had it on but unused and uncharged since last night (1 push email account - no texting, no imdb, no calls) and it only went down 5% in 12 hours (BT enabled, WIFI disabled). The screen activity does seem to use more battery life than my S4 and so does GPS. Otherwise phone talk time seems to have about the same battery drain. I only use BT for making calls so BT is on 24x7. FYI I just got the Plantronics EDGE and it is amazing (I also have the Sennheiser presence which has better battery life but overall I like the Edge much more.
Charging - the phone is picky about chargers. I've used the same chargers I've had for years for my Nexus, S3, S4, Plantronics and Sennheiser headsets but the G3 said it wasn't acceptable and wouldn't use it to charge. On the plus side the included charger does seem to charge it quickly. Biggest disappointment - that it didn't come with a wireless charging backplate.
Signal strength - I'd say it has only slightly better voice signal reception than the S4 but every bit helps (e.g. calls from the cement garage beneath my apartment complex). Data seems a teeny bit slower though when running speedtest. I haven't done enough testing for this to be an accurate or detailed analysis.
Overlay - I have to say it seems zippy enough to me and as user friendly as the Samsung although different so it takes a teeny bit of getting used to - except the back arrow - that took a lot since it is on the opposite side from where my thumb automatically tried to go when I wanted to go back.
Screen - great size. I don't think the contrast is as sharp as the S4 - you can say it is color saturation or whatever you want - in the end it still means some things are as well separated. There is a color adjustment some say impacts contrast but what it does is adjust colors - not contrast IMHO.
Buttons - I thought I'd really freak out about not having the hard buttons where I had in the past but that was easier to get used to than the back button - I'm finally used to both though.
Bloat ware - both Samsung and LG have some apps I'd love to just uninstall but until you root them, you are stuck with the crap although most of it you can disable. Health was the very first thing I would uninstall if I could.
Issues - no issues so far other than the charging one. No reboots or hangs. My guess is that people are installing an app that doesn't play well with the G3 or perhaps the current version of Android. I admit I don't have more than 15 apps I install myself. The only ones I really care about are truecaller(mediocre call blocker/id app), Tesla (flashlight), call history, cal widget (calendar for home screen) and the rest are items I only use occasionally - e.g. ip calcs, where's my car, speedtest etc. I tried some live wallpapers and went back to static ones - attempting to keep every bit of battery life. I had a hard time pairing my BT headset with my new phone - perhaps there is something different about the process on the G3 - I ended up using NFC and it worked instantly.
Conclusion - I like the phone a lot although I'm sure the S5 would have been an excellent choice as well. I like the screen size on this a bit more but I like the contrast on the Samsung screen. I notice the difference in large 4K TVs right away but for a screen of this size the S4 resolution was fine. You really have to look to notice the difference.
I changed the soft button placement on mine to make back on the right side.
squeeze said:
I changed the soft button placement on mine to make back on the right side.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's an excellent idea. It turns out - I use back more often so it is more comfortable to me in the LG position although I admit it took me many many many fumbled pressing of the wrong button before I'm used to the new layout.
Nice review. Think I will be picking up one this week.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Thoughts on jumping from an S3 to the G3? Just picked up an S5 for the wife (currently has a Droid 4, yikes) due to slightly better battery life and camera from what I've read. Debating myself whether or not to run with the S3 or the G3. I typically play with my phones more than my wife so the S5 may be out due to it's lock down by VZ.
teamhurtado said:
Thoughts on jumping from an S3 to the G3? Just picked up an S5 for the wife (currently has a Droid 4, yikes) due to slightly better battery life and camera from what I've read. Debating myself whether or not to run with the S3 or the G3. I typically play with my phones more than my wife so the S5 may be out due to it's lock down by VZ.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The S3 to the G3 would be a huge jump in battery life alone (but so would a jump to the S5). If you play games with your phone I'd go with the S5. If you just want to root them - I really couldn't say which would be better suited for that.
teamhurtado said:
Thoughts on jumping from an S3 to the G3? Just picked up an S5 for the wife (currently has a Droid 4, yikes) due to slightly better battery life and camera from what I've read. Debating myself whether or not to run with the S3 or the G3. I typically play with my phones more than my wife so the S5 may be out due to it's lock down by VZ.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Let me know how the camera works out. I found from my experience that it was too slow especially at night shots.
---------- Post added at 02:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:34 AM ----------
boe said:
That's an excellent idea. It turns out - I use back more often so it is more comfortable to me in the LG position although I admit it took me many many many fumbled pressing of the wrong button before I'm used to the new layout.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi. I am right handed so I need it close to the right thumb.
squeeze said:
[/COLOR]
Hi. I am right handed so I need it close to the right thumb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm right handed as well - but my thumb is more comfortable extended than bent so I prefer it on the left now that I'm used to it but if you prefer it close, I think you made an excellent suggestion about reassigning it.
boe said:
The S3 to the G3 would be a huge jump in battery life alone (but so would a jump to the S5). If you play games with your phone I'd go with the S5. If you just want to root them - I really couldn't say which would be better suited for that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Catch is the S5 has less than half the storage and when L releases, ART sucks up 25% more storage and needs about 1GB more floor to operate stably. If a light to medium user, IMO the G3 is the best newer device overall. If a heavy user, I would not recommend the G3, but JMO. I would hold off for the 805 models that will release that are to battle the evil iPhone 6 army this fall.
Note 4 is looking sweet, but even bigger than the G3. Touch Wiz is an easy Nova fix. Do not be surprised if LG releases the G3 Plus as well this fall. Not seeing LG staying out when Samsung releases the "Prime" and Note 4. The industry is fully expecting new Android devices to combat iPhone 6.
I wonder if the reason the carriers priced the 3/32 as they did (about $100 less than normal for these specs) due to a looming new model?
rushless said:
Catch is the S5 has less than half the storage and when L releases, ART sucks up 25% more storage and needs about 1GB more floor to operate stably.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you tell me what are L and ART?
boe said:
Can you tell me what are L and ART?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android L is the newest Android release coming this fall, it's currently released as a beta but will most likely be android version 5.0 (currently 4.4.4). Art is a runtime for apps, it improves speed and such but also requires more storage per app. You can manually activate ART but it's not finished (phones currently use Dalvik). it'll be the the default runtime for Android L and will finally be stable as well. Battery life will also jump up around 36% because android L and ART manage apps / the phone far better.
The 36% was in a very controlled scenario of what apps and usage. For heavier use, there will be little improvement since the main drainers are the display and chipset, closely followed by the radios.
Overall the only thing everyone will notice is less storage space.
rushless said:
The 36% was in a very controlled scenario of what apps and usage. For heavier use, there will be little improvement since the main drainers are the display and chipset, closely followed by the radios.
Overall the only thing everyone will notice is less storage space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good to know - thanks.
Can anybody that upgraded from a Note 3 specifically comment on radio performance on the G3? Maybe a quick comparison of dBm if possible? I'm pretty satisfied with my Note 3 but the RF hasn't really been that great. From what I've read so far the G3 seems to have strong signal reception.
untouchablez said:
Can anybody that upgraded from a Note 3 specifically comment on radio performance on the G3? Maybe a quick comparison of dBm if possible? I'm pretty satisfied with my Note 3 but the RF hasn't really been that great. From what I've read so far the G3 seems to have strong signal reception.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The G3 has SLIGHTLY better call reception - not huge but I can make calls a LITTLE more reliably in bad places e.g. partially underground parking garages. Not as much as I hoped but better than my S4. Data speed seems a teeny bit slower. Not the exact same as the Note3 but I've had reception problems with every Samsung phone I've ever had on Verizon - starting with the Galaxy Nexus, S3, S4...
Are there any swift key users out there. I have noticed some lag with the keyboard and lag overall....Now this leads me to my next question, a deadspot where the delete key is, but easily fixable by shutting off screen and back on...Would you determine thats software or hardware issue?
I guess you wanted us to chime in as well? Here's my review...
This is the second phone I’ve purchased without seeing it first. I have to say it’s a great phone, but if you’re looking to pay full price to keep your unlimited data, then I do not feel it’s worth the $600+ if you already have a premier device. I’d go so far as to say, if you have a G2, I wouldn’t upgrade to the G3. The differences between the two are not that big in my opinion. Since I was able get the phone for $99+ activation fee and tax, I do feel that it is well worth that price to upgrade from any device that you are unhappy with.
Screen – If you love AMOLED, you’ll hate this screen. It’ll seem washed out to you and not as crisp. If you hate AMOLED, you’ll love this screen. It’s that simple. AMOLED screen always seem to have that “In Your Face” feeling to me. They actually hurt my eyes and I’ve never been a fan of them. After spending years in the Motorola line, I never got used to a sharp display. The toned down QHD display of the G3 is perfect for my eyes even when it’s 100%.
Battery – A lot has been said about the battery life on this phone. The screen does pull down the battery more than other phones, but it still lasts all day. That’s all I care about. Can I get through an entire day with the phone? If so, then the battery is good. I typically watch a little NetFlix, read some emails, play a few games, maybe turn on the hotspot for a little browsing with my tablet, then go to bed with it around 20-30%. As far as I’m conserved, that’s good battery life.
Size – My opinion, this is one of the best features of this phone. The 5.5” display does not feel like it’s that big because the phone is not that much bigger than its predecessor the G2. The thin bezels are a thing of beauty and most of what you see is the screen, not blank real-estate. However, the bottom bezel is just big enough that it works great for holding the phone while playing games without touching the screen.
Software – While the Android software is pretty much the same 4.4.2 that LG put out for the G2, they have added a few features that work well with the bigger screen. QSlide is a nice feature and one, which if you remember it’s there, can be very useful. It allows you to open an app in front of the current app as a window. Of course there’s only certain apps this works with. I am mixed about the SmartTips. I haven’t seen anything that is useful to me, but maybe I don’t need anything “Smart” enabled? As for Smart Bulletin Screen, I turned it off. It would have been better if they had designed a “Blinkfeed” style window here instead of a combination screen for SmartTips and LG Health.
IR Blaster – This one is finicky. I found that the IR port had to be directly facing the equipment to work. I most cases, you have to point it right at the device and not in the general direction. For me, it’s not a big deal as I really never used it on the M8.
Camera – I love the camera. It’s basically the same one from the G2 and I loved the G2’s camera. I haven’t really noticed any difference in the focus speed of the camera, so I am not sure if the laser focus is a gimmick or not, but the camera itself works just as you’d expect and it is right up there with the premier phones of today.
Signal – I do wish LG had improved the radios. I went around with the G2 and G3 reading decibels in different areas. I saw no difference between the two phones leading me to wonder if they even did anything to the G3’s radios. SpeedTest were also identical and I live in an xLTE environment. I have even had the G3 slip into 3G mode where the G2 always stayed in 4G. I’d have to say this is the biggest disappointment for me. (If it continues to slip into 3G mode in certain areas, then I will consider switching back to the G2.)
Conclusion: If you’re looking to move from the latest and greatest phone (IE: HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S5, or even the LG G2), I would advise against it. There’s just no noticeable upgrade from today’s premier devices. However, if you’re unhappy with your current phone, then the G3 is one to consider. I do believe that this phone will be my main carry device for the next year or so. Well, maybe until the iPhone 6 is released…
We should also see two Samsung phones to counter the iPhone 6 launch and maybe a 805 version of the G3.... Maybe.
Not a full review yet, that's to come soon. But here's my unboxing and first impressions/first look at the device!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40hMAEae1NA
boe said:
Hello,
I thought I'd post a quick review for anyone considering a Verizon G3. I'm sure others have reviews to give as well. My last 2 phones were the Verizon S3 and Verizon S4. I also had many HTC phones going back to WM.
Battery life - at first I'd say it was comparable to my S4 but then I went to all applications and disabled a bunch that were on after I activated my phone - now the battery life is great - I've had it on but unused and uncharged since last night (1 push email account - no texting, no imdb, no calls) and it only went down 5% in 12 hours (BT enabled, WIFI disabled). The screen activity does seem to use more battery life than my S4 and so does GPS. Otherwise phone talk time seems to have about the same battery drain. I only use BT for making calls so BT is on 24x7. FYI I just got the Plantronics EDGE and it is amazing (I also have the Sennheiser presence which has better battery life but overall I like the Edge much more.
Charging - the phone is picky about chargers. I've used the same chargers I've had for years for my Nexus, S3, S4, Plantronics and Sennheiser headsets but the G3 said it wasn't acceptable and wouldn't use it to charge. On the plus side the included charger does seem to charge it quickly. Biggest disappointment - that it didn't come with a wireless charging backplate.
Signal strength - I'd say it has only slightly better voice signal reception than the S4 but every bit helps (e.g. calls from the cement garage beneath my apartment complex). Data seems a teeny bit slower though when running speedtest. I haven't done enough testing for this to be an accurate or detailed analysis.
Overlay - I have to say it seems zippy enough to me and as user friendly as the Samsung although different so it takes a teeny bit of getting used to - except the back arrow - that took a lot since it is on the opposite side from where my thumb automatically tried to go when I wanted to go back.
Screen - great size. I don't think the contrast is as sharp as the S4 - you can say it is color saturation or whatever you want - in the end it still means some things are as well separated. There is a color adjustment some say impacts contrast but what it does is adjust colors - not contrast IMHO.
Buttons - I thought I'd really freak out about not having the hard buttons where I had in the past but that was easier to get used to than the back button - I'm finally used to both though.
Bloat ware - both Samsung and LG have some apps I'd love to just uninstall but until you root them, you are stuck with the crap although most of it you can disable. Health was the very first thing I would uninstall if I could.
Issues - no issues so far other than the charging one. No reboots or hangs. My guess is that people are installing an app that doesn't play well with the G3 or perhaps the current version of Android. I admit I don't have more than 15 apps I install myself. The only ones I really care about are truecaller(mediocre call blocker/id app), Tesla (flashlight), call history, cal widget (calendar for home screen) and the rest are items I only use occasionally - e.g. ip calcs, where's my car, speedtest etc. I tried some live wallpapers and went back to static ones - attempting to keep every bit of battery life. I had a hard time pairing my BT headset with my new phone - perhaps there is something different about the process on the G3 - I ended up using NFC and it worked instantly.
Conclusion - I like the phone a lot although I'm sure the S5 would have been an excellent choice as well. I like the screen size on this a bit more but I like the contrast on the Samsung screen. I notice the difference in large 4K TVs right away but for a screen of this size the S4 resolution was fine. You really have to look to notice the difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I may ask, which apps did you disable/turn off after you set up your G3? I am curious what you found to be the battery hogs that you don't or won't need. Everyone has different needs, but knowing what others did will help others as well.
New updates on review are in the 2nd post. Thanks for reading!
Hey everyone! Many of you know me from other threads or some Q&A, but I wanted to share my experience with the Nexus 6P. I do have a thread where you can ask me anything to try or test out on the device, to help answer some questions. I am a front end developer, UX/UI designer, and business owner. This review is based on how I use the phone and where the phone either shines or fails to perform to my needs. The #hype is real on this device and I am hoping to provide you some feedback that removes the bias of #hype and focuses on the device. Hope you find this helpful and thanks for reading!
Introduction
The Nexus 6P is probably the one device I was so excited to get since the iPhone 4. From reading every possible hands on review, watching every YouTube video, and being on the forums trying to calculate shipping dates. This phone has generated so much buzz that I finally felt so excited to get a device. Compared to last year, nothing was "omfg must have". The Nexus 6P filled that hope.
Ergonomics & Hardware
There is no need for me to get into the specs, we all know them or they are easily available elsewhere. This review is about how the specs of the phone play to the hardware and software to make OUR experience the best. The Nexus 6P has some amazing hardware. I got the 32gb Aluminum (long live #aluminati!) version. It is such a delight to hold. The device feels fantastic in my hands, and I have average size hands for a 5'10" individual. I am coming from a Moto X Pure, Note 5, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPhone 6, and Nexus 6 over the past year. Yes, I change phones frequently...mostly for entertainment or variety. Unlike the iPhones, Note 5, and Nexus 6 - The 6P feels stable in my hands, easy to hold, my thumb can reach across the screen without slipping and the weight of the device does help me balance it for one handed use. Where iPhones were so light and thin, the ergonomics sucked to hold; the 6P thickness actually helps in one handed use. The width of the device is not so wide, like the 2014 N6, that one handed use is easy and 2 handed use works just fine as well.
Slippery - Or should I say, lack thereof? The metal on the phone has a slight grip to it. Similar to that of the Moto X Pure (minus the rubber), but it stays in my hand. Those of you worried about the metal frame and possibly being slippery like the iPhones or even Nexus 6; have no fear.
Metal & Screen - Every version (color) will probably differ. I can only speak for the aluminum version. I have barely put the device down and I have zero fingerprints on the back. Oils do not absorb into the metal to look dirty. The only area where fingerprints are obvious is where they should be...on the screen. Which brings me to the glass of the screen. The glass, in the first hours, felt good but over the ongoing use it has been a little tough for me to slide my fingers over. Could be me or maybe I just need to put the damn phone down. The glass is beautiful and seems strong, but I ordered a glass screen protector to help with fingerprints and always feeling smooth to the touch.
There is a lip around the edge. The metal lip seems to be that of 0.2mm, give or take. It's extremely subtle, but obvious it is there to the touch. If that is something that would bother you, the glass screen protectors seem to hit the correct dimensions in thickness to flatten the surface out entirely. I can imagine the lip probably makes applying a glass screen protector even easier due to form fitting vs aligning.
Buttons and Fingerprint Sensors
The buttons are metal and solid. They don't wiggle around, which drove me insane on my iPhone and Moto X Pure. You can tell they were built well. The home button has a texture to identify easily and works quite well. The click in on volume and home buttons have a easily identifying feedback so you know you are pushing them. As silly as it may sound, the Moto X Pure failed in that area. Where the buttons were so easy to push and lack of feedback on press, there were nights where I would watch a YouTube clip and accidentally click the volume in and piss off the lady.
The fingerprint sensor is like every other reviewer has put it. Extremely fast and reliable. I programmed my index and middle fingers on both hands to the fingerprint sensor. I love that I can pull my phone out of my pocket and its ready to go without awkward thumb bending on the front to reach. Only gripe here on the UX is the inability to unlock the device with my fingerprint when it's laying on my desk. It's not a huge deal to some, but I am at a desk non stop. There is a solution, in Android Marshmallow for this though. I setup certain areas as my "trusted" areas. My car, for example, is a trusted connection and the phone does not require to unlock. I did the same for the bluetooth on my work desk. Solves the issue, but leaves the phone open to access if that worries you.
Notification Light
I love notification lights. This one is simple and great. Not buried into the speaker. Obvious pulsing and colors. Just make sure you turn it on! My phone had it disabled. To enable, go to settings > Notifications > Pulse Notification Light. This is one of my favorite features, for as simple and dumb as it may sound.
Speed and Battery
This phone is lightning fast for me. It was built to work fluidly with Android M and it does exactly that. I haven't ran into any hiccups, crashing, issues and everything just...works! Not sure when I was last able to say that about an Android device. This is the first Android I don't have the "want or need" to begin installing greenify, sleep, and other apps that help chill the phone out and not drain the battery. App switching is smooth, RAM usage has stayed consistently at 1.5gb and the camera opens without stutter or lag for me. I frequently find something I wish to take a picture of and it just opens without delay. More on the camera further down.
The battery is great. The synergy with Android M, Doze, and the Nexus 6p - the battery life for me has been phenomenal. It's too early to reveal screenshots, but just in my general use today I have only used 9% of my battery. I have sent numerous emails, taken some pictures, showed off the device, used Google Maps for navigation, and listened to a Play Music Radio Station on the drive to work. I am happy to say that I am sure battery life won't be a big complaint amongst users. If you use your device so intensively, the rapid charging is rapid. Not as fast as my Moto X Pure, but pretty darn fast. It won't let you down.
Battery life screenshots attached in this post. I am impressed by the battery on this device.
Camera
I ****ing love this camera. The pictures are beautiful, detailed, and vibrant with colors. I take a lot of pictures with my devices and generally, my family will ask me to use my phone (whatever it may be at the time) to take those perfect shots. The focus, ISO, exposure and color has not let me down at all. I was able to get some amazing night shots, with the improved camera here. Lack of OIS isn't missed much on pictures, but at 4k video recording it would have been very helpful. In general, the camera is reliable and great quality. The pictures you may want to take at a bar or night environment will probably come out better than that of any other phone...with or without a flash. Samples attached of a couple night shots I posted elsewhere.
I did install a camera app called FV-5. It gives you far more control over the camera and has made some pictures really incredible. I have to tinker with it more and learn about some settings, but the face detection, focus and more on the app really allows the hardware to shine. Hopefully they update it quickly with more support for the 6P camera hardware features.
Connectivity
The most important part of the phone. I have Verizon and some areas in my house or office will be weaker than others. Where my Moto X Pure wasn't getting the best signal, I do see a slight stronger signal on the 6P. Nothing much though and wouldn't bank on it improving your past experiences substantially. WiFi speeds are great. I attached a screenshot of my speeds at home, on WiFi, with the 6P.
Bluetooth and Car
I use my phone in the car all the time. If this one aspect of a phone is flawed, then it goes back. I was concerned at first, because the phone and car would not connect. I was worried it was related to Android M. After I turned off bluetooth and turned it back on - it connected and paired, finally. I was most worried at this point.
Since then, I have gotten in and out of my car and the transition and connection to bluetooth has been seamless and quick. Where my Moto X Pure and iPhones took about 30 seconds to finally connect to the car and have a 3s gap where I miss conversation; The 6P seems to connect and transition the audio instantly. I hope it stays that way!
In the End?
I love this phone. It does live up to the #hype. Without any bias to my excitement to have it, this phone has pretty much hit every aspect of feature I would want out of a mobile device. The best part is IT JUST WORKS. That used to be my argument for Apple devices, but I can now say the same for Android. Sorry if that disappoints some of you... This is also the first android device where I don't feel the need to unlock or root. I will unlock and root because it's a Nexus and I like to develop/test ROMS out. However, those of you who felt you had to rely on unlocking and rooting to tinker settings, you may find that you won't have that urge to do so anymore. If anything, I'll do it for TWRP.
Where I would normally plan on switching devices every few months or 6 months, I can see myself keeping this device for a year to 2 years. Just won't tell the lady that or else I'll hear it when I want to upgrade to next years Nexus line...
Lastly, in the day using it, I have had many people ask me, "Hey, what phone is that?". While I don't care for being known to have the latest and greatest, it's fun showing it off. I can't wait to see some Frosties or Graphites in the wild, but for you folks with #aluminati...stand proud and shine. I hope this helped provide some honest insight and answer some questions.
Thanks folks!
Note: The only changes I made to the pictures was reduce the size of them. They were too large to upload, but no post edits were done for enhancements.
***UPDATES***
Blue Tint / Hue: I got our second device today and first thing I looked for was the blue tint/hue. I am surprised to say that there really isn't much of one on the second device. It's the exact same 32gb aluminum. That being said, I still never notice it on the first device and personally don't find it worth the effort to replace.
Bluetooth Issues: Some bluetooth connectivity issues have began to show their faces. I think it has to do with Android 6.0 and NOT the 6P, but we'll see.
Car: Mazda3 2014 Grand Touring, updated to most recent software
Symptoms: "Google Now" isn't working when connected. It seems that the device is depending on the vehicles microphone for any input and the vehicle microphone only triggers on button press. My other devices in the past year did not have this problem, including iPhone's "Hey Siri".
Resolution: Pending
Speakers: This is purely based on opinion, but I love the speakers on the 6P. I find them to sound rich and some great tones for a phone. I DO prefer them to my Moto X Pure, don't shoot me. Really though, speakers are great. I watched a movie last night from the device, for about 30 minutes, and no pops, crackles, stutters at all. Was pleased.
I did notice on speakers, that the volume range is a bit wonky. The low to mid setting for speakers in media playback was quite hard to hear. At 75% it was what I expect at medium. At 100% it was too loud. Food for thought, but hopefully this is addressed in software updates or use Viper.
What accessories are you using?
I love to accessorize my devices. I usually run my phone naked, to display all of it's beauty and engineering. Project Fi did send me a 50% off the ADOPTED case, which I ordered. Can't beat $10.81 with free shipping on a Google official case.
Screen Protectors:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016XZLFD6?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014UNPYEE?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01
These haven't arrived yet. One gets in Tuesday. I will test it out to make sure it does not block any sensors along with making the lip feel flush. Will report back on these.
Car Charger:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0146FK3G0?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s01
There is a great thread, somewhere in accessories about Car Chargers. If you have lots of questions about it or need specifics, most have been answered there. I will say that RAPID CHARGING from this charger DOES WORK. Confirmed. I was able to charge up from 60% to 100% on a short drive home. It works great and the spare USB slot is appreciated.
Extra USB-C Cable:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010VFFSL4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00
Braided, heavy duty and feels very solid/premium. Length is great and I am using it with a Moto X Pure charging block. Rapid charging works and it's a great cable.
Car Mount:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VEAF6SG?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00
This is the first car mount I have tried. I am picky about how things are in my car and I like it clean. Since my CD slot is at the bottom of the front dash, this fits quite well. It doesn't shake much and gets the job done.
Con: The piece that holds the phone expands and snaps back to default when you remove the device. It's not the easiest to use. You also can't center your device because the "arms" that hold the phone will press the volume/power key. This thing looks like it was built for an iPhone or LG G3+ type phone. Food for thought.
SPEAKERS VOLUME VIDEO:
***UPDATE TO OP 11/03***
Hey everyone! So after a week of use, I have some updates to the review. I have pasted the updates below, so you don't have to jump back to OP.
Battery
This seems to be one of the most discussed topics and quite a sensitive one! Some users are experiencing incredible SoT while others are not. Ultimately, it will boil down to what apps you have installed along with your connectivity. If your LTE connection is weak, your phone's battery will reflect that. There are many factors to take into consideration with battery, so please understand it is literally per individual basis!
Disclaimer: I haven't received any OTA updates yet. There have been 3 thus far and probably address some of the issues I have.
Over the weekend, I noticed my battery life not lasting as long as I would like. Almost seemed that every 5 minutes I was on the phone, I would lose roughly 3%-5%. This raised some questions so I started diving into the possible issues.
Symptoms:
Phone near fingerprint sensor would get warm during phone calls
Bluetooth constantly scanning
WiFi active during Doze/Sleep
WiFi scanning
GPS on
Solution:
Disabled Bluetooth and WiFi scanning passively
WiFi Advanced settings, disabled WiFi on during sleep
GPS was set to battery saving, but wasn't working. Simply turn off GPS, turn it back on, and check battery saving (this was an odd one)
With those adjustments, I have now noticed my battery in DOZE would lose roughly 2% over 4 hours. I'll get some screenshots and update the OP when they are available. Still testing. Battery life after the fixes are substantially better, however, my device is still getting warm while on calls where our second 6P does NOT. Due to this, a replacement has been overnighted to me. When that arrives, I will be unlocking/rooting to have some more fun with reporting to everyone.
VEHICLE BLUETOOTH
So, either this is new in Android M or my car is losing it's AI mind (or lack thereof), but I have figured out what it's doing. When placing a call through the device or the car, the phone will go into a "dialing" status. While it's in "dialing" status, the car will continue to play my music. When someone on the other end of the call picks up, the audio will switch to the phone. It hasn't been easy adjusting to this and I do wish I would just hear the dial tone, but everything else works great in car.
SCREEN PROTECTOR
I just received one of my screen protectors. I will apply it this evening, record it and share the link here for everyone to see. First impressions are that it misses the "edge to edge" by a slight amount. There is a lip on the edge of the device. My hope was the glass would extend from lip to lip. Not the case here, but still worth a shot. The glass DOES protrude above the lip. Glass thickness is slightly thicker than the other posted above, according to specs. That one arrives today, hopefully!
If something like that will bother you, I don't recommend the Yoozon glass. Video will come soon and you can see for yourself and decide which may be best for you, if any.
FINGERPRINT SENSOR
Still works like a charm. I hope they have an update that allows you to use a little more of the edge of your fingers, similar to Sammies or Apple. Other than that, it's reliable and fast even if your finger has moisture. Good stuff Huawei.
More to come soon, but hope this provides you more info and helps!
Thank you for the excellent review.
Excellent review and agree with everything you have said this is one of the best phones I have owned and I have owned a lot of them.
Thanks for the review! I'm currently test-driving a Moto X Pure, and have a week or so left to return it, which means if I want to get the Nexus 6P I'll have to go back to my old LG G2 for several weeks until Huawei gets its butt in gear and starts pumping out more 64gb models. What's your take on the 6P vs. the X Pure?
Chief85 said:
Thanks for the review! I'm currently test-driving a Moto X Pure, and have a week or so left to return it, which means if I want to get the Nexus 6P I'll have to go back to my old LG G2 for several weeks until Huawei gets its butt in gear and starts pumping out more 64gb models. What's your take on the 6P vs. the X Pure?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you! Seeing that I literally just came from the Moto X Pure to the 6P, I can say that I have not looked back or regret doing so. I gave my X Pure to my business partner (he was on a 2014 model still). There is a noticeable height difference, but I like it. It actually places the volume rocker and power button in the right spot for my thumb. Unless you did Moto Maker and like that super unique look, I'd pick the 6P hands down.
Great review! Thanks for sharing.
tehpud said:
Hey everyone! Many of you know me from other threads or some Q&A, but I wanted to share my experience with the Nexus 6P. I do have a thread where you can ask me anything to try or test out on the device, to help answer some questions. I am a front end developer, UX/UI designer, and business owner. This review is based on how I use the phone and where the phone either shines or fails to perform to my needs. The #hype is real on this device and I am hoping to provide you some feedback that removes the bias of #hype and focuses on the device. Hope you find this helpful and thanks for reading!
Introduction
The Nexus 6P is probably the one device I was so excited to get since the iPhone 4. From reading every possible hands on review, watching every YouTube video, and being on the forums trying to calculate shipping dates. This phone has generated so much buzz that I finally felt so excited to get a device. Compared to last year, nothing was "omfg must have". The Nexus 6P filled that hope.
Ergonomics & Hardware
There is no need for me to get into the specs, we all know them or they are easily available elsewhere. This review is about how the specs of the phone play to the hardware and software to make OUR experience the best. The Nexus 6P has some amazing hardware. I got the 32gb Aluminum (long live #aluminati!) version. It is such a delight to hold. The device feels fantastic in my hands, and I have average size hands for a 5'10" individual. I am coming from a Moto X Pure, Note 5, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPhone 6, and Nexus 6 over the past year. Yes, I change phones frequently...mostly for entertainment or variety. Unlike the iPhones, Note 5, and Nexus 6 - The 6P feels stable in my hands, easy to hold, my thumb can reach across the screen without slipping and the weight of the device does help me balance it for one handed use. Where iPhones were so light and thin, the ergonomics sucked to hold; the 6P thickness actually helps in one handed use. The width of the device is not so wide, like the 2014 N6, that one handed use is easy and 2 handed use works just fine as well.
Slippery - Or should I say, lack thereof? The metal on the phone has a slight grip to it. Similar to that of the Moto X Pure (minus the rubber), but it stays in my hand. Those of you worried about the metal frame and possibly being slippery like the iPhones or even Nexus 6; have no fear.
Metal & Screen - Every version (color) will probably differ. I can only speak for the aluminum version. I have barely put the device down and I have zero fingerprints on the back. Oils do not absorb into the metal to look dirty. The only area where fingerprints are obvious is where they should be...on the screen. Which brings me to the glass of the screen. The glass, in the first hours, felt good but over the ongoing use it has been a little tough for me to slide my fingers over. Could be me or maybe I just need to put the damn phone down. The glass is beautiful and seems strong, but I ordered a glass screen protector to help with fingerprints and always feeling smooth to the touch.
There is a lip around the edge. The metal lip seems to be that of 0.2mm, give or take. It's extremely subtle, but obvious it is there to the touch. If that is something that would bother you, the glass screen protectors seem to hit the correct dimensions in thickness to flatten the surface out entirely. I can imagine the lip probably makes applying a glass screen protector even easier due to form fitting vs aligning.
Buttons and Fingerprint Sensors
The buttons are metal and solid. They don't wiggle around, which drove me insane on my iPhone and Moto X Pure. You can tell they were built well. The home button has a texture to identify easily and works quite well. The click in on volume and home buttons have a easily identifying feedback so you know you are pushing them. As silly as it may sound, the Moto X Pure failed in that area. Where the buttons were so easy to push and lack of feedback on press, there were nights where I would watch a YouTube clip and accidentally click the volume in and piss off the lady.
The fingerprint sensor is like every other reviewer has put it. Extremely fast and reliable. I programmed my index and middle fingers on both hands to the fingerprint sensor. I love that I can pull my phone out of my pocket and its ready to go without awkward thumb bending on the front to reach. Only gripe here on the UX is the inability to unlock the device with my fingerprint when it's laying on my desk. It's not a huge deal to some, but I am at a desk non stop. There is a solution, in Android Marshmallow for this though. I setup certain areas as my "trusted" areas. My car, for example, is a trusted connection and the phone does not require to unlock. I did the same for the bluetooth on my work desk. Solves the issue, but leaves the phone open to access if that worries you.
Notification Light
I love notification lights. This one is simple and great. Not buried into the speaker. Obvious pulsing and colors. Just make sure you turn it on! My phone had it disabled. To enable, go to settings > Notifications > Pulse Notification Light. This is one of my favorite features, for as simple and dumb as it may sound.
Speed and Battery
This phone is lightning fast for me. It was built to work fluidly with Android M and it does exactly that. I haven't ran into any hiccups, crashing, issues and everything just...works! Not sure when I was last able to say that about an Android device. This is the first Android I don't have the "want or need" to begin installing greenify, sleep, and other apps that help chill the phone out and not drain the battery. App switching is smooth, RAM usage has stayed consistently at 1.5gb and the camera opens without stutter or lag for me. I frequently find something I wish to take a picture of and it just opens without delay. More on the camera further down.
The battery is great. The synergy with Android M, Doze, and the Nexus 6p - the battery life for me has been phenomenal. It's too early to reveal screenshots, but just in my general use today I have only used 9% of my battery. I have sent numerous emails, taken some pictures, showed off the device, used Google Maps for navigation, and listened to a Play Music Radio Station on the drive to work. I am happy to say that I am sure battery life won't be a big complaint amongst users. If you use your device so intensively, the rapid charging is rapid. Not as fast as my Moto X Pure, but pretty darn fast. It won't let you down.
Camera
I ****ing love this camera. The pictures are beautiful, detailed, and vibrant with colors. I take a lot of pictures with my devices and generally, my family will ask me to use my phone (whatever it may be at the time) to take those perfect shots. The focus, ISO, exposure and color has not let me down at all. I was able to get some amazing night shots, with the improved camera here. Lack of OIS isn't missed much on pictures, but at 4k video recording it would have been very helpful. In general, the camera is reliable and great quality. The pictures you may want to take at a bar or night environment will probably come out better than that of any other phone...with or without a flash. Samples attached of a couple night shots I posted elsewhere.
I did install a camera app called FV-5. It gives you far more control over the camera and has made some pictures really incredible. I have to tinker with it more and learn about some settings, but the face detection, focus and more on the app really allows the hardware to shine. Hopefully they update it quickly with more support for the 6P camera hardware features.
Connectivity
The most important part of the phone. I have Verizon and some areas in my house or office will be weaker than others. Where my Moto X Pure wasn't getting the best signal, I do see a slight stronger signal on the 6P. Nothing much though and wouldn't bank on it improving your past experiences substantially. WiFi speeds are great. I attached a screenshot of my speeds at home, on WiFi, with the 6P.
Bluetooth and Car
I use my phone in the car all the time. If this one aspect of a phone is flawed, then it goes back. I was concerned at first, because the phone and car would not connect. I was worried it was related to Android M. After I turned off bluetooth and turned it back on - it connected and paired, finally. I was most worried at this point.
Since then, I have gotten in and out of my car and the transition and connection to bluetooth has been seamless and quick. Where my Moto X Pure and iPhones took about 30 seconds to finally connect to the car and have a 3s gap where I miss conversation; The 6P seems to connect and transition the audio instantly. I hope it stays that way!
In the End?
I love this phone. It does live up to the #hype. Without any bias to my excitement to have it, this phone has pretty much hit every aspect of feature I would want out of a mobile device. The best part is IT JUST WORKS. That used to be my argument for Apple devices, but I can now say the same for Android. Sorry if that disappoints some of you... This is also the first android device where I don't feel the need to unlock or root. I will unlock and root because it's a Nexus and I like to develop/test ROMS out. However, those of you who felt you had to rely on unlocking and rooting to tinker settings, you may find that you won't have that urge to do so anymore. If anything, I'll do it for TWRP.
Where I would normally plan on switching devices every few months or 6 months, I can see myself keeping this device for a year to 2 years. Just won't tell the lady that or else I'll hear it when I want to upgrade to next years Nexus line...
Lastly, in the day using it, I have had many people ask me, "Hey, what phone is that?". While I don't care for being known to have the latest and greatest, it's fun showing it off. I can't wait to see some Frosties or Graphites in the wild, but for you folks with #aluminati...stand proud and shine. I hope this helped provide some honest insight and answer some questions.
Thanks folks!
Note: The only changes I made to the pictures was reduce the size of them. They were too large to upload, but no post edits were done for enhancements.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have a fantastic cat sir
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
I think it is a very good review. Granted, I have only had my phone for just now 24 hours and only completed full set up early this AM.
Can't speak about the battery yet as it is too early to tell and it has been on and off charger. I anticipate tonight forward I can get a better read.
Camera is one of the best and I REALLY like the Moto X 2015 Pure. I think N6P may trump it as a few low light pics came out great. At very least is on par with Apple 6S Plus which I also own.
Fingerprint scanner is phenomenal and IS faster than Apple 6S Plus, which I thought was fast. N6P trumps it.
Now, I don't necessarily agree with connectivity on LTE: I STILL think MOTO has better radios and at work I have very sketchy connectivity. I do notice my Nexus 6 and even when I owned the Moto X 2015 Pure, it would grab a weaker signal and have faster data connections moreso than the Nexus 6P. I had to keep toggling airplane mode on the Nexus 6P to get signals. So, I think it is OK but MOTO still has better radios IMHO.
Furthermore, I also think the processor is a "tad" slower than Nexus 6. The Nexus 6 seems to fly and is speedier (both Nexus 6 and N6P are decrypted as well). Granted, I perceive no lag on the N6P, but I definitely feel a controlled movement.
Good review, but my thoughts differ from yours a bit.
My Nexus 6P just arrived. Initial impression? The screen on my Moto X Pure is better (brighter, better whites, less graininess up close). Also, the speakers on the Moto X Pure are better. The Moto X Pure is also a little smaller and easier to grip with the rubber back. My Moto X Pure has very clicky and solid buttons, so maybe that's just a flaw in your particular Moto X.
I'm actually shocked because I fully expected to fall in love with the 6P immediately and ditch the Moto X Pure based on the stellar reviews I have been seeing, but now I'm thinking this is going to be a tougher decision than I thought, and I might actually end up returning the 6P!
Chief85 said:
Thanks for the review! I'm currently test-driving a Moto X Pure, and have a week or so left to return it, which means if I want to get the Nexus 6P I'll have to go back to my old LG G2 for several weeks until Huawei gets its butt in gear and starts pumping out more 64gb models. What's your take on the 6P vs. the X Pure?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am in exactly same boat. Have till Nov. 13. Great review OP. You make me really want one and if they were readily available I probably would have it.
tehpud said:
Hey everyone! Many of you know me from other threads or some Q&A, but I wanted to share my experience with the Nexus 6P. I do have a thread where you can ask me anything to try or test out on the device, to help answer some questions. I am a front end developer, UX/UI designer, and business owner. This review is based on how I use the phone and where the phone either shines or fails to perform to my needs. The #hype is real on this device and I am hoping to provide you some feedback that removes the bias of #hype and focuses on the device. Hope you find this helpful and thanks for reading!
Introduction
The Nexus 6P is probably the one device I was so excited to get since the iPhone 4. From reading every possible hands on review, watching every YouTube video, and being on the forums trying to calculate shipping dates. This phone has generated so much buzz that I finally felt so excited to get a device. Compared to last year, nothing was "omfg must have". The Nexus 6P filled that hope.
Ergonomics & Hardware
There is no need for me to get into the specs, we all know them or they are easily available elsewhere. This review is about how the specs of the phone play to the hardware and software to make OUR experience the best. The Nexus 6P has some amazing hardware. I got the 32gb Aluminum (long live #aluminati!) version. It is such a delight to hold. The device feels fantastic in my hands, and I have average size hands for a 5'10" individual. I am coming from a Moto X Pure, Note 5, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPhone 6, and Nexus 6 over the past year. Yes, I change phones frequently...mostly for entertainment or variety. Unlike the iPhones, Note 5, and Nexus 6 - The 6P feels stable in my hands, easy to hold, my thumb can reach across the screen without slipping and the weight of the device does help me balance it for one handed use. Where iPhones were so light and thin, the ergonomics sucked to hold; the 6P thickness actually helps in one handed use. The width of the device is not so wide, like the 2014 N6, that one handed use is easy and 2 handed use works just fine as well.
Slippery - Or should I say, lack thereof? The metal on the phone has a slight grip to it. Similar to that of the Moto X Pure (minus the rubber), but it stays in my hand. Those of you worried about the metal frame and possibly being slippery like the iPhones or even Nexus 6; have no fear.
Metal & Screen - Every version (color) will probably differ. I can only speak for the aluminum version. I have barely put the device down and I have zero fingerprints on the back. Oils do not absorb into the metal to look dirty. The only area where fingerprints are obvious is where they should be...on the screen. Which brings me to the glass of the screen. The glass, in the first hours, felt good but over the ongoing use it has been a little tough for me to slide my fingers over. Could be me or maybe I just need to put the damn phone down. The glass is beautiful and seems strong, but I ordered a glass screen protector to help with fingerprints and always feeling smooth to the touch.
There is a lip around the edge. The metal lip seems to be that of 0.2mm, give or take. It's extremely subtle, but obvious it is there to the touch. If that is something that would bother you, the glass screen protectors seem to hit the correct dimensions in thickness to flatten the surface out entirely. I can imagine the lip probably makes applying a glass screen protector even easier due to form fitting vs aligning.
Buttons and Fingerprint Sensors
The buttons are metal and solid. They don't wiggle around, which drove me insane on my iPhone and Moto X Pure. You can tell they were built well. The home button has a texture to identify easily and works quite well. The click in on volume and home buttons have a easily identifying feedback so you know you are pushing them. As silly as it may sound, the Moto X Pure failed in that area. Where the buttons were so easy to push and lack of feedback on press, there were nights where I would watch a YouTube clip and accidentally click the volume in and piss off the lady.
The fingerprint sensor is like every other reviewer has put it. Extremely fast and reliable. I programmed my index and middle fingers on both hands to the fingerprint sensor. I love that I can pull my phone out of my pocket and its ready to go without awkward thumb bending on the front to reach. Only gripe here on the UX is the inability to unlock the device with my fingerprint when it's laying on my desk. It's not a huge deal to some, but I am at a desk non stop. There is a solution, in Android Marshmallow for this though. I setup certain areas as my "trusted" areas. My car, for example, is a trusted connection and the phone does not require to unlock. I did the same for the bluetooth on my work desk. Solves the issue, but leaves the phone open to access if that worries you.
Notification Light
I love notification lights. This one is simple and great. Not buried into the speaker. Obvious pulsing and colors. Just make sure you turn it on! My phone had it disabled. To enable, go to settings > Notifications > Pulse Notification Light. This is one of my favorite features, for as simple and dumb as it may sound.
Speed and Battery
This phone is lightning fast for me. It was built to work fluidly with Android M and it does exactly that. I haven't ran into any hiccups, crashing, issues and everything just...works! Not sure when I was last able to say that about an Android device. This is the first Android I don't have the "want or need" to begin installing greenify, sleep, and other apps that help chill the phone out and not drain the battery. App switching is smooth, RAM usage has stayed consistently at 1.5gb and the camera opens without stutter or lag for me. I frequently find something I wish to take a picture of and it just opens without delay. More on the camera further down.
The battery is great. The synergy with Android M, Doze, and the Nexus 6p - the battery life for me has been phenomenal. It's too early to reveal screenshots, but just in my general use today I have only used 9% of my battery. I have sent numerous emails, taken some pictures, showed off the device, used Google Maps for navigation, and listened to a Play Music Radio Station on the drive to work. I am happy to say that I am sure battery life won't be a big complaint amongst users. If you use your device so intensively, the rapid charging is rapid. Not as fast as my Moto X Pure, but pretty darn fast. It won't let you down.
Camera
I ****ing love this camera. The pictures are beautiful, detailed, and vibrant with colors. I take a lot of pictures with my devices and generally, my family will ask me to use my phone (whatever it may be at the time) to take those perfect shots. The focus, ISO, exposure and color has not let me down at all. I was able to get some amazing night shots, with the improved camera here. Lack of OIS isn't missed much on pictures, but at 4k video recording it would have been very helpful. In general, the camera is reliable and great quality. The pictures you may want to take at a bar or night environment will probably come out better than that of any other phone...with or without a flash. Samples attached of a couple night shots I posted elsewhere.
I did install a camera app called FV-5. It gives you far more control over the camera and has made some pictures really incredible. I have to tinker with it more and learn about some settings, but the face detection, focus and more on the app really allows the hardware to shine. Hopefully they update it quickly with more support for the 6P camera hardware features.
Connectivity
The most important part of the phone. I have Verizon and some areas in my house or office will be weaker than others. Where my Moto X Pure wasn't getting the best signal, I do see a slight stronger signal on the 6P. Nothing much though and wouldn't bank on it improving your past experiences substantially. WiFi speeds are great. I attached a screenshot of my speeds at home, on WiFi, with the 6P.
Bluetooth and Car
I use my phone in the car all the time. If this one aspect of a phone is flawed, then it goes back. I was concerned at first, because the phone and car would not connect. I was worried it was related to Android M. After I turned off bluetooth and turned it back on - it connected and paired, finally. I was most worried at this point.
Since then, I have gotten in and out of my car and the transition and connection to bluetooth has been seamless and quick. Where my Moto X Pure and iPhones took about 30 seconds to finally connect to the car and have a 3s gap where I miss conversation; The 6P seems to connect and transition the audio instantly. I hope it stays that way!
In the End?
I love this phone. It does live up to the #hype. Without any bias to my excitement to have it, this phone has pretty much hit every aspect of feature I would want out of a mobile device. The best part is IT JUST WORKS. That used to be my argument for Apple devices, but I can now say the same for Android. Sorry if that disappoints some of you... This is also the first android device where I don't feel the need to unlock or root. I will unlock and root because it's a Nexus and I like to develop/test ROMS out. However, those of you who felt you had to rely on unlocking and rooting to tinker settings, you may find that you won't have that urge to do so anymore. If anything, I'll do it for TWRP.
Where I would normally plan on switching devices every few months or 6 months, I can see myself keeping this device for a year to 2 years. Just won't tell the lady that or else I'll hear it when I want to upgrade to next years Nexus line...
Lastly, in the day using it, I have had many people ask me, "Hey, what phone is that?". While I don't care for being known to have the latest and greatest, it's fun showing it off. I can't wait to see some Frosties or Graphites in the wild, but for you folks with #aluminati...stand proud and shine. I hope this helped provide some honest insight and answer some questions.
Thanks folks!
Note: The only changes I made to the pictures was reduce the size of them. They were too large to upload, but no post edits were done for enhancements.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is that a Huawei watch?
bullshark888 said:
Is that a Huawei watch?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup!
tehpud said:
Yup!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am still debating this or the 360, maybe wait for the black Friday.
bullshark888 said:
I am still debating this or the 360, maybe wait for the black Friday.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would wait for Black Friday tbh. I am probably going to return it and wait for the Moto 360 Sport. I already have a nice watch, but need something that I can use while I work out.
Was there really a need to start a new thread about reviews?
Now that is what I call a fantastic review
Very nice review. Thank you for taking the time and sharing. I think I know my next device after mapping this against the Moto X Pure.
Does VoLTE work on Verizon with the 6p? If not, does it have dual radios to let you call on CDMA and still use LTE data?
jmileti said:
I am in exactly same boat. Have till Nov. 13. Great review OP. You make me really want one and if they were readily available I probably would have it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very frustrating! If only I could hold both at the same time...
So, I bought my ZenFone 3 Deluxe from Amazon on October 23, with an estimated delivery of Nov 30-Dec 7. On Nov 4th, surprisingly, my phone got delivered. Coming from a Note 7 (as a long time galaxy user) I had some hesitations, but overall I am pleased. I have owned it for just about a month now, and I would like to share some of the things I have noticed. I am hoping that some of you have a way to fix some of these, or if nothing else, to find out that I am not the only one having the issues.
First, lets start with the IMEI issue I had. Straight out of the box, I took the phone to the AT&T store and got a new SIM card for it. Right off the bat, it picked up good service on the voice network, but failed to connect to LTE (or any data network for that matter). I checked my APN settings, called AT&T 3 different times, and finally fixed it. The cause was the IMEI was reading as a Motorola V577, which is an old flip phone without the data capability. I could pull up my IMEI as a ZF3D but, for whatever reason, AT&T was pulling it up as the Motorola. On the 3rd call, they finally reconfigured my IMEI and a week later I now have data connection. Not LTE, but 4G+ is better than nothing I guess...:victory:
Next, the most annoying thing, is Bluetooth. I have a few devices. A Samsung Gear S2 watch, an LG headset, and my Honda Accord are my main 3. All the devices I have connected initially pair really easily, so no problem there. I am normally wearing both my watch and headset, and for the most part, both stay connected no problem. The biggest thing for me is when I have both connected, and receive a call, it automatically directs it to my watch-not my headset... to "fix" this in call I have to pretty much disconnect my watch, then go into the headset Bluetooth settings, deselect phone audio, then reselect it. I have gotten to the point now that I just leave the watch connected only for "contact sharing" and the headset stays connected for audio. I have only received one call since doing this, so hopefully that works. Also, hopefully someone has a fix on how to have them both connected at the same time and have the headset take priority.
The other big deal with Bluetooth is with my car. The ZF3 will not automatically connect to the car, and manually connecting to the car takes about 10 failed attempts each time. With my Note7, as soon as I would start the car it would start the connecting process. Same with my wife's Iphone 6+. The car will even connect to my wife's phone when I start it up in the morning, her phone inside the house, and mine being in the car before backing out of the driveway...again annoying...
Yet another annoying thing, is the texting fail. Normally not a big deal, but when it comes to picture messages, whether group or individual, it's hit or miss. I have a friend with a Galaxy S7 Edge, and his pictures 90% of the time never come through. For the most part everyone else's come through fine, and his pictures come through on everyone else's phones perfectly (we do a lot of group texts...). The messenger app tells me I have a picture, and gives me the refresh button for each picture, but even when pressed, they wont come through. This happens when connected to both WIFI and Data. A not so big deal, but more of a nuisance, is the texting notification. Regardless of if I have no new texts, it says I have 3 new...the bubble never goes away. If I get new texts, it gains numbers (4, 5, 6, etc.) but never gets lower than 3. I have been through each text, checked all of them, refreshed, checked archived messages, and nothing seems to make the number disappear.
Now for the good. The fingerprint sensor is awesome. I absolutely love it. It is BY FAR greater than the Note7, and leaps and bounds greater than my wife's Iphone. The camera is awesome (minus low light, but I knew that from the reviews) and the wide variety of shooting modes is pretty cool as well. The amount of different themes you can choose from is a plus, and the laser ruler is a neat toy, that will probably never get any real use. I will say, I tested the accuracy with a ruler, and it comes within about 1/2 an inch every time.
The accessories I use are the Sparin clear TPU soft case, and the OMOTON 9H hardness tempered glass screen protector. Both of these I got off of Amazon, and both came in a 2 pack. I am pleasantly surprised with both of these items. The screen protector is extremely smooth to the touch, and goes on easily, you can hardly tell its there. The case is good for a cheap TPU case, and it's a lot smaller scale than an Otterbox, which I am used to having on all of my phones within the last 4 years.
Sorry this is a lot of words, hopefully at least some of you read it and find something interesting, or know of a fix for anything. I would definitely appreciate it. :good:
Thanks again everyone.
Nick
Good read! What model 4ram 64gb soc820?
Hey Nick,
Phones Issues
IMEI: I'm on ATT too. I have the 6/64GB version. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but even when you have LTE connection, it will still only show up as 4G+.
Bluetooth call priority issues: Sound like you need to set the priority This quick read may help.
General connection to car's Bluetooth: the previous info might help this issue as well. My ZF3D automatically connects to my car radio about 10 seconds or less after startup.
Text Fail: Have you tried a different messaging app? Have you checked your MMS settings in the app?
Accessories
I have 3 cases. A soft clear TPU case, Blue Tudia Slim Case, and the black IMAK frosted case. Out of them all, I like the cheap clear case the best. Cost like 2.50 and came with two glass protectors. Super thin and allows the phone's good looks to show (hard to notice that it has a case). I'm surprised how well I like the phone - I do have my rant on some issues, but they are mostly with Asus and the way they operate their phone division rather than the phone itself.
galaxys said:
Good read! What model 4ram 64gb soc820?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is no SD820 with 4GB of RAM
Blues-n-Blazin said:
There is no SD820 with 4GB of RAM
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes there is...
ultramag69 said:
Yes there is...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How are you going to say yes there is and not give me a model number to back it up?
And if you are saying that referring to a non Zenfone 3 model, well then you know what I meant to say and you should take a look at your avatar...lol. I really should have specified Zenfone, so if that is what you mean, then nicely played sir, got me on a technicality and I can appreciate that.
galaxys said:
Good read! What model 4ram 64gb soc820?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
6 GB ram 64 Gb storage sd820. Even though when I bought it, it was advertised as the 821...
The Simple said:
Hey Nick,
Phones Issues
IMEI: I'm on ATT too. I have the 6/64GB version. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but even when you have LTE connection, it will still only show up as 4G+.
Bluetooth call priority issues: Sound like you need to set the priority This quick read may help.
General connection to car's Bluetooth: the previous info might help this issue as well. My ZF3D automatically connects to my car radio about 10 seconds or less after startup.
Text Fail: Have you tried a different messaging app? Have you checked your MMS settings in the app?
Accessories
I have 3 cases. A soft clear TPU case, Blue Tudia Slim Case, and the black IMAK frosted case. Out of them all, I like the cheap clear case the best. Cost like 2.50 and came with two glass protectors. Super thin and allows the phone's good looks to show (hard to notice that it has a case). I'm surprised how well I like the phone - I do have my rant on some issues, but they are mostly with Asus and the way they operate their phone division rather than the phone itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info, I'll give the read a try. I haven't tried any other messenger apps, I'm used to the stock messenger just working with Samsung...I have checked the settings though, and even toggling them does nothing.
UPDATE 12/6/2016:
So I tried the Bluetooth autoconnect app thing, and it didn't fix it for me. It sometimes connects to my watch mid call, but only with my headset off. When my headset is on now, it stays connected just fine. Same with the car, if I manually select the car in the Bluetooth menu, it stays connected, but wont actually connect automatically.
As far as the different messenger app, I tried a couple (Handcent, Google Allo,) and while using those, my phone hardly received ANY texts...I uninstalled both, and it seems to have fixed itself with the preinstalled messenger. either that or I no longer get any group texts like I usually do....either way, I'm not complaining.
Thanks for your help everyone!
Nick
Blues-n-Blazin said:
How are you going to say yes there is and not give me a model number to back it up?
And if you are saying that referring to a non Zenfone 3 model, well then you know what I meant to say and you should take a look at your avatar...lol. I really should have specified Zenfone, so if that is what you mean, then nicely played sir, got me on a technicality and I can appreciate that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL....
I too have had mine for about a month, and I'm underwhelmed. I have the same screen protector and it works very well, but good cases are few and far between.
Speed is OK, almost everything runs fine, but the single biggest issue I have is texting. I can make/receive calls, but sending SMS, I'm having to trap "try again" to send text messages waaaaaaaaaaay to often. I receive messages hours after they're sent. Stick the SIM card back in my ZF2, and everything works like it should. So that's frustrating.
Looked at APN settings, matches everything online I can find.
Bluetooth pairing is also a problem for me. It will not pair with my bluetooth ear buds, it shows the Mac address and then the name of the deivce, then when I pair it says device not available. My tablets and ZF2 both pair with them fine, so not sure where the problem is.
I think that if I compare it at 499 vs the 299 I paid for my zenfone 2, the $200 difference isn't worth it, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. And frankly, I think the marketing was a bit misleading, I thought I was getting the 821, and only got the 820, but I didn't find a good side-by-side comparison, and amazon stock was getting low and I needed a phone. And there is no way, based on what I have, that the 799 for the special deluxe is money well spent.
On the hunt for another phone so I can dump this one off on some unsuspecting sucker.
I swung away from samsung, and tried something new, and am now paying the price.
My phone has none of those issues you've described, but based on what I've read, it's one of two things - your phone, or everything else.
Meaning, if it's your phone that is just plain defective and you have a warranty - exchange it. If the connection problems persists, more than likely it's another cause (everything else) and then it gets more complicated. Otherwise I'm with you, dump the phone if it doesn't work right.
I do think that Asus priced the ZF3D too high to be very competitive against other Chinese/Taiwan phone makers. They released it much too late in the year and got undercut by the competition (see examples: OnePlus 3T, LeEco Le Max 2). I was ready to have buyer's remorse, but I realized that that was my problem not the phone or it's quality.
As far as comparisons to your old phone, I have a Zenfone 2 Deluxe as well. I got the dreaded ghost touch problem. I replaced the screen and I still like it. However, the 5.7 inch ZF3D is still a far better and different phone than the Zenfone 2 in my opinion. I find it hard to compare the two.
mrcpu said:
I too have had mine for about a month, and I'm underwhelmed. I have the same screen protector and it works very well, but good cases are few and far between.
Speed is OK, almost everything runs fine, but the single biggest issue I have is texting. I can make/receive calls, but sending SMS, I'm having to trap "try again" to send text messages waaaaaaaaaaay to often. I receive messages hours after they're sent. Stick the SIM card back in my ZF2, and everything works like it should. So that's frustrating.
Looked at APN settings, matches everything online I can find.
Bluetooth pairing is also a problem for me. It will not pair with my bluetooth ear buds, it shows the Mac address and then the name of the deivce, then when I pair it says device not available. My tablets and ZF2 both pair with them fine, so not sure where the problem is.
I think that if I compare it at 499 vs the 299 I paid for my zenfone 2, the $200 difference isn't worth it, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. And frankly, I think the marketing was a bit misleading, I thought I was getting the 821, and only got the 820, but I didn't find a good side-by-side comparison, and amazon stock was getting low and I needed a phone. And there is no way, based on what I have, that the 799 for the special deluxe is money well spent.
On the hunt for another phone so I can dump this one off on some unsuspecting sucker.
I swung away from samsung, and tried something new, and am now paying the price.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How could you think you were getting the SD821? They list two options, common sense tells you that it is price tiered.
I have the 256GB SD821, and it was money well spent. Everything works great.
You may need to take your phone to the carrier to make sure all their network settings registered off the SIM card. I got my Dad that phone and he had to get a new SIM card from ATT. For some reason, it doesn't like SIM cards being traded back and forth between phones
Blues-n-Blazin said:
How could you think you were getting the SD821? They list two options, common sense tells you that it is price tiered.
I have the 256GB SD821, and it was money well spent. Everything works great.
You may need to take your phone to the carrier to make sure all their network settings registered off the SIM card. I got my Dad that phone and he had to get a new SIM card from ATT. For some reason, it doesn't like SIM cards being traded back and forth between phones
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going to go get a new SIM and see. The last OTA, and a factory reset seems to have cleared up all but one issue, which is the massively delayed texting. I'm trying the NXTGENPHONE APN, to see if it helps, but some initial tests aren't encouraging. Everytime I reboot the phone, all the "delayed texts" come in bam bam bam, and I can send. Then 10-15 minutes later, I send myself a text, and nothing. Reboot the phone, and bam, here it is. So we'll see if the new APN helps, and I'll snag a new SIM on my way to work Monday if the AT&T store isn't too busy.
I managed to cobble together a decent wallet-ish case that I'm happy with, so that's a plus.
I used this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HQKYJOE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 , and
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KPOOL5U/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 with this screen protector
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01H3SI1TS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and it's all working together pretty well for me, and appears to be holding up, so one major gripe eliminated. (If you pull the lip of the case up with your fingernail and run your nail all the way around the case, it will come down on top of the glass, and add some extra "hold-down" power. If you don't, the glass seems to just touch the edge of the case, and depending on how you grab it, raise it up just a tad so you see a little air bubble around the edge).
Anyway, I was probably a bit harsh, the phone is a good phone, good build quality, battery life for me has been very good, > 1 day, everything I try is working well, my NFC works, I can pay stuff with android pay, all those parts are good, it's now just the texting, and while I won't be a happy camper, at least I'll be a satisfied one.
I've kind of lost my custom rom fetish with phones, so lack of custom roms, and unlockers really doesn't sway me either way. Will I buy a ZF4? Probably not, but this will work for now...
mrcpu said:
I'm going to go get a new SIM and see. The last OTA, and a factory reset seems to have cleared up all but one issue, which is the massively delayed texting. I'm trying the NXTGENPHONE APN, to see if it helps, but some initial tests aren't encouraging. Everytime I reboot the phone, all the "delayed texts" come in bam bam bam, and I can send. Then 10-15 minutes later, I send myself a text, and nothing. Reboot the phone, and bam, here it is. So we'll see if the new APN helps, and I'll snag a new SIM on my way to work Monday if the AT&T store isn't too busy.
I managed to cobble together a decent wallet-ish case that I'm happy with, so that's a plus.
I used this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HQKYJOE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 , and
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KPOOL5U/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 with this screen protector
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01H3SI1TS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and it's all working together pretty well for me, and appears to be holding up, so one major gripe eliminated. (If you pull the lip of the case up with your fingernail and run your nail all the way around the case, it will come down on top of the glass, and add some extra "hold-down" power. If you don't, the glass seems to just touch the edge of the case, and depending on how you grab it, raise it up just a tad so you see a little air bubble around the edge).
Anyway, I was probably a bit harsh, the phone is a good phone, good build quality, battery life for me has been very good, > 1 day, everything I try is working well, my NFC works, I can pay stuff with android pay, all those parts are good, it's now just the texting, and while I won't be a happy camper, at least I'll be a satisfied one.
I've kind of lost my custom rom fetish with phones, so lack of custom roms, and unlockers really doesn't sway me either way. Will I buy a ZF4? Probably not, but this will work for now...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The NXTGENPHONE APN is what my Dad's phone got put on and his works great. He has the SD820
I've had it (5.7", SD820/64Gb variant) since late October;
- the design is amazing, but the smooth back can be a tad slippery; mine already fell on the pavement from around hip-height & got dents.
This is definitely not aircraft-grade aluminium but a softer alloy.
- the screen is OK; QHD would've been better but FHD is a good compromise with power consumption. Colour saturation is what you'll come to expect from an OLED display & autobrightness kicks has an acceptable reaction time. Full brightness is quite good, even in direct sunlight.
- performance: processing power - takes everything I throw at it. Disk performance is a 50/50 though. Nothing beats the NMVe, not even UFS 2.
The external storage (128Gb Samsung EVO+, exfat formatted) works fine.
- audio: nothing to write home about - good general purpose quality over A2DP/earphones, but not audiophile.
- video playback: works fine.
- software: I've grown to tolerate the ZenUI - it's fast & snappy, but I definitely do not like it. I can't wait until we finally have a bootloader unlock to slap an AOSP build.
- connectivity: 4G/LTE reception &call quality is OK. BT is also OK once it connects (can be a bit slow to connect). WiFi is a miss though - I have worse reception than on my other devices (examples: Nexus 9, Samsung A5/2016, Huawei P8max). Maybe this is due to the "no antenna lines" approach.
- power management: the worst of the bunch - battery life is subpar. I have no other choice than to force close some apps until I check on them again.
I didn't have such an issue on my Xiaomi Mi5 (same SD820 SoC) or Huawei P8max, which leads me to believe it's an issue with the inkernel implementation or pm framework. Again, one of the reasons we absolutely need a bootloader unlock & play around with nogapps or custom firmware builds.
ASUS should've considered at least 3500mAh, or even 4000mAh, seeing how even the budget phones like UMi or elephone are able to include Sony batteries of such capacity while keeping a low profile (thickness).
- fingerprint sensor: it's usually quite fast, but can be slow when being probed from deep sleep.
- camera: I don't use it too often, but it does take amazing pictures in a well-lit environment (I usually use HDR Pro mode).
It does struggle & produces subpar quality in lowlit conditions. The sensor itself is quite good (IMX318), thus I hope we can port some of the code from other devices using similar sensors once we have bootloader unlock.
adwinp said:
I've had it (5.7", SD820/64Gb variant) since late October;
- the design is amazing, but the smooth back can be a tad slippery; mine already fell on the pavement from around hip-height & got dents.
This is definitely not aircraft-grade aluminium but a softer alloy.
- the screen is OK; QHD would've been better but FHD is a good compromise with power consumption. Colour saturation is what you'll come to expect from an OLED display & autobrightness kicks has an acceptable reaction time. Full brightness is quite good, even in direct sunlight.
- performance: processing power - takes everything I throw at it. Disk performance is a 50/50 though. Nothing beats the NMVe, not even UFS 2.
The external storage (128Gb Samsung EVO+, exfat formatted) works fine.
- audio: nothing to write home about - good general purpose quality over A2DP/earphones, but not audiophile.
- video playback: works fine.
- software: I've grown to tolerate the ZenUI - it's fast & snappy, but I definitely do not like it. I can't wait until we finally have a bootloader unlock to slap an AOSP build.
- connectivity: 4G/LTE reception &call quality is OK. BT is also OK once it connects (can be a bit slow to connect). WiFi is a miss though - I have worse reception than on my other devices (examples: Nexus 9, Samsung A5/2016, Huawei P8max). Maybe this is due to the "no antenna lines" approach.
- power management: the worst of the bunch - battery life is subpar. I have no other choice than to force close some apps until I check on them again.
I didn't have such an issue on my Xiaomi Mi5 (same SD820 SoC) or Huawei P8max, which leads me to believe it's an issue with the inkernel implementation or pm framework. Again, one of the reasons we absolutely need a bootloader unlock & play around with nogapps or custom firmware builds.
ASUS should've considered at least 3500mAh, or even 4000mAh, seeing how even the budget phones like UMi or elephone are able to include Sony batteries of such capacity while keeping a low profile (thickness).
- fingerprint sensor: it's usually quite fast, but can be slow when being probed from deep sleep.
- camera: I don't use it too often, but it does take amazing pictures in a well-lit environment (I usually use HDR Pro mode).
It does struggle & produces subpar quality in lowlit conditions. The sensor itself is quite good (IMX318), thus I hope we can port some of the code from other devices using similar sensors once we have bootloader unlock.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SD820 - RAM6/64Go
I have pretty same comments as you after 2weeks daily driver, even though:
- Design: I would have prefer white body
- Automatic brightness still too bright for me
- Audio/Video: good enough for my moderate usage
- ZenUI: snappy, but I don't like it either. Colors too flashy, and smaller text size would have been nice in display settings. Looking forward LineageOS (CM14.1 RIP)
- network: everything fine (same or better than P8max - my previous phone)
- power management: would have loved to have 3500/4000mAh. But I recently discover I could run a full day with Location off (hope may help you)
- camera: ok, but not ergonomic enough in manual mode. Too much sub menu
I owned one for about a month also and I am underwhelmed by the phone also. I hadDa note 7 before this. I have mine on the T Mobile network here are some of my pros and cons:
PROS: The price. Great quality build. The phone is nice and sturdy. Capable of 256 GB microsd storage. Phone runs buttery smooth, no lag. Customer service is good. Not a lot of bloatware.
CONS: Battery life is bad. Camera is horrible. For a 23 MP camera the zoom and picture quality is bad. If you move the phone even a little the picture will blur. The phones features are lackluster. There is no video calling from the dialer. You will have to look for several third party apps to do things familiar to Samsung. Updates from ASUS are lacking. For some reason my phone signal doesn't see LTE signals. I get H, 4G and 4G+. Right now I'm coordinating with TMobile and their engineers are going to provision the phone in 72 hours.
OK, it's been another month, new SIM, NXTGENPHONE APN on AT&T, and still nothing has gotten better with the texting. I suppose it may get better with an update somewhere, but enough's enough, it's gotta go. I went back and reactivated my zf2, and everything works just as expected. Not that that's proof, but it seems unlikely to be an AT&T problem.
I think it could've been a great phone, I'm actually really happy with my cobbled together wallet case, performance is relatively snappy.
I guess it's either take a shot on another off-brand, like a huawei which looks nice, or stick with tradition, and go with samsung. Anyway, thanks for those of you that offered advice.
Ok Nick
Ok mister Ramble the fu%* on...... Dude I don't no what planet you come from but here on earth there is no NOTE 7....WTF R you talking about bro....
Nicksjohnson said:
So, I bought my ZenFone 3 Deluxe from Amazon on October 23, with an estimated delivery of Nov 30-Dec 7. On Nov 4th, surprisingly, my phone got delivered. Coming from a Note 7 (as a long time galaxy user) I had some hesitations, but overall I am pleased. I have owned it for just about a month now, and I would like to share some of the things I have noticed. I am hoping that some of you have a way to fix some of these, or if nothing else, to find out that I am not the only one having the issues.
First, lets start with the IMEI issue I had. Straight out of the box, I took the phone to the AT&T store and got a new SIM card for it. Right off the bat, it picked up good service on the voice network, but failed to connect to LTE (or any data network for that matter). I checked my APN settings, called AT&T 3 different times, and finally fixed it. The cause was the IMEI was reading as a Motorola V577, which is an old flip phone without the data capability. I could pull up my IMEI as a ZF3D but, for whatever reason, AT&T was pulling it up as the Motorola. On the 3rd call, they finally reconfigured my IMEI and a week later I now have data connection. Not LTE, but 4G+ is better than nothing I guess...:victory:
Next, the most annoying thing, is Bluetooth. I have a few devices. A Samsung Gear S2 watch, an LG headset, and my Honda Accord are my main 3. All the devices I have connected initially pair really easily, so no problem there. I am normally wearing both my watch and headset, and for the most part, both stay connected no problem. The biggest thing for me is when I have both connected, and receive a call, it automatically directs it to my watch-not my headset... to "fix" this in call I have to pretty much disconnect my watch, then go into the headset Bluetooth settings, deselect phone audio, then reselect it. I have gotten to the point now that I just leave the watch connected only for "contact sharing" and the headset stays connected for audio. I have only received one call since doing this, so hopefully that works. Also, hopefully someone has a fix on how to have them both connected at the same time and have the headset take priority.
The other big deal with Bluetooth is with my car. The ZF3 will not automatically connect to the car, and manually connecting to the car takes about 10 failed attempts each time. With my Note7, as soon as I would start the car it would start the connecting process. Same with my wife's Iphone 6+. The car will even connect to my wife's phone when I start it up in the morning, her phone inside the house, and mine being in the car before backing out of the driveway...again annoying...
Yet another annoying thing, is the texting fail. Normally not a big deal, but when it comes to picture messages, whether group or individual, it's hit or miss. I have a friend with a Galaxy S7 Edge, and his pictures 90% of the time never come through. For the most part everyone else's come through fine, and his pictures come through on everyone else's phones perfectly (we do a lot of group texts...). The messenger app tells me I have a picture, and gives me the refresh button for each picture, but even when pressed, they wont come through. This happens when connected to both WIFI and Data. A not so big deal, but more of a nuisance, is the texting notification. Regardless of if I have no new texts, it says I have 3 new...the bubble never goes away. If I get new texts, it gains numbers (4, 5, 6, etc.) but never gets lower than 3. I have been through each text, checked all of them, refreshed, checked archived messages, and nothing seems to make the number disappear.
Now for the good. The fingerprint sensor is awesome. I absolutely love it. It is BY FAR greater than the Note7, and leaps and bounds greater than my wife's Iphone. The camera is awesome (minus low light, but I knew that from the reviews) and the wide variety of shooting modes is pretty cool as well. The amount of different themes you can choose from is a plus, and the laser ruler is a neat toy, that will probably never get any real use. I will say, I tested the accuracy with a ruler, and it comes within about 1/2 an inch every time.
The accessories I use are the Sparin clear TPU soft case, and the OMOTON 9H hardness tempered glass screen protector. Both of these I got off of Amazon, and both came in a 2 pack. I am pleasantly surprised with both of these items. The screen protector is extremely smooth to the touch, and goes on easily, you can hardly tell its there. The case is good for a cheap TPU case, and it's a lot smaller scale than an Otterbox, which I am used to having on all of my phones within the last 4 years.
Sorry this is a lot of words, hopefully at least some of you read it and find something interesting, or know of a fix for anything. I would definitely appreciate it. :good:
Thanks again everyone.
Nick
Click to expand...
Click to collapse