[Q]Upgrade time...This, SGSII or the Sensation XE? - Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Hey guys,
Long time (part-time/occasional) lurker and first time poster here.
Currently, I'm coming from an iPhone 4 with a broken home button, but luckily for me my contract ended as well, so it's time for me to get a new phone. The things I really liked about the iPhone 4 were the graphical quality, the slightly heavier weight, solid built quality, and the longer battery life.
Recently, I've turned into quite a musical appreciator. This made me go with the Sensation XE because I didn't really like having a dedicated hardware "home" button like on the SGSII. I've used a friends SGSII for a while he was abroad, and while it was fun to finally come back to Android after the G1 Fiasco, it did feel a lot less snappy than the videos I've seen, regardless of the fact that I got the phone completely factory restored (he did it, not me). Also the home button really made an annoying clicking sound and the device felt kind of cheap overall. Seeing as my past experience with home buttons, I would rather avoid a phone with a dedicated home button. I have used this phone for 2 weeks, so near the end of it I knew how to handle the phone quite nicely.
So then there was the Sensation XE. According to many, the YourBeats with the additional Beats profile on the XE make a great listening experience, and I must admit it is. I have yet to meet another phone capable of producing clear low and high ranges like the XE. However, I have read many reviews of people complaining about slower performance compared to the SGSII and lower battery life. Also the SA+ screen seems to work wonders for battery life even though the colors looked over-saturated to me. So far the Sense UI has proven to be not any slower, if not faster than the TouchWiz interface, and this is coming from a point where both devices are at factory settings, with the XE having a couple of apps installed. The qHD screen isn't bad either, and the text is still very readable from almost every angle, up to the point where the screen isn't really visible anymore. The colors do lose their vividness, but at that angle, I don't really expected anything else.
The XE runs with a 1.5 GHz processor compared to the Galaxy II's 1.2 GHz and the Nexus' 1.2 GHz. Despite the 300MHz more, I don't think it really affects performance that much compared to extra RAM or a better GPU. So I'll disregard that "Major Feature" of the XE.
Now here's my question:
Currently I'm in the possession of the HTX Sensation XE and still have 13 days left to decide if I want to keep this phone or trade it for a SGSII or a voucher for when the SGN releases which will ensure me a SGN on release date (Additional fees ofcourse, but nothing too high)
With more and more details being revealed on the SGN, and almost all specifications known right now, what would be the better choice?
To try and help myself decide, I've tried to make up some short lists regarding each device, and tried to list the Pro's and Cons:
Samsung Galaxy SII​Pro's
Super Amoled+ Screen
Greater battery life than the Sensation XE
Eligible for an ICS Upgrade near Janaury (?)
Has been labeled best Smartphone/Superphone of the Year (2011)
Roughly 3.7k Quadrant score
1024 MB of RAM
Cons
TouchWiz interface felt sluggish even at factory reset
Plastic frame felt cheap
Hardware based home button (Felt cheap as well)
6 Months old device
Lower resolution
HTC Sensation XE​Pro's
HTC Sense Interface
Beats by Dre technology and earphones
Slightly heavier and sturdier frame feels great
Red accents on the XE make it look really stylish
Solely touch buttons for Home, Menu, Back and Search
Higher resolution than SGSII
5GB Cloud Storage, thanks to HTC's partnership with Dropbox
Eligible for an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade
[Cons]
Quadrant score of roughly 2.4k
Lower battery life
Original Sensation often had dust under its screen (Nothing so far, seems to be solved on the XE version?)
No real improvements over the original Sensation which is also an aged device
768 MB of RAM
qHD screen has a lower resolution compared to the SA screen of the SGN
Samsung Galaxy Nexus​Pro's
Completely Google Phone, and thus first to receive official updates
Ships with Ice Cream Sandwich
Touch buttons for Menu, Back and Home
4.65'' Display (Of which some is taken by software buttons)
32GB Variant (The Netherlands only has this version)
Really snappy according to videos
720p screen with high dpi/ppi (forgot which it was)
Really well working camera (Even though it's 5MP, People often use MP as a standard, but that's just not right)
1024 MB of RAM
Cons
I would be without a (decent working) phone for 2-3 weeks
The design of the phone does not seem more stylish than the XE
Snappyness seems to be related to ICS with its GPU acceleration, something the XE and SGSII have not been able to try out yet
Real world battery life is unknown
Some issues could easily be fixed of course, for example the TouchWiz interface, garbage it and get a proper CM7 rom but the fact is, I'm not really into flashing yet, and I'd like to get a good performer out of the box until I feel confident enough to take the step and head into the Custom ROMs.
The main things I want to use the device for is:
General stuff such as Messaging, Calling and Browsing the Web/Facebook
Heavy music use, talk about at least 2-3 hours a day
Gaming, and I'm not just talking about angry birds, I'm talking about games such as Dungeon Defenders which no device seems capable of running properly yet at max graphics (Phones that is) for extended periods of time
Watching movies while on the road or at school when there are no classes
Agenda
Navigation
So there you have it, my thoughts on the current three phones which I am considering.
I only have 13 days left before I'm "stuck" with my Sensation XE, so I'm hoping for some helpful replies with reasoning behind it explaining why I should get that specific phone.
Also, I've read something about enabling tegrak to improve Quadrant scores on the XE up to 4.5k? How equally do Quadrant score represent gaming fluidity? and does anyone have any gameplay of the SGSII on Dungeon Defenders? Because I was not able to try it out myself at the time I had the SGSII in my possession, but the XE doesn't seem to be able to handle it at max graphics fluidly.
I apologise for the wall of text and would like to thank you for your time.
Regards,
Vex

If you're into music probably the sensation. I dont know if the bl has been unlocked on sensation but if it has find a better rom with better battery life. And part ofthe the reason sgs2 does well on battery is samsung took some initiative and included hardware acceleration which has been lacking on android and will continue to do so until ICS gets out in wild and more phones are released. But if you think the sensation doesnt float your boat get the nexus. The sgs2 has too many flaws for my personal use and it seems to not fit yours.
I voided my warranty and your nexus.

-=Vex=- said:
The main things I want to use the device for is:
General stuff such as Messaging, Calling and Browsing the Web/Facebook
Heavy music use, talk about at least 2-3 hours a day
Gaming, and I'm not just talking about angry birds, I'm talking about games such as Dungeon Defenders which no device seems capable of running properly yet at max graphics (Phones that is) for extended periods of time
Watching movies while on the road or at school when there are no classes
Agenda
Navigation
So there you have it, my thoughts on the current three phones which I am considering.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not to sound negative
but if that is really your goal, the i doubt Galaxy Nexus is your choice of phone, as it will really lack on the music & gaming department.
the games you are talking about uses huge amount of storage space, a good sized variety of music album will probably eat a good 16 GB of space, good quality recording 192 kbps or above if you want to stream to your car stereo without sounding like a music in a tuna can
you'll be better off with the SGS2 or the Sensation as a 2nd choice

As far as music goes... I've been using google music and it will work so you don't use your devices storage. It will definitely eat some data if not on wifi, but yeah its what I did when I had my nexus s
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

It sounds like you like the Sensation a lot so I would recommend sticking with it. No microSD support on the GN will limit your music and games a lot.

Killer Bee said:
It sounds like you like the Sensation a lot so I would recommend sticking with it. No microSD support on the GN will limit your music and games a lot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's the hard lesson i learned from the Nexus S

The sensation is definitely your best bet for music. I say go with that.
Sent from my Nexus Prime using XDA Ultimate App

General stuff such as Messaging, Calling and Browsing the Web/Facebook
Heavy music use, talk about at least 2-3 hours a day
Gaming, and I'm not just talking about angry birds, I'm talking about games such as Dungeon Defenders which no device seems capable of running properly yet at max graphics (Phones that is) for extended periods of time
Watching movies while on the road or at school when there are no classes
Agenda
Navigation
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Definitely the Galaxy Nexus based on your preferences. The only reasons to even consider the sensation are sound and build quality(the iPhone 4S beats it in both categories). If you cannot wait then get the Galaxy S II - it's perfectly smooth, fast, customizable, has all the codec support you could need, great screen, light weight, hardware accelerated browser, great CPU/GPU for gaming, great camera, above average sound quality, etc.
The Galaxy Nexus combines the best features of both.

AllGamer said:
not to sound negative
but if that is really your goal, the i doubt Galaxy Nexus is your choice of phone, as it will really lack on the music & gaming department.
the games you are talking about uses huge amount of storage space, a good sized variety of music album will probably eat a good 16 GB of space, good quality recording 192 kbps or above if you want to stream to your car stereo without sounding like a music in a tuna can
you'll be better off with the SGS2 or the Sensation as a 2nd choice
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How exactly is the Galaxy Nexus lacking in the music department?
The codec? We have yet to see if the TWL6040 is good or bad.
The storage? 32GB isn't bad for a smartphone, there are very few 64GB ones out there.

pukemon said:
If you're into music probably the sensation. I dont know if the bl has been unlocked on sensation but if it has find a better rom with better battery life. And part ofthe the reason sgs2 does well on battery is samsung took some initiative and included hardware acceleration which has been lacking on android and will continue to do so until ICS gets out in wild and more phones are released. But if you think the sensation doesnt float your boat get the nexus. The sgs2 has too many flaws for my personal use and it seems to not fit yours.
I voided my warranty and your nexus.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The music quality on the Sensation really is amazing, I can't compare it to anything else. However, it seems to be mostly thanks to the accompanied earbuds and the equalizer setting. I believe the "Beats" settings have been ported to different phones already. And the YourBeats aren't all that expensive, so even if I won't go with the Sensation, I'll end up with those earphones and a similar equalizer setting on the SGSII or the SGN.
Would the fact that Samsung uses hardware acceleration on the SGSII affect the benchmarks like Quadrant and others? If not, then that would mean that the SGSII would prove itself to be superior graphics wise and would thus perform better in a gaming environment?
The hardware home button really is a thing to be afraid of. as I've gotten quite accustomed to using the software buttons on the Sensation already, even though the home button is slightly inconveniently placed.
What other flaws are you talking about here? I'm quite curious to what you would see as flaws and see if I can relate to those.
AllGamer said:
not to sound negative
but if that is really your goal, the i doubt Galaxy Nexus is your choice of phone, as it will really lack on the music & gaming department.
the games you are talking about uses huge amount of storage space, a good sized variety of music album will probably eat a good 16 GB of space, good quality recording 192 kbps or above if you want to stream to your car stereo without sounding like a music in a tuna can
you'll be better off with the SGS2 or the Sensation as a 2nd choice
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The storage space is indeed something to ponder about, as my library currently consists out of 100+ GB, and I just cleared out some. I believe the SGS2 has 16 GB internal storage capacity which is upgradable to 32 with an SD card? or is it 16+32 on the SD card?
After careful consideration of the limitations of the SGN, I believe that due to the higher resolution which is to be rendered and the slightly underclocked GPU, the Nexus would not be really suitable for the demanding games of today such as Dungeon Defenders and the Tegra 2 games while using Chainfire(Or something like that) which would mean that the Nexus would be taken out of the equation when it comes to gaming.
lorddart said:
As far as music goes... I've been using google music and it will work so you don't use your devices storage. It will definitely eat some data if not on wifi, but yeah its what I did when I had my nexus s
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately, my data limit per month is a mere 1GB. This pretty much leaves streaming music on the go an option which would only collect dust on my phone.
Killer Bee said:
It sounds like you like the Sensation a lot so I would recommend sticking with it. No microSD support on the GN will limit your music and games a lot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Sensation is a marvelous phone by itself, but there are quite some limitations which will lead to me being frustrated in the end. Before writing this post, I had not fully experimented with the device and tried to push it to its limits. After putting it through some benchmarks, I decided that the phone was slightly underperforming gaming-wise compared to the SGSII but was still pretty capable of handling anything else I throw at it, with music being the best part of it. However, I did notice some flaws with for example multitasking which was not as fluid as I had experienced it before after using the device for a day, forcing me to install a task manager to close apps to conserve available memory. While this will also be a concern on other phones, the increased amount of RAM on both the SGSII and the SGN will make it slightly less of an annoyance.
AllGamer said:
that's the hard lesson i learned from the Nexus S
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Click to collapse
I agree that having multiple SD cards with multiple contents is quite nice, but isn't internal memory more easily loaded into the OS? Meaning that there will be less resources used and quicker response times for those certain contents?
LordButtersI said:
The sensation is definitely your best bet for music. I say go with that.
Sent from my Nexus Prime using XDA Ultimate App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While music is indeed a primary concern, it is not the only thing I would base my choice on. Any more thoughts on the rest of the issues? Battery life, processing power, scree, gaming etc.
Toss3 said:
Definitely the Galaxy Nexus based on your preferences. The only reasons to even consider the sensation are sound and build quality(the iPhone 4S beats it in both categories). If you cannot wait then get the Galaxy S II - it's perfectly smooth, fast, customizable, has all the codec support you could need, great screen, light weight, hardware accelerated browser, great CPU/GPU for gaming, great camera, above average sound quality, etc.
The Galaxy Nexus combines the best features of both.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After reading this post I would say that you're saying that I should get the SGSII haha. Also, you're pretty much concluding that the Sensation has none of the features the SGSII has, or it has, but in a less quality than the SGSII. The nexus has me worried about the screen in combination with the GPU to be honest. Much more pixels to be rendered with an effectively "weaker" GPU than the SGSII.
Thank you for all your replies, my choices are pretty much still undecided. Everyone seems to put up some point of view which sways me to one or the other.
My primary thoughts currently are:
- The SGSII already has hardware acceleration, does this affect everything, or just browsing? If it does indeed affect everything, how will ICS make any difference? And if not, will the SGSII become even more of a powerhouse with ICS?
- The Sensation currently has poor battery life, I've seen that for myself. How will ICS affect the speed while gaming and browsing and how will it increase or decrease battery life?
- The Nexus has a 720p screen with a "weaker" GPU than both of the devices. This will severely affect gaming in my owning. Which is still my 2nd favorite thing to do while on the move.

I think part of the misconception with nexus gpu is people are going to expect 720p games at least 30fps. No way in hell unless we're underestimating it. I think it will be fine at current resolutions. Now can the sgx540 scale well, we will have to wait an see. Youre placing a lot of importance on sound and then games. Youre going to have to pick your poison. The sgs2 is probably the best bet for gaming. The nexus is a ?. For sound sensation, and i think the nexus will be fine.but it too is a question mark at this point. Battery life is a question mark for all three in your situation. We dont know how well the nexus will fair. You can bet the lte version will suck.
I voided my warranty and your nexus.

I wouldn't be too sure about the music qualitiy of the sensation. I read that it is just an equalizer setting for huge bass an nothing else. That's a quite nice review of it.
Review Sensation XE
If you want see the reasons of other users considering the Nexus I would recommend you to have look here:
Main Ressons

Nebucatnetzer said:
I wouldn't be too sure about the music qualitiy of the sensation. I read that it is just an equalizer setting for huge bass an nothing else. That's a quite nice review of it.
Review Sensation XE
If you want see the reasons of other users considering the Nexus I would recommend you to have look here:
Main Ressons
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly!
www.engadget.com/photos/beats-audio-test-results/#4515965
Those are the EQ settings for the beats app!

pukemon said:
If you're into music probably the sensation. I dont know if the bl has been unlocked on sensation but if it has find a better rom with better battery life. And part ofthe the reason sgs2 does well on battery is samsung took some initiative and included hardware acceleration which has been lacking on android and will continue to do so until ICS gets out in wild and more phones are released. But if you think the sensation doesnt float your boat get the nexus. The sgs2 has too many flaws for my personal use and it seems to not fit yours.
I voided my warranty and your nexus.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In any event, Beats is not a name associated with quality in the audiophile world. Hyped up and overpriced audio equipment.
I think we'll have to see how good the XE's audio hardware is before judging.
The DAC on the GS2 though is a big letdown - they ought to have used the Wolfson DAC again rather than the Yamaha one.

I believe it. Beats isnt anywhere on my audiophile list. Not that im a true audiophile, more a wannabe but youre definitely paying for the advertising and pockets of shareholders when you get beats. With that said, im willing to bet that the sensation is still a couple of steps up on the music hardware list. And im leaning towards the nexus being better than gs2 in the audio department. But i could be wrong on that. Though people want to think the nexus line is flagship on the hardware side, if anything it s a middle of the road phone with no frills software. Albeit great software with no carrier or manufacturer crap. Pure android distinguishes itself without any fancy skins or me too lines of code.
I voided my warranty and your nexus.

pukemon said:
I believe it. Beats isnt anywhere on my audiophile list. Not that im a true audiophile, more a wannabe but youre definitely paying for the advertising and pockets of shareholders when you get beats. With that said, im willing to bet that the sensation is still a couple of steps up on the music hardware list. And im leaning towards the nexus being better than gs2 in the audio department. But i could be wrong on that. Though people want to think the nexus line is flagship on the hardware side, if anything it s a middle of the road phone with no frills software. Albeit great software with no carrier or manufacturer crap. Pure android distinguishes itself without any fancy skins or me too lines of code.
I voided my warranty and your nexus.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All of these 3 phones should get Cyanogenmod 9 once the Ice Cream source code comes out, so AOSP > Touchwiz, Sense (which I agree with) shouldn't be a concern. From my experiences, CM has been the fastest, most stable ROMs around (and I mean official CM).
Audio-wise, we know the XE's software hyped up more than actual quality. It's nothing that PowerAmp cannot replicate. It remains to be see how good this phone sounds with other high end headphones and for those who care, the phone speakers, which are believed to be the same as the Sensation.

I have no idea. Im sure beats could make a name for itslef if it pushed out some quality sound to external speakers whether theyre headphones or a x.1 setup. Im guessing you can tweak the equalizer on beats? If not then beats is a total scam, especially for bass junkies. I like my bass too, but ill take an all around bang for buck setup any day. Onkyo is a good middle of the road example. Good receiver great sound for the right price. They make some pretty ****ty speakers though. Haha.
I voided my warranty and your nexus.

pukemon said:
I have no idea. Im sure beats could make a name for itslef if it pushed out some quality sound to external speakers whether theyre headphones or a x.1 setup. Im guessing you can tweak the equalizer on beats? If not then beats is a total scam, especially for bass junkies. I like my bass too, but ill take an all around bang for buck setup any day. Onkyo is a good middle of the road example. Good receiver great sound for the right price. They make some pretty ****ty speakers though. Haha.
I voided my warranty and your nexus.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's special "EQ" settings, I posted them a few post up. They work on any EQ app on a computer or phone.

In absolute terms Beats are not terrible headphones. However they are a very poor value for the money - a $400 Beats headphone is outperformed in the sound quality department often by $50 headphones. The problem is that they sound "muddy" and that the bass is so overpowering that it tends to hide the mids and highs.
For bass junkies, consider the Audio Technica Pro 700 mk2. Costs half as much as a Beats Pro and outperforms it - big time. I personally prefer a neutral pair of cans though.
@Pukemon
Yes you can tweak the equalizer on the Beats phone and there is a special profile. As I mentioned, it isn't anything too special.

Ok. That s what i figured. Yohre basically over paying for a name. I know the earphones are overpriced. My nokia - 505s probably sound better. My nokia 214s sound like ****. They're both around $50.
I voided my warranty and your nexus.

Related

Desire over Galaxy S?

I am in a tricky situation here.
I need to choose between Desire (not HD) and Galaxy S.
I also considered Iphone 4, but because of much problems, i rather dont.
Is the battery life of Desire Poor? (i had/have X10i(the big one) and i had enough battery for 2 days. is Desire better or worse than x10i?
Is the screen bad in sunlight?
and which one would you choose?
tnx for replies..
I have no experience of the SGS but I love my Desire. I get over 24hrs usage with most apps syncing each hour. The screen is poor in direct sunlight but all phones are
I've had both. The sgs is nice for the screen but I hated that the build quality wasn't great and there was no led notification. The sense UI on the desire is a lot nicer and the desire is smoother through transitions
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
My wife has an SGS, I have a Desire. The SGS screen is awesome but the lack of LED notification is a big problem as you have to unlock it to see if you have any messages etc. She can't even get 18 hours out of it which annoys her no end so she is always having to charge it. She isn't even a techy so all she does is call/text and email, no MP3 playing or browsing etc. My desire always lasts 2 days (I turn it off at night 11pm-8am).
SGS is so close to being great but the battery life, lack of LED and less dev support than HTC devices makes it less desirable than the desire IMHO!
tnx someone else have experience with Desire or all of them?
Desire HD? worth the wait? (its maybe a little to big), In norway we have to vait to end of december or longer for Desire HD.
Anyone tried Iphone 4? (calendar, notes(notification on these?))
the SGS best plus is the graphics card gaming performance
bad points is the plastic build, iphone copy design and iphone copy interface, you get high quality rigid feel with the metal in the desire
SGS camera has no flash and you can get excellent results with the desire camera provided you reduce the digital sharpness
like EDDY said camera can last you a day with the desire slightly more if you use it less
super amoled is great but you get higher pixel density with an SLCD desire, pretty close to the retina dsiplay
slightly better software support with the desire
arrtoo said:
tnx someone else have experience with Desire or all of them?
Desire HD? worth the wait? (its maybe a little to big), In norway we have to vait to end of december or longer for Desire HD.
Anyone tried Iphone 4? (calendar, notes(notification on these?))
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Desire HD is bigger and heavier, so its up to your taste
screen is 4.3inch but standard LCD, while desire is nicer amoled or SLCD higher with pixel density too
Desire battery is better than Desire HD
Desire HD has a much improved interface, slightly better camera, better 720p recording, it also sports a much better graphics card for gaming, more internal storage and more RAM, same processor speed
My friend bought Desire and after a couple of days he regret and got the SGS.
I saw the phone, played with him a little bit and I got the following results, some of things you already mentioned and some not:
- SGS has bigger screen & less weight. Total weight of 135g against 119g. It really feels lighter in your hand but as you all said, It's all thanks to the poor plastic design. Screen is 4.0 inches instend of 3.7. Super AMOLED vs. SLCD, I think both are very impressive screens.
- SGS has more internal storage than desire. It comes with 8\16GB internal + microSD extension. Despite the Desire, You don't need any of S-OFF N1 Table, A2SD or something like this.
- The latest technology in smartphones by far - Bluetooth 3.0, DLNA & Built-in Wi-Fi N.
- SGS's GPU is much more stronger. Playing games is way more smooth. Playing 720p movies without an effort.
- Camera - I think both phones has pretty much nice pictures, 5MP. SGS has no flash but nightmode also does the job. SGS has 720p faster fps recording.
- SGS has also something that almost no one talk about - LOW SAR. According to SAR EU, Desire has 0.72 W/kg (head) against SGS that has 0.24 W/kg (head). Pretty big difference.
- SGS has FULL multi-touch support. Desire's lack of multi-touch support, it can understand up to 2 fingers and that's also defective.
- First of all, as a phone - SGS's speaker is clearer than the Desire. Desire's speaker is noisy when playing at full volume. Recording quality is also much better in SGS. Desire's recording quality is poor, Both sound recording and video recording. Desire uses old AMR format.
- Battery Life. SGS's has 1500 mAh and Desire 1400 mAh. I think the difference isn't about the battery but because of the "Smart battery use" of Samsung. You can reach up to 2-3 days with the SGS. Desire's battery will last for something about 1 day.
If the following things doesn't bother you then buy the SGS:
- SGS doesn't have Camera flash.
- SGS's design is mainly poor plastic.
- SGS doesn't have LED notification.
- SGS interface is an "iPhone" copy.
- One of the disadvantages for me, at least, there isn't CyanogenMod port yet.
- Less android programs support as I know.
- "Menu" and "Back" buttons are touch, It might bother you at some point.
- After all, It's Samsung and I believe this is the only phone which they can compete with.
In conclusion, take your time and watch reviews of both phones on YouTube before you decide.
Also calendar and notes on the iPhone are good but android easily beats the iPhone in notifications. There is no LED light and if you get a text when your in the middle of doing something on your phone it interupts it.
The SGS GPS doesn't work properly and you can't use it for driving. Lags out, jumps around and is frankly pathetic.
No, it really is properly ****ed.
Two words - "XDA developers". Long ago i had HTC Tytn, great XDA roms and support. After some time I bought samsung i8000 and it was wrong. Samsung forget about this phone almost instantly - no video driver "we don't have time so FU".
This time I even don't consider - HTC phone, nothing else.
SGS has that lag, which has been fixed, but my cousin still complains that its slow sometimes.
My desire can last me up to 3 days on average days use, 100 texts a day, a couple calls here and there, using a custom rom mind you.
Touchwiz isnt all that great, and the build feels way too cheap...
oh and it looks like an iphone... wouldnt want to be mistaken for one of those things now would we.
1. Why jump from x10 to SGS or Desire when x10 is good enough after it got 2.1 update aaand you don't get much new stuff...
2. SGS looks better on paper, but it is nowadays all about software and SGS sucks on that, laggy, all appz don't work on it etc.
My 2 friends have SGS and have read others problems on my local forums...
Just got my Desire today. Previously had x10. I'm really impressed with it. I was also considering the galaxy but desire was cheaper and to be honest I think it is a better phone when it comes to specs and build quality overall. I think galaxy may look prettier though and has the Iphone look which attracts people. You should be happy with whichever you choose though, both great phones but desire was for me...
Oh just bear in mind that galaxy does video calling. So even though it lacks a notification led it does have front camera...
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
I have had experiences with both, SGS has a flawless multi-touch screen and an extremely powerful GPU as well as looks much modern. So gaming on it would be quite better than Desire, but it has a crap GPS, no LED notification, Samsung's over-bloated crapware(God please burn Kies in the hell), lag problems which require fixing, chances of getting a phone with the 3 button mode disabled(I'm not sure if they fixed it yet), comparatively worse developer community. I owned the SGS for 3 days, got another SGS in replacement due to me having problems, the replacement had even more problems so I got the Desire.
Desire has a far superior developer community especially since hardware wise it is very similar to Nexus One and we can have updates even before HTC announces them officially(If HTC ever does), its build quality is better, has a flash which is a very good torch and much more customization possibilities(MIUI, Sense, AOSP, Sense HD etc).
As far as battery life goes, I got my phone on a single charge for 1 day 4 hours and still got about 40% battery left.
Pl4ub said:
1. Why jump from x10 to SGS or Desire when x10 is good enough after it got 2.1 update aaand you don't get much new stuff...
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Click to collapse
Because my X10i is in for repair for the third time for 2 failure, and they can't seem to fix these 2 failures (sparkling in-ear speaker, and burned smell on the back of the battery which causes instant restarts)
The only thing they to at repair is to reinstall SW, which is very strange, since i had reinstalled 1 day before i send it in for repair, i also updated to 2.1 and they updated my X10i to 2.1 a day after...... Not very happy whit that.
It seems like i'm gonna get the Desire, because i need good calendar, notes(so therefore the Sense UI is very good) and i don't play games(not a big deal for me).
Is Iphone 4 something to consider(or is Desire a phone with less problems(or/and better platform))???
The most important part for me is a phone with "No" problems", good in-ear speaker and good calendar(and ofcourse apps, for internet radio, maps, GPS, and XDA)
Tnx for helping me with my phone choice
I forgot something.
Do Desire have a Multitouch Bug? and is it noticeable, i think multitouch is only gonna be used by me while browsing or watching pictures, and if the bug is small, it's no problem.
Is there any other known bugs? and is The 3.5 mm jack sound quality good, and can it support MW600 from SE X10i?
arrtoo said:
I forgot something.
Do Desire have a Multitouch Bug? and is it noticeable, i think multitouch is only gonna be used by me while browsing or watching pictures, and if the bug is small, it's no problem.
Is there any other known bugs? and is The 3.5 mm jack sound quality good, and can it support MW600 from SE X10i?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does have a hardware "bug" because of how it's made, but you will never notice it unless you really try to do it. The 3.5mm jack sound quality is pretty good with my AKG518s, and I also have an MW600. It works great with the MW600. In your position my choice would be between the Desire, because the Galaxy S is just a poor quality model, and the iPhone 4. If you have the money and you don't like tweaking, go for the iPhone 4. If you are a tweak freak like most guys here then certainly pick the Desire.
arrtoo said:
I am in a tricky situation here.
I need to choose between Desire (not HD) and Galaxy S.
I also considered Iphone 4, but because of much problems, i rather dont.
Is the battery life of Desire Poor? (i had/have X10i(the big one) and i had enough battery for 2 days. is Desire better or worse than x10i?
Is the screen bad in sunlight?
and which one would you choose?
tnx for replies..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had all three phones, though I've sold my X10 way before the 2.1 update which should've made things better.
Rant:
I have just about the same problems with the X10 as with the SGS, both have excellent hardware... but fail to deliver.
- The X10 and the SGS both have a bigger (1500mah) battery than my desire, so why don't they last as long as the Desire?
- They all have a 1ghz processor, than why do the SGS and the X10 lag like hell, and the Desire never...ever...? (btw, the SGS lag is way worse than the X10, samsung keeps saying they'll fix it but they don't).
- The X10 is made by SE which make the walkman-phones, then why does playing music (through good headphones) sound so horrible? Even worse, the SGS has a super-duper capable audio chip, an equalizer, and dolby digital; why can't I get a decent sound out of this thing? I have fiddled with the settings for ages, but it's just not going to give decent audio output.
- If you ever use GPS, the SGS is out of the question, it just doesn't work. It locks quickly, but then starts jumping all over the map, it's useless.
- I like the screen of both the SGS and the X10 better than the one on the Desire; the SGS's samoled is truly gorgeous, and the LCD of the X10 is MAD-bright! (always readable in bright sunlight). While the Desire has a pinkish, not to bright amoled.
Conclusion:
I always wanted to stay way from the desire because I use it outside all the time because I travel allot, so I wanted good audio (an equalizer) for listening to music. I also wanted to be able to see what's on the screen however bright the sun is. And I wanted the battery to last a day, and the Desire has a relatively small one.
But being frustrated like hell by the X10 and the SGS, due to the lag/audio/battery life I have gotten an HTC Desire, and what a wonderfull device it is! no more lags...the battery outlasts the other two easlily... and the sound quality (playing music) is better out of the box without fiddling endlessly with the settings. Even the screen visibility outside is better than I expected! This phone is SO much better than the X10 and SGS, it's amazing!
Advice:
buy the desire!
My experience as a AT&T rep allowed me to play with both the iPhone 4 and the Samsung galaxy s, captivate.
The iPhone is ok for the simpleton, non technical, non customizable, 2 year from retirement folks. No offense to anyone.
The sgs, captivate, is much nicer than the iPhone, but many folks don't know they have had a silent recall due to gps and data connect problems. I have not seen too many come in but its there. Most of these folks are non iPhone previous owners, or just despise Apple from their experience.
The sgs still does not have froyo, and the interface is an iPhone wanna be. But a much better choice than the iPhone. As for Rom support from what I have heard is minimul, but folks here do their best as always.
So I own a desire I do have it on the ATT network via Telstra branding. The southeast market is currently migrating to sole 850 mhz 3g, so currently on edge, but its still worth the wait till 2011.
Also since upgrading, and rooting my phone its worth about 150 more than what I paid via eBay. Never expected it to increase in value so I am pleased.
I would base my decision on carrier network support, xda support, and devices material and construction. As a bonus, if you are on ATT you can have unlimited data for 15 dollars, since the imei is not registered with the company. So 15 bucks a month savings makes the difference over the length of a contract wich you should not need by supplying your own equipment.
Advice: buy an HTC Desire with AMBLED if available still.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

Infuse to nexus....how is speaker volume difference?

Hi all, I went from captivate to infuse, and have been very happy with speaker quality, louder than my captivate when viewing youtube videos. Its hard to determine speaker volume, I'm hearing low from other nexus owners, but low compared to what? Its sad that so many years of improvements in smart phones, yet, best audio is the bold 9000 from 5 years ago.
So my question, has anyone tried the nexus coming from an infuse, if so, is it the same? Or how much lower..estimate like 10% or more?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997R using XDA App
Havent owned an atrix or nokia n/x series phone have you? X series had awesome stereo for a phone. N too. And the atrix is great mono speaker. I cant answer your question personally, but everythng seems to point to nexus being better than average so far.
I invented cyberspace. You're trespassing.
I had a Nexus S before having the Galaxy Nexus.
the loudspeaker is considerably quieter than the Nexus S, and I would go so far as to say that it is the quietest loudspeaker on any of the phones I've owned.
the earpiece speaker is just fine though.
I am coming from the infuse and bought a GN yesterday. Because you asked I ran this test:
I played the same song on both phones - Jimmy James by the Beastie Boys - at max volume. I don't have a perfect system for measuring dB but I used the mic on my computer and watched the number of bars that lit up. On the Infuse I would see 3 bars and an occasional 4th bar. On the GN with the stock settings I barely saw 1 bar.
However, there is a caveat. On the Infuse I am running MIUI 1.10.28 and using the MIUI music player. On the GN I am running the stock Music player. This is the new music player though so it has an EQ function which is disabled by default. If you turn on the EQ function I get a much better result. The test ends up being almost the same, and if I crank up the levels some it is better than the Infuse seeing 4 or even 5 bars.
Another thing I noticed right away was the sound quality. Even before I tweaked the EQ on the GN the sound was much richer. I had never thought that the Infuse sounded tinny until I did the head-to-head comparison. Before I tweaked the settings I had even though that the GN was a bit louder because of this, just because the sound was fuller. It was only when I did a more qualitative measurement that I found the levels were higher on the Infuse initially.
Hopefully this helps.
Cheers,
cj
Wow, thanks so much for the insight, makes me feel at ease.was wondering that many of those that did reviews never mentioned equalizer.
So in general, coming from infuse, what are your main pros or cons? Is browser much faster, since infuse is also 4g.
Appreciate your help
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997R using XDA App
The pros are fairly obvious. Faster, lighter, thinner better screen resolution, etc. The screen is amazing. One thing that is huge for me is the Penta-band GSM chip. I travel a lot so it is nice to have a phone that will get 3G worldwide. ICS is also a huge improvement. I am even wondering if I might skip custom ROMs altogether. I love the Gmail app.
My biggest con is the lack of a micro SD card and that so far there is only a 16Gb version. But that is the price of early adoption. I am also having trouble getting movies to play but there is another thread for that and that is software related so there are alternatives. Lastly I have experienced the volume bug on 2G but I assume that will get a fix pushed out soon enough.
cj
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

[Q] Should I buy the HTC Desire Z?

I want to buy the HTC Desire Z but a few things that I read on the net are really freaking me out:
1) BATTERY LIFE: Some users say the battery lasts for less than a day, while others say they have no problem for 2 days. Now I have a ZTE Blade(which I plan to sell) that also has bad battery life, somewhat similar, so its kinda OK as long as its not really that bad.
I wont really have the Wifi turned on 24/7, coz I am a conservative user(although when I get the phone initially I'll check it out every 10 seconds... only for some days).
Can the battery life be fixed by using custom ROMs or Kernels or is it just the underpowered battery pack?
2)Keyboard Hinge: It seems that the screen falls loose when you turn the phone upside down. Some people complain of loose hinges .
I will be using the keyboard frequently.
3)LAG AND BUGS: Actually, its software related so it doesn't really matter I would probably flash a Custom ROM as soon as I get.
So should I buy this phone or not? Please tell me about the other problems in this phone...
If you say "NO", then please suggest an alternative in the same price segment!
Thanks a lot!
Regards,
jj_95nano
I've had my Desire Z since august last year.
Pros:
-great dev support with PLENTY of ROMs to choose from, you get choices between AOSP, GB Sense, GB MIUI, ICS Sense and ICS MIUI.
-good sound quality output through headphone jack
-great screen with nice viewing angles and colours.
-good battery life lasting 2 full days regularly for me under light to medium use.
-great keyboard which has a good feel to it.
-fantastic build quality, i've dropped my DZ a bit more than a handful of times and it barely has any scratches anywhere.
-the "z-hinge" is much more sturdy than it seems and it will definitely last the test of time.
-the phone is blazing fast with AOSP ROMs and can play pretty much every game right now.
-Call quality is really good when there is good reception (read below)
Cons:
-sometimes not-so fantastic performance when it comes to Sense ROMs.
-my keyboard is becoming unresponsive and requires very hard pushes to register the keys Q,W,E and more recently the space bar is having this issue too.
-i have had both wifi and cellular signal death grip issues that occur when the keyboard is out and my hands are wrapped around the device.
-With wifi, a full bar signal can drop down to half signal or less than half if you hold the device as i described.
-With cellular signal, i have very poor reception at my house where i'll get 3/4 bars at the most but a lot of the time, if i hold my phone for more than 30 seconds while the keyboard is out with my hands wrapped around it, i will end up completely losing reception. That said, this has been an issue with previous phones of mine anyway though.
-The device does get hot at times where it can make your hands sweaty but it never really gets burning hot.
-call quality is quite terrible for me at times at my house due to the bad reception that i have and the death grip issues seem to interrupt calls as well at times as i've had a drop outs during calls before.
I hope that helps a bit. Oh and about the tightness of the Z-hinge, i can hold my phone upside down with the keyboard open without it closing, it takes a little bit of practice but my hinge is quite tight and it's still as tight as it was when i bought my phone so as mentioned earlier, the hinge will definitely last the tests of time.
Overall, the pros outweigh the cons for me simply because of how much i love android, so i'd give the phone about an 8/10. If you can find it for like $250USD or less, i'd buy it if i were you, but otherwise, i would just wait for the next best qwerty slider.
magic_android said:
I've had my Desire Z since august last year.
Pros:
-great dev support with PLENTY of ROMs to choose from, you get choices between AOSP, GB Sense, GB MIUI, ICS Sense and ICS MIUI.
-good sound quality output through headphone jack
-great screen with nice viewing angles and colours.
-good battery life lasting 2 full days regularly for me under light to medium use.
-great keyboard which has a good feel to it.
-fantastic build quality, i've dropped my DZ a bit more than a handful of times and it barely has any scratches anywhere.
-the "z-hinge" is much more sturdy than it seems and it will definitely last the test of time.
-the phone is blazing fast with AOSP ROMs and can play pretty much every game right now.
-Call quality is really good when there is good reception (read below)
Cons:
-sometimes not-so fantastic performance when it comes to Sense ROMs.
-my keyboard is becoming unresponsive and requires very hard pushes to register the keys Q,W,E and more recently the space bar is having this issue too.
-i have had both wifi and cellular signal death grip issues that occur when the keyboard is out and my hands are wrapped around the device.
-With wifi, a full bar signal can drop down to half signal or less than half if you hold the device as i described.
-With cellular signal, i have very poor reception at my house where i'll get 3/4 bars at the most but a lot of the time, if i hold my phone for more than 30 seconds while the keyboard is out with my hands wrapped around it, i will end up completely losing reception. That said, this has been an issue with previous phones of mine anyway though.
-The device does get hot at times where it can make your hands sweaty but it never really gets burning hot.
-call quality is quite terrible for me at times at my house due to the bad reception that i have and the death grip issues seem to interrupt calls as well at times as i've had a drop outs during calls before.
I hope that helps a bit. Oh and about the tightness of the Z-hinge, i can hold my phone upside down with the keyboard open without it closing, it takes a little bit of practice but my hinge is quite tight and it's still as tight as it was when i bought my phone so as mentioned earlier, the hinge will definitely last the tests of time.
Overall, the pros outweigh the cons for me simply because of how much i love android, so i'd give the phone about an 8/10. If you can find it for like $250USD or less, i'd buy it if i were you, but otherwise, i would just wait for the next best qwerty slider.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for answering!
But there are a few new problems(Call reception, bad signal) that you have just enlightened me about. But should it really matter at a place with full network strength?
But seriously, the PROS seem tooo attractive! The number of ROMS is amazing.
I guess I might just go to an E-store and check out the DZ today!
Then I'll make up my mind.
Thanks again for your helpful post.
jj_95nano said:
Thank you for answering!
But there are a few new problems(Call reception, bad signal) that you have just enlightened me about. But should it really matter at a place with full network strength?
But seriously, the PROS seem tooo attractive! The number of ROMS is amazing.
I guess I might just go to an E-store and check out the DZ today!
Then I'll make up my mind.
Thanks again for your helpful post.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I bought my DZ a year and a half ago and i've never encountered major issues other than ROM depending ones.
I live in a french "big city" and never have signal troubles.
Sure he doesn't have incredible performances (mostly with Sense 3.x Roms) and if you want to use it while lying on your bed and holding it above you you will suffer of a loose hinge but if you can find it at a reasonable price, it's still a good deal and one of the best with an HW Keyboard.
Might be worthwhile to check out the official review thread in the General section.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA
If you live somewhere with good reception and you can get the desire z at a good price, then i'd say go for it . When i have good reception, calls sound pretty much perfect. It's just that my carrier somewhat sucks haha.
magic_android said:
If you live somewhere with good reception and you can get the desire z at a good price, then i'd say go for it . When i have good reception, calls sound pretty much perfect. It's just that my carrier somewhat sucks haha.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for replying!
My carrier sucks too, but only outside the city, but I get full signal strength with my ZTE Blade in my house. Considering that the ZTE Blade has similar network issues, I think I don't mind the bad reception issue. Things are getting positive for this phone... I couldn't go to see it today, but I'll try tomorrow!
Ditamae said:
Might be worthwhile to check out the official review thread in the General section.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its great you pointed me out to that thread, it added to my knowledge about the DZ!
And I also found a ZTE Blade owner who had upgraded to DZ on that thread!
TenMaKo said:
I bought my DZ a year and a half ago and i've never encountered major issues other than ROM depending ones.
I live in a french "big city" and never have signal troubles.
Sure he doesn't have incredible performances (mostly with Sense 3.x Roms) and if you want to use it while lying on your bed and holding it above you you will suffer of a loose hinge but if you can find it at a reasonable price, it's still a good deal and one of the best with an HW Keyboard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, HW keyboard is important as I always face issues with my existing phone when it comes to using the on-screen keyboard. Well, I'll just grin and bear the loose hinge.
Thanks to everyone on this thread. I seem to like the phone now.I just need to see it in reality to make up my mind.
it's just the keyboard issue, other than that , the phone is awesome
Very quick fix if you feel the keyboard is loose. Check the thread on the spring fix. I did both mine and my girlfriends g2s in 20min. As for reception there are more radios to pick from then on any other device I've used so chances are at least one is good in your area and this may help with battery life too. Also I get about 20 hrs give or take with most roms and I'm a heavy user. My gf still has over 80% battery when she plugs in at night as a light user. Not to mention many after market batteries to pick from.
Did a lot of research before I bought us both g2s and I could not find a better option for us as the keyboard was the hw biggest need for us
Sent from my HTC Vision using xda premium
The screen is meant to be loose, in that it allows you to flip the keyboard open and closed with almost no effort. I actually find it pretty tough to hold the phone in such a way, that it opens when upside down. Any contact with your fingers/hands on the "screen" portion of the phone will prevent it from opening accidentally. You actually have to be holding the back "half" of the phone without touching the front "half" in order for it to open while upside down. A few people have mentioned that the phone opens when they are using the phone and laying down. But I often use my Z while laying on the couch, and have never found this to be an issue. My opinion is that the hinge "issue" has been completely overblown, and don't let it negatively sway your opinion of the phone.
Battery life is obviously a very difficult thing to compare between users, as its very dependent on how you use your phone, and also reception. But with fairly moderate use, the Z will easily get you through the day, and then you charge overnight. With light usage, I can often get 2 days. On the other hand, when I'm hiking in the woods, in poor reception areas, I can kill the battery in 8 hours or less, without even using it. Forcing the phone to EDGE seems to help, as some of the battery drain seems to be from the phone constantly trying to connect to a dodgy 3G signal. Similarly, in less populated areas (but still in built up towns) I will sometimes get battery life much less than the usual 1-2 days I can get at my home and work locations. I guess the moral of the story, your mileage will certainly vary. But for average conditions, I'd say the Z has pretty good battery life for a smartphone.
All that said, the Z is a solid phone, and a great community here. But I'd be hard pressed to recommend buying one at this time. The phone is a year and a half old. The CPU and memory specs are really showing their age. And its unfortunate that flagship devices with hardware keyboards seem to be becoming an extinct species. I'd only consider this device if you really require a hardware keyboard, and can get a good price.
redpoint73 said:
The screen is meant to be loose, in that it allows you to flip the keyboard open and closed with almost no effort. I actually find it pretty tough to hold the phone in such a way, that it opens when upside down. Any contact with your fingers/hands on the "screen" portion of the phone will prevent it from opening accidentally. You actually have to be holding the back "half" of the phone without touching the front "half" in order for it to open while upside down. A few people have mentioned that the phone opens when they are using the phone and laying down. But I often use my Z while laying on the couch, and have never found this to be an issue. My opinion is that the hinge "issue" has been completely overblown, and don't let it negatively sway your opinion of the phone.
Battery life is obviously a very difficult thing to compare between users, as its very dependent on how you use your phone, and also reception. But with fairly moderate use, the Z will easily get you through the day, and then you charge overnight. With light usage, I can often get 2 days. On the other hand, when I'm hiking in the woods, in poor reception areas, I can kill the battery in 8 hours or less, without even using it. Forcing the phone to EDGE seems to help, as some of the battery drain seems to be from the phone constantly trying to connect to a dodgy 3G signal. Similarly, in less populated areas (but still in built up towns) I will sometimes get battery life much less than the usual 1-2 days I can get at my home and work locations. I guess the moral of the story, your mileage will certainly vary. But for average conditions, I'd say the Z has pretty good battery life for a smartphone.
All that said, the Z is a solid phone, and a great community here. But I'd be hard pressed to recommend buying one at this time. The phone is a year and a half old. The CPU and memory specs are really showing their age. And its unfortunate that flagship devices with hardware keyboards seem to be becoming an extinct species. I'd only consider this device if you really require a hardware keyboard, and can get a good price.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess if I buy the phone, I'll have better battery life as I have my cellular plan limited to 2G so that is going to make a big difference. Anyways its not like my existing phone(ZTE Blade) has great battery life and reception, so I'm used to this.
And ay the community here is AMAZING, the number of ROMs and Radios is superb! I am no fan of OC'ing so CPU speed doesn't matter. HW keyboard is soo tempting.
Thanks a lot for all your responses... I'll search for the spring fix for the keyboard...
jj_95nano said:
I am no fan of OC'ing so CPU speed doesn't matter.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually have to say that this statement is a bit backward. If you were into overclocking, that would make up a bit for the lower "stock" CPU clock speed of 800 MHz. As it is, the CPU on the Z is good enough for most tasks. But newer CPUs are pushing 1.5 GHz, and multi cores, and you can really tell the difference. My tablet is a HTC Flyer, with a 1.5 GHz CPU, and it just, well . . . flies. So much more smoother interface experience (even with Sense), smooth video playback (Rockplayer), and this is only with single core (most phones are now coming dual core, and quad core coming soon). Plus 1 GB of RAM means much less dropping of apps from memory. My Flyer acts like I wish my Z would.
Again, don't get me wrong. The Z is solid, and will still have plenty of life left, if you really need the keyboard. But its nowhere near cutting edge, and for me its time to move on. I'll likely be picking up the One X when its released.
redpoint73 said:
Actually have to say that this statement is a bit backward. If you were into overclocking, that would make up a bit for the lower "stock" CPU clock speed of 800 MHz. As it is, the CPU on the Z is good enough for most tasks. But newer CPUs are pushing 1.5 GHz, and multi cores, and you can really tell the difference. My tablet is a HTC Flyer, with a 1.5 GHz CPU, and it just, well . . . flies. So much more smoother interface experience (even with Sense), smooth video playback (Rockplayer), and this is only with single core (most phones are now coming dual core, and quad core coming soon). Plus 1 GB of RAM means much less dropping of apps from memory. My Flyer acts like I wish my Z would.
Again, don't get me wrong. The Z is solid, and will still have plenty of life left, if you really need the keyboard. But its nowhere near cutting edge, and for me its time to move on. I'll likely be picking up the One X when its released.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I mostly agree with this post and his previous one.
I'm also considering buying an HTC One X.
It seems so great : Tegra3 1.5Ghz QuadCore - 1GB RAM - Screen resolution : 1280*720px, Internal Memory 32GB, Front Camera, NFC, Native ICS + Sense 4 in its full version
Compared to our DZ, that's just like WOW !!
But no hardware keyboard anymore and no real HDMI connection (you need a special cable).... for a 600€ phone.... that really pisses me off.
@ the OP, i think you should wait a couple of months until some new phones come out so that you have more choice. I'm personally HIGHLY considering getting a One X or One S if i can find the money for it as the keyboard on my phone is driving me nuts xD.
redpoint73 said:
Actually have to say that this statement is a bit backward. If you were into overclocking, that would make up a bit for the lower "stock" CPU clock speed of 800 MHz. As it is, the CPU on the Z is good enough for most tasks. But newer CPUs are pushing 1.5 GHz, and multi cores, and you can really tell the difference. My tablet is a HTC Flyer, with a 1.5 GHz CPU, and it just, well . . . flies. So much more smoother interface experience (even with Sense), smooth video playback (Rockplayer), and this is only with single core (most phones are now coming dual core, and quad core coming soon). Plus 1 GB of RAM means much less dropping of apps from memory. My Flyer acts like I wish my Z would.
Again, don't get me wrong. The Z is solid, and will still have plenty of life left, if you really need the keyboard. But its nowhere near cutting edge, and for me its time to move on. I'll likely be picking up the One X when its released.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't want to contradict you, but I never overclocked my existing phone which is only 600MHz and I was pretty satisfied because I used custom ROMs. The only Overclocking that I did was to OC the GPU. But the stock 800MHz on DZ is good with custom ROMs as I saw on youtube...
Well I'm still a teen so the One X is a tad too expensive. I txt, so HW keyboard is a necessity. I have an iPod touch 4 for 1GHz . I use that for Gaming, media, etc(you obviously know)...
Yes the market is full of Dual and Quad core phones and tabs out there but I might just venture out to that segment when I'm actually looking for a good quality phone to use long-term when I'm older(Coz my parents don't think I'd handle those kinda expensive Gizmos)
magic_android said:
@ the OP, i think you should wait a couple of months until some new phones come out so that you have more choice. I'm personally HIGHLY considering getting a One X or One S if i can find the money for it as the keyboard on my phone is driving me nuts xD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After reviewing the phone in a store I was pretty impressed and there really wasn't anything wrong with the keyboard(firm enough) on that piece so I think I'll just have to have my fingers crossed to get a piece that has a stiff keyboard.
I need to buy a phone quick as my ZTE Blade's value is going down and I don't want to spend too much on upgrading. The only competitor IMHO to the DZ is Xperia Pro. So I think I'd either buy the DZ or the Xperia Pro...
You're talking about the mini pro? Or is there another version of it? The dz will probably have a larger community since that device wasn't advertised too much. It's still a great device though, a friend of mine's got it and I had the chance to play around with it.
The phone's hardware, as redpoint73 stated, is indeed starting to age. It can last for a bit more than a year, if you don't mind the slower hardware. So, it might just be worth it if you upgrade every 1,5-2 years.
Sent from my DZ.
crestofawave said:
You're talking about the mini pro? Or is there another version of it? The dz will probably have a larger community since that device wasn't advertised too much. It's still a great device though, a friend of mine's got it and I had the chance to play around with it.
The phone's hardware, as redpoint73 stated, is indeed starting to age. It can last for a bit more than a year, if you don't mind the slower hardware. So, it might just be worth it if you upgrade every 1,5-2 years.
Sent from my DZ.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No I'm talking about this: http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_pro-3779.php <<< It has a resolution of 480x854, so its bigger and it has a 1GHz processor. Only thing is that it does not have a good community(or maybe no community...)
I bought my ZTE Blade just 5 months back, so you know that's pretty short... I will obviously upgrade in the future if there is another phone that I fall in love with
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_pro-3779.php
jj_95nano said:
I don't want to contradict you, but I never overclocked my existing phone which is only 600MHz and I was pretty satisfied because I used custom ROMs. The only Overclocking that I did was to OC the GPU. But the stock 800MHz on DZ is good with custom ROMs as I saw on youtube...
Well I'm still a teen so the One X is a tad too expensive. I txt, so HW keyboard is a necessity. I have an iPod touch 4 for 1GHz . I use that for Gaming, media, etc(you obviously know)...
Yes the market is full of Dual and Quad core phones and tabs out there but I might just venture out to that segment when I'm actually looking for a good quality phone to use long-term when I'm older(Coz my parents don't think I'd handle those kinda expensive Gizmos)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its largely a matter of personal preference and needs, so feel free to disagree! Its you buying the phone, after all. But for me, its really quite evident when comparing the Z to more modern phones, the difference in CPU. Lightweight ROMs help, but its really just a Band-Aid when the CPU is falling this far behind. But if you're on a budget, and can get a good deal on a Z, its still a solid phone.
Slightly off topic, but speaking of CPUs on newer phones, have you guys seen the recently posted benchmarks on the US (AT&T) version of the One X (actually One XL)? Dammmnnnn, this thing embarrasses every phone currently on the market, including the Galaxy Nexus. Much less an older phone like the Z:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1565181
jj_95nano said:
No I'm talking about this: http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_pro-3779.php <<< It has a resolution of 480x854, so its bigger and it has a 1GHz processor. Only thing is that it does not have a good community(or maybe no community...)
I bought my ZTE Blade just 5 months back, so you know that's pretty short... I will obviously upgrade in the future if there is another phone that I fall in love with
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_pro-3779.php
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that we don't care about the slight difference between the 2 processor as you can OC your DZ from 800Mhz to 1.8Ghz without problems (i know u can even go higher but i've never tried). Even if you're not fond of OCing, that's still a possibility.
Screen resolution doesn't seem relevant to me neither. 480*800 VS 480*854.....
On the other hand, the community should be a major argument as it's the one thing that allows our DZ not to be totally outdated.
P.S: Sorry, i'm pretty sure my english is terrible
TenMaKo said:
P.S: Sorry, i'm pretty sure my english is terrible
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Um, almost perfect, actually. And more better than many native English speakers on XDA. ;-)

I have got mine! (Early impressions)

I have got my One X on Saturday (Tegra version, HT24 batch) and I am posting my quick impressions.
GOOD THINGS:
- Build quality is superb, after reading horror stories here I was really worried, but happily my device is perfect - no creaking, flex, gaps, yellow spots etc.
- Polycarbonate body looks really great, although it is a bit slippery. Rubber-like back of my HD2 felt more secure in hand.
- Display is just amazing, colours are vivid and natural (compared to oversaturated, 'radioactive' mess on SAMOLEDs), resolution is perfect (no pen-tile absurd). I don't think any screen in the near future can get much better than this. I haven't observed any flickering at all or graphics corruption a lot of people complain about. My LCD is slightly on the warmer side (but not yellowish), colour calibration and gamma are surprisingly good (this is not something you see on mobiles displays often). If I wanted to be really picky, there is a small particle of dust behind the glass (about one pixel size, looks like a dead pixel), which I can only see under the microscope (sic!) really.
- Touchscreen is very responsive and the glass has got this nice 'soft' feeling under the fingers (some kind of coating?).
- Performance is great, UI is smooth, internal storage is blazing fast (> 30MB/s). It is a joy to use this phone.
NEUTRAL:
- Battery life. Not great, but not terrible either (sofware 1.28). The battery can easily last the whole day (6AM - 11PM) with moderate usage: a lot of phone calls & texts, 1 hour of internet browsing and music, a bit of gaming, 3G / Wifi on + Exchange & GMail push synchronization enabled all the time.
- Sense. I prefer stock ICS, but Sense is not that bad. It has got some nice widgets and sync features. It would be perfect if HTC could just provide stock ICS experience, will some additional wallpapers, themes, widgets and sync options. The biggest problem is that Sense alone eats almost 800MB of RAM on One-X.
BAD THINGS:
- Quality of headphone output is really terrible. There is huge amount of noise (SNR must be really low) and even at the maximum level volume is just OK on pretty sensitive Ultimate Ears 700 IEMs. My old HD2 sounds like audiophile device when compared to One X. Really disappointed here.
- GPS works well indoors and fix is quick, but erratic. Position on Google maps is just floating all over the screen (it looks quite funny), in most cases it stabilizes after a while though. It seems like some output filtering / accuracy reporting issue (GPS reports 1m accuracy which I find hard to believe), hopefully this can be corrected by further software updates. At this point GPS is quite unusable in applications that rely on distance / speed calculations (Sports tracking, Car Nav, etc).
- Camera is overhyped IMHO. The pictures are VERY grainy, oversaturated and lacking details (too much noise reduction?). They actually look worse than from HD2, not to mention my old Nokia N82. The photos I saw in various 'camera is great' threads on XDA are also pretty bad, I am not sure what all this fuss is about. It is probably some mass-hallucination The camera is just average, at best. However, you can't deny that speed of capture application is great.
- Not enough RAM - when Android + Sense consumes almost 800MB, 1GB is just not enough. Because of lack of RAM, applications are killed very quickly and multitasking is significantly affected. This device should ship with at least 1.5GB of RAM.
- Software is still unpolished and outdated (2.x kernel, Android 4.0.3 base in 2012 flagship model - HTC, seriously?), Tegra power management is lacking, there are a lot of small bugs. This should be resolved within a few months (hopefully!)
- Lack of MicroSD slot. I am not that concerned about replacement battery, but absence of SD card slot is a MAJOR design fault. First of all, with microSD you could expand your phone with 32GB of extra space for 15 quid or so and not waste quick internal memory for data like movies, music or pictures. Second (I think more important) point is that memory card is great for quickly transferring data between devices and storing / taking backups (Titanium Backup, CWM). If something goes wrong with the phone (it dies, gets damaged, etc.) then you can say goodbye to your data on the internal memory. With microSD card, you just move it to another device / card reader and easily recover your files from it.
It might look like there are more bad points than good ones, but I am actually loving this device. It has just got this 'premium' felling (build quality, screen), it is really hard not to like it. It is just a shame that sound quality is dire (despite of 'Beats Audio' branding) and the phone is plagued with various QC / software issues. I really hope HTC will be able to rectify them soon, this handset deserves it.
aszu said:
I have got my One X on Saturday (Tegra version, HT24 batch) and I am posting my quick impressions.
GOOD THINGS:
- Build quality is superb, after reading horror stories here I was really worried, but happily my device is perfect - no creaking, flex, gaps, yellow spots etc.
- Polycarbonate body looks really great, although it is a bit slippery. Rubber-like back of my HD2 felt more secure in hand.
- Display is just amazing, colours are vivid and natural (compared to oversaturated, 'radioactive' mess on SAMOLEDs), resolution is perfect (no pen-tile absurd). I don't think any screen in the near future can get much better than this. I haven't observed any flickering at all or graphics corruption a lot of people complain about. My LCD is slightly on the warmer side (but not yellowish), colour calibration and gamma are surprisingly good (this is not something you see on mobiles displays often). If I wanted to be really picky, there is a small particle of dust behind the glass (about one pixel size, looks like a dead pixel), which I can only see under the microscope (sic!) really.
- Touchscreen is very responsive and the glass has got this nice 'soft' feeling under the fingers (some kind of coating?).
- Performance is great, UI is smooth, internal storage is blazing fast (> 30MB/s). It is a joy to use this phone.
NEUTRAL:
- Battery life. Not great, but not terrible either (sofware 1.28). The battery can easily last the whole day (6AM - 11PM) with moderate usage: a lot of phone calls & texts, 1 hour of internet browsing and music, a bit of gaming, 3G / Wifi on + Exchange & GMail push synchronization enabled all the time.
- Sense. I prefer stock ICS, but Sense is not that bad. It has got some nice widgets and sync features. It would be perfect if HTC could just provide stock ICS experience, will some additional wallpapers, themes, widgets and sync options. The biggest problem is that Sense alone eats almost 800MB of RAM on One-X.
BAD THINGS:
- Quality of headphone output is really terrible. There is huge amount of noise (SNR must be really low) and even at the maximum level volume is just OK on pretty sensitive Ultimate Ears 700 IEMs. My old HD2 sounds like audiophile device when compared to One X. Really disappointed here.
- GPS works well indoors and fix is quick, but erratic. Position on Google maps is just floating all over the screen (it looks quite funny), in most cases it stabilizes after a while though. It seems like some output filtering / accuracy reporting issue (GPS reports 1m accuracy which I find hard to believe), hopefully this can be corrected by further software updates. At this point GPS is quite unusable in applications that rely on distance / speed calculations (Sports tracking, Car Nav, etc).
- Camera is overhyped IMHO. The pictures are VERY grainy, oversaturated and lacking details (too much noise reduction?). They actually look worse than from HD2, not to mention my old Nokia N82. The photos I saw in various 'camera is great' threads on XDA are also pretty bad, I am not sure what all this fuss is about. It is probably some mass-hallucination The camera is just average, at best. However, you can't deny that speed of capture application is great.
- Not enough RAM - when Android + Sense consumes almost 800MB, 1GB is just not enough. Because of lack of RAM, applications are killed very quickly and multitasking is significantly affected. This device should ship with at least 1.5GB of RAM.
- Software is still unpolished and outdated (2.x kernel, Android 4.0.3 base in 2012 flagship model - HTC, seriously?), Tegra power management is lacking, there are a lot of small bugs. This should be resolved within a few months (hopefully!)
- Lack of MicroSD slot. I am not that concerned about replacement battery, but absence of SD card slot is a MAJOR design fault. First of all, with microSD you could expand your phone with 32GB of extra space for 15 quid or so and not waste quick internal memory for data like movies, music or pictures. Second (I think more important) point is that memory card is great for quickly transferring data between devices and storing / taking backups (Titanium Backup, CWM). If something goes wrong with the phone (it dies, gets damaged, etc.) then you can say goodbye to your data on the internal memory. With microSD card, you just move it to another device / card reader and easily recover your files from it.
It might look like there are more bad points than good ones, but I am actually loving this device. It has just got this 'premium' felling (build quality, screen), it is really hard not to like it. It is just a shame that sound quality is dire (despite of 'Beats Audio' branding) and the phone is plagued with various QC / software issues. I really hope HTC will be able to rectify them soon, this handset deserves it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just would like to offer my own experience on the bad poings you covered:
Audio is Great with my Marley Zions, On the Beats profiles and no effect settings its above and beyond my Desire HD and HD2. Not sure how you'd. Put the HD2 above it, as IMO that was a horrible sounding device (It lasted me two weeks). But of course audio is subjective.
GPS, this may be your device, as I was using GPS extensively saturday night for a car cruise where we'd be texted the next location and have to find our way there (all 500+ of us )
But GPS lock on in Essex, Took 2-5 seconds, withvabsolutely no disconnections for 2 hours estimated total, I was very impressed as my DHD had awful GPS performance.
I partly agree with the Camera, In low light it struggles due to the over compression, which should be sorted via software update, but in good light It's one of the best Or the best cameraphones I've used.
Ram- 1GB is quite sufficient, I have around 350MB free RAM when I'm not using any other applications, and I don't know of any apps that require 350MB of Ram , Games like GTA and Riptide GP etc will use 100MB at It's max. I can run Stick it while browsing facebook. and listening to music, etc.
More RAM isn't really necessary yet, until battery improvements arise, and of course the requirement for it, but if It's a concern then LG have a phone with 2GB of RAM, but like I said its not necessary and wouldn't be utilized.
SD card issue is also subjective. sure I agree It's a little inconvenient as I like to swap data around, but the improved read and. write speed is a welcome trade off , 25+MB/s compared to around 6-10MB/S On my DHD.
Good review but:
- Battery will improve in a week, especially on 1.29
- Camera is like you described in low light but its amazing in daylight reduce sharpness to -2
- Audio output is amazing, earphones are a nodge better than iPhone4/4s earphoens, what are you talking about
Regarding sd card, everything seems to be going the way of the cloud. I never switched my sd card on previous phones anyway.
Music is backed up on Google music, photos on dropbox, titanium backup can sync with multiple cloud services, so there's not too many important things that can be lost.
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2
I bought my over the weekend.
Battery Life will alway seem rubbish when you first get the phone, mostly because it a new toy so we keep playing with it.
My Desire was rubbish.. but once got over the wow new toy.. i could take it off charge at 7am and at 11pm it was at 75% (sometimes 90% if untouched).
So i am hoping the same will be true with the HOX.
I like to watch videos, (on holiday) so i do hope it can handle a 2hour film and still be at 50+% charge when done.
I wasn't really that bothered the battery cannot be removed, really the only time i needed to remove battery on the Desire was due to some apps not liking the new Custom ROM. i can alway use a portable charger.
The Screen is gorgeous, just stunning.
Now i was shocked to find only 300megs was left on a 1GB phone... wow, the desire only had 480 and i still had 120mb free.
The big problem was that HTC failed to give us update and blamed the limited amout of Memory... I really hope they dont pull that trick again, eg Jelly Bean comes out and say sorry your 1gb Quad core phone doesn't have the space to run it!
there is some lag here and there but overal an impressive phone.
The dancing GPS will not affect car navigation. You can only really see it when using Google maps and standing still. It is due to a firmware bug from what I can tell, whereby it is not utilising all available satellites, and seemingly also misinterpreting A-GPS info. I find it better if Wi-Fi is switched off for example. I am confident that this will improve with a subsequent firmware update.
If you havent done this yet.
Go to Settings - Sound - Sound Enhancer -
Then at the very top on the black bar there is an Arrow. Select this it will be on Other for Heandphones. Select one of the other 2 options and see wich works better.
The other default sounds horrible. You will notice an increase in volume as well.
Also - you need the headphones plugged in or Sound Enhancer is greyed out.
why on earth would anyone buy a phone w no SD card slot just to complain about it? It's like buying an Iphone but complain about the 3.5 inch screen. Just to remind you the fact that it has no SD card slot --> unibody --> why it's beautiful --> why people choose it over the S3.
Anyway it's your phone, your money, your experience. Complain as much as you want or just return it and move on.
jonstatt said:
The dancing GPS will not affect car navigation. You can only really see it when using Google maps and standing still. It is due to a firmware bug from what I can tell, whereby it is not utilising all available satellites, and seemingly also misinterpreting A-GPS info. I find it better if Wi-Fi is switched off for example. I am confident that this will improve with a subsequent firmware update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope you're right about firmware fiing this.
I tried to use Runkeeper and Endomondo sports tracker today for a walking trip. After 1 mile walking, the SGPS track reported me covering 6 miles at a speed of 20-something miles per hour. The track was all over the place. USELESS!
I had a Galaxy Nexus as backup...track was flawless.
aszu said:
Software is still unpolished and outdated (2.x kernel, Android 4.0.3 base in 2012 flagship model - HTC, seriously?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Blame Nvidia (or HTC for choosing their SoC). Not a single Teg3 device released is on a ICS kernel (the XL is). The biggest and most common issue with the phone right now is graphics drivers problems that are clogging the front page of the forum and really frustrating people. The same thing happened when the Asus Prime launched. Not letting HTC off the hook but, based on some of the Teg3 related problems the One X is experiencing that neither the XL or S are, I'm betting their not real big Nvidia fans right now either.
TommUK said:
... I was using GPS extensively saturday night for a car cruise where we'd be texted the next location and have to find our way there (all 500+ of us ) ..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That sounds like a lot of fun.
I'm hoping the Tegra problems are taking a while because Nvidia are working on the 3.x kernel.
As someone else has already pointed out, I'm not sure what's up with the sound on your HOX but I don't have any noise on mine. I'm using a mix of Denon in ear (got them on a Play.com offer for travelling around with) to high end Sennheiser full size headphones and with decent quality FLAC files the sound is very good.
Using the Sennheisers the volume is quite loud but it's not as loud as on some other kit, the Denon's go louder than I could ever want them, so it does depend on sensitivity of the headphones but sure, the output isn't as high as some others.
Agree with you on the camera though, it is pretty grainy on most pics I have seen, not that I bought the phone for the camera, but it's a bit disappointing seeing how HTC seem to make a point of how great the camera is.
jonstatt said:
The dancing GPS will not affect car navigation. You can only really see it when using Google maps and standing still. It is due to a firmware bug from what I can tell, whereby it is not utilising all available satellites, and seemingly also misinterpreting A-GPS info. I find it better if Wi-Fi is switched off for example. I am confident that this will improve with a subsequent firmware update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am afraid it does affect car navigation badly, i.e when car waits on the traffic lights, position just jumps all over the place and causes route to be constantly recalculated. I really hope it could be solved by software patch. Allegedly 1.29.401.11 (not in UK yet) provides some fix for this problem, can anyone confirm?
louis.b said:
why on earth would anyone buy a phone w no SD card slot just to complain about it? It's like buying an Iphone but complain about the 3.5 inch screen. Just to remind you the fact that it has no SD card slot --> unibody --> why it's beautiful --> why people choose it over the S3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not complaining, just providing feedback. I was aware of the lack of SD card slot before I bought the phone and I decided I can live with it. This however does not change the fact that SD card can be very useful in some cases and removing this feature from One X was IMO bad HTC design decision. While I agree that absense of removable battery is a tradeoff required for solid unibody design, in microSD case HTC could just add another small slot on the side (like the one for microSIM). I think users should be vocal about issues like this, so possibly HTC will think twice when designing the next model.
Regarding sound quality, I played a bit more with various equalizer / DSP / Beats Audio options and I can agree I exaggerated a bit calling it 'terrible'. The quality is actually passable (nothing spectacular though), it might even sound good if you don't do A/B testing with some better kit. The thing that bothers me the most is very high noise floor (I am not used to hear noise in my earphones when there is silence on the music track) and realatively low output power. My old HD2 sounded very dull and harsh out of the box, but after doing EQ tweaks in Poweramp it was IMO great (for a phone), no noise at all either. One X sounds initially better without tweaks, but EQ does not help that much. The sound is somehow muffled / lacking details though. BTW: In my case the noise in quesiton is only heard on sensitive IEMs. I don't have this problem when using regular headphones.
I think the headphone output is superb personally, especially on my Sony DJ headphones. Better quality than my iPod anyway.
Completely disagree about the battery though, I've bearly used my phone today and I'm on 80% already. I'm scared to use my phone in case the battery goes flat
I think the camera is pretty good, in the right light it can take some great pics. Took some amazing shots when I went to Tunisia
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

How is it so far?

Hi all, haven't got one yet and still have my n7 (2012). They're are sold out right now at my local store. My question is what the title says. How is it? I haven't got the chance to get one in my hands yet. Is it leaps and bounds better!? I've read reviews and check forums and am still unsure if I want one. Any opinions are appreciated.
Sent from my Lean Mean Jelly Bean Machine.
Just read some of the threads.
There are some issues with the screens right now on some devices. Still worth the risk as it is a huge upgrade to the 2012 Nexus 7. No more lag, unbelievable screen, lighter, and thinner. Definitely worth the money.
Well, I usually do not do reviews of mainstream devices, since that is well covered by the "big boys",
But I was secretly waiting for an opportunity to make some comments:
In short, it is an incredible tablet.
Much nicer to hold than any other tablet I've owned/tried. I really like how thin it is, and the texture of the back.
I handed it to my son, and he loaded one of these games where you control something using the accelerometers. He has a Nook Color (With CM7), so he has a similar device to compare it too. He immediately commented how nice it was to hold and play the game.
The screen is incredible too. Way more resolution than my old eyes need, but even with my glasses things look great.
Web pages look more Desktop-like than any other tablet, including 10 inchers. Page rendering is also desktop fast. (Actually faster than this 10+ year old AMD machine I am typing on now, even with lots of RAM, and Xubuntu 12.04, which I credit with prolonging it's life this long).
WiFi, Works great with solid connections, great speed and lots of (indicated) signal. (As compared to other devices).
An iDM5 combination bluetooth speaker, and keyboard paired over BT with no problem at all. I am also using an Apple magic mouse. All re-connect quickly too.
Works (as one would expect) seemlessly with my Chromecast.
Another big plus for me was Standard USB charging. Pretty much anything charges it with no problem.
Now the complaints:
Yes, it has stereo speakers, but they are not that loud or great sounding. Using the EQ in Google Music does not help. Attempting to add Bass only causes it to sound muffled.
I have a Huawei u9508 with 2 speakers on the back, near the bottom (close together). It gives me more volume, more bass, and more stereo effect (OK, that last one may just be a perception thing).
Take the stereo speakers out of your purchasing decision. As of right now, it effectively does not have any better audio than a (than some) single speaker tablet(s).
To be clear (pun) The sound is by no means bad, it's just disapointing considering all the Fraunhofer hype.
Lack of an SD slot almost made me not buy the Nexus. I really miss it. I have a lot of things that use those cards, and not being able to just slot them in the Nexus is a big hit.
I also wish Google would stop "Apple-izing" things. Android had USB Storage mode for most of it's life. I wish it still did. Yes, there are work-arounds, and perhaps it is "safer" not to have it, but it is a clear case of "Defective by Design", in my opinion.
I miss the standard Android (AOSP) Browser and Music Player. (See these forums for installing the AOSP browser, and recommendations for other audio players.)
I do like the fact that it is (except for the Google Stuff) bloat-ware free. It is a very clean, fast, and good-looking factory ROM (I'm an Android purist.)
Also, you know that the community will support the device for years to come, whether or not Google does.
I have not tried Qi charging or NFC.
Should you buy one?
Well, you should not buy any other 7 inch tablet over this one -- I think that is pretty clear.
It is just a question if you need a (another) 7 inch tablet. In my case, I really needed a new tablet. My Archos 80 G9 was (something I cannot describe here with out getting banned) on the day it was made, and I had dissasembled it many times to fix broken USB connections, etc. Lately it would reboot everytime I squeezed the case a bit too hard.
Alternatives I concidered:
Acer A700 -- Same True HD resolution on a 10" screen -- SD card slot -- Dolby Stereo Speakers -- NVIDIA Tegra 3.
Chinese iFive X2 -- Same True HD resolution on an 8.9" screen -- SD card slot -- Front facing stereo speakers -- USB charging.
Say what you want about Chinese tablets, but the iFive X2 was the only one that really met my requirements (desirements). If you believe the iFive website, and some of the reviews, it actually looks like the build quality is pretty good. I may still buy one.
Awesome, zero complaints. Don't let all the negative threads get you down, mine arrived flawless shipped from New York to Ontario, Canada.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
Linuxslate said:
In short, it is an incredible tablet.
Much nicer to hold than any other tablet I've owned/tried. I really like how thin it is, and the texture of the back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So true...
It was the first thing I noticed after opening the box and even after 1 week, I am still amazed by the weight, the texture and how fast everything is... Switching between apps is so fun now
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
My God is it ever amazing. Such a huge upgrade over last gens model. It is a joy to do everything with this tablet. Feels and looks oh so premium as well. Unbelievable how it costs so little in comparison to other tablets. I don't want to type an extremely long review, but even if I did, words cannot express how happy I am with this tablet.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD
Awesome.
I was convinced last year that the original nexus 7 was too small so I got the iPad mini which was great for 6+ months. After I downloaded iOS 7 I thought what a joke ios7 will be and in general for traveling the mini was a major pain(loading movies, documents etc for offline use).
So recently I replaced my mini with a note8 for 2 weeks traveling and thought this is a keeper...then the new nexus 7 came out and I picked it up with the plans to return it after some testing....WOW I ended up returning the note 8 and keeping the N7!
No regrets...love the form factor even with a few hiccups (sometimes screen will just pause for a second and rare crashes).
SO I am using my N7 so much I might sell my Samsung s4 and get something cheaper (I.e. nexus 4) since it just sits when at home.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4
This is my first tablet ever. And the second android device. The first being HTC Desire, which after OC-ing didn't feel bad.
But I wanted something that could deliver superb performance without the whole process of rooting, unlocking and flashing. So I bought this one, and I can say that this one's the best I've used ever. I have had my hands on those iPads some of my friends have, but they don't sound all that convincing.
There have been no lags at all that I have been able to identify. But still, I'm planning on going through the fun of rooting unlocking and flashing process. Just because I'm a flashaholic.
Regarding the device itself, I have found that the display is more blue-oriented. It has a much colder display than my HTC Desire. But it does look good on it. The data transfer speeds are superb. No performance issues so far. Battery lasts about two days, since I don't actively use it, occasional wifi and browsing, but no more than that. I mainly read books on it, and have successfully devoured 5 books in two weeks (I'm an avid reader , never mind). Others have been facing Wifi issues, but not me. Mine seems adequate. I've got a 3mbps connection in my country, which is the fastest here
There is some dust on the upper left corner, but since there are no dead pixels, I haven't returned mine for the fear of getting a dead-pixels-infected one. I use the tablet without any external peripherals, apart from my custom made earphones, which give a good amount of clear sound with good levels of bass, even without any audio mod.
I don't use the stock things, no... That's right, I've never learned how to use those For music, I have PowerAmp, for movies, MXPlayer, for pictures, QuickPic, for internet, OperaMini, the legendary ES for file browsing, and upcoming root mode
So far, all these apps have been superb in performance at least compared to my HTC Desire.
I should probably be saluting Asus and Google, for this combined effort to hand us quadcore Snapdragon 1.5 GHz, HD display equipped, nice tablet for under 30k in my country.
Thanks for the in depth answers. Went and got one at office max Friday. Last one with too plus a 20% discount from my boys at drippler.. App. Haven't even opened it yet Lol waiting on my screen protector n case from amazon. Now what to do with the old one?
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app

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