Droid Bionic

[LeafUF]

I desperately need to get a new phone. I have the original Droid that has been absolutely abused over the past couple of years of ownership.

I went to the Verizon store to see what they had and the sales associate told me to wait for the Bionic which should be out tomorrow according the rumors online.

Anyone been following this phone? Want to suggest another Verizon Android phone that you like?

[helix139]

As of right now the Bionic is the best phone Verizon has hardware-wise. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of MotoBloat...er...Motoblur and locked bootloaders and am opting to wait for either the HTC Vigor or the Samsung Droid Prime. Both should boast 1280x720 4.5" screens with 1.5ghz dual core processors, with the Prime possibly coming in as a Nexus device running Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) and the Prime running Gingerbread with Sense 3.5. Both of them should be out by year end.

If you can, wait. If not, then the Bionic is definitely not a bad selection and is what I would buy if I had to choose something tomorrow. FYI the best deal on the Bionic is at Costco where for $299 you get the phone with an extra battery, the multimedia dock, and the car dock.

[LeafUF]

Thanks I don't think I can wait much longer since my phone is a bitch to charge and dies fast.

Unfortunately, no costco nearby but the Sam's club does have a Verizon inside maybe they have a deal going too.

[helix139]

Thanks I don't think I can wait much longer since my phone is a bitch to charge and dies fast.

Unfortunately, no costco nearby but the Sam's club does have a Verizon inside maybe they have a deal going too.

Have you thought about just buying a new battery? Sounds like that is your culprit

[flgtrs]

Bionic will not need extra battery because the battery life is SOO much better on it. Should be able to get 2 days out of it. Verizon has 11 new phone coming out in next 45 days, I have been told

[LeafUF]

Have you thought about just buying a new battery? Sounds like that is your culprit

Its not just the battery, the connector for the charger is broken and you have to manipulate it just to get it to charge at all. I could do an insurance claim and get a new one to hold me over but I dont think I want to do that.

[jewood592]

I've got a Droid X and was just thinking the other day that there isn't a phone out, or coming out, that excites me. What more can they do? A little faster yes, better cam, yes, but over all, unless your phone just doesn't work, what's the point in buying something new? I understand Leafs dilemma, but aside from that, you couldn't get me to buy a new phone. I can't think of anything else I need my phone to do. Hell, I don't use 90% of what it is capable of doing right now:)

[Ericgraves]

It is a dual core processor together with a mimo antenna system. First verizon droid with both of those.

I will be picking one up in roughly 12 hours.

There will always be a better phone coming out a few months later. So if your requirements are best phone out at the time (on verizon) then go for the bionic. If you have additional requirements wait for something else. As long as you get a brand name droid phone you are most likely going to be happy.

[LeafUF]

Yeah I don't really need the latest or greatest and if my old Droid weren't crapping out I'd be fine with it.

After I get off work tomorrow I'll go by Verizon and give it a look.

[GatorFan89]

Leaf, I'd look at the HTC Incredible 2. My cousin just got it and it is a niiiiiiice phone. I'm jealous, he let me mess around with it and the UI is awesome, HTC's sense UI in my opinion is the best, Motorola has the God-awful MotoBlur and Samsung has the awful Touchwiz, I rooted my phone and put a Gingerbread UI on it just to get rid of Touchwiz, not to mention if you have any interest in rooting, stay far away from Motorola, they make great phones aside from the MotoBlur UI and they have locked Bootloaders.

You're lucky though, Verizon, despite it's terrible data plan, has the best selection of Android phones. Personally though I'd recommend the HTC Incredible 2 or the HTC Thunderbolt which is supposed to be very popular, it is Verizon's version of the HTC Evo but it is a lot faster and has Android the newest verson of Android I think.

[LeafUF]

The problem I see with the Thunderbolt is just that it has awful battery life. Everyone I know that has one had to get the extended battery just to make the phone useable.

I have heard that HTC has the best UI of the Droid phones and was looking at the Thunderbolt but battery life is a huge deal for me.

The Bionic supposedly boasts amazing battery life which is appealing.

[helix139]

Leaf, I'd look at the HTC Incredible 2. My cousin just got it and it is a niiiiiiice phone. I'm jealous, he let me mess around with it and the UI is awesome, HTC's sense UI in my opinion is the best, Motorola has the God-awful MotoBlur and Samsung has the awful Touchwiz, I rooted my phone and put a Gingerbread UI on it just to get rid of Touchwiz, not to mention if you have any interest in rooting, stay far away from Motorola, they make great phones aside from the MotoBlur UI and they have locked Bootloaders.

You're lucky though, Verizon, despite it's terrible data plan, has the best selection of Android phones. Personally though I'd recommend the HTC Incredible 2 or the HTC Thunderbolt which is supposed to be very popular, it is Verizon's version of the HTC Evo but it is a lot faster and has Android the newest verson of Android I think.

I have the thunderbolt. In stock form, the rom is a bit bloated and pedestrian and the battery live is terrible. It has the same 1ghz processor as the evo and the incredible 2 along with a 4.3" screen and 768mb of ram. I've rooted it, though, and am currently running a Sense 3.0 Gingerbread rom overclocked at 1.4ghz and actually get better battery life than stock. I will be running a Sense 3.5 ROM whenever Team BAMF puts up a stable build, possibly this weekend. It's superior to the Incredible 2 due to the large screen and LTE. I'm very happy with my phone right now and won't be upgrading until the Prime or the Vigor comes out.

That said, if I had to upgrade today, I wouldn't buy the Thunderbolt and I definitely wouldnt buy the Incredible 2. The hardware on either is only marginally better than the original Incredible and the Bionic absolutely blows both away in that department. Though the bootloader is locked, there is a chance Moto will unlock it, and it's already rootable and thus possible to freeze or remove a lot of the undesireable elements.

[GatorFan89]

I hear what you guys are saying about battery life, rooting usually can fix that. I'm not sure if you're into rooting or not though, Leaf?

I have the Samsung Captivate and it had awful battery life when I got it, now I have it rooted and running Android 2.3.5 and at the end of the day I have around 80% battery life left. The Captivate was one of the best Android phones when it came out, it was part of the original Samsung Galaxy S line and it blows most of the other phones from that time out of the water, like the Evo. Samsung's AMOLED screens alone are amazing, the quality is just unsurpassed and they really make LCD screens look like garbage. I think some of the new HTC phones use Samsung's AMOLED screen? But the Captivate is really the only Galaxy S1 phone I'd get, I'm not sure about the Tmobile or Sprint version, but my cousin has the Verizon version before he got his Incredible 2 and the ROM support was atrocious. In terms of hardware Samsung is one of the best phone companies, but their software support is atrocious. Unless you have the Nexus phones, you get the latest Android version about 6 months after it comes out.

Like I said, Motorola makes great phones, but I cannot stand their awful MotoBlur UI. Same with Samsung and TouchWiz. Thankfully my Captivate is rooted and is running the Gingerbread UI like the Nexus S, I can never go back to TouchWiz.

off topic, how is the Sense 3.0, helix? It looks great from what I've seen. I actually like Sense so much I had a hacked version of Sense 2.0 running on my Captivate. Idk if I can use it though because that was on Android 2.2 and Idk if my 2.3 supports the hack I had...

As for the phone Leaf, get whatever matters most to you. That's all I can say really... I'd say if you dont mind MotoBlur and want good battery life then get the Droid Bionic, just to warn you though don't believe what you hear about battery life being great, wait for people who buy the phone to tell you how it is because the Captivate was supposed to have great battery life when it came out but it was absolutely shitty. But the Bionic's could be excellent out of the gate, I don't know. As most will say, get what makes you happy.

[LeafUF]

Never thought about rooting. Not that I am opposed to it and maybe I would give it a shot on my next phone especially if I can improve battery life by doing so.

[Ericgraves]

As I said earlier I got a bionic at around 1 pm. The UI is ok. I understand where motorboat comes from. Still battery life was about 5 hours of continuous use.

Still my general impression of this phone can be summed up in one word- fast. Obviously the speed of the 4g will drop as it becomes more prevalent. Still everything runs smooth and getting 10 Mb download speed is nice. Any other questions I can answer from first hand I will try to.

[GatorFan89]

Never thought about rooting. Not that I am opposed to it and maybe I would give it a shot on my next phone especially if I can improve battery life by doing so.

I'd definitely give it a go. Not only that, but with rooting you can change the entire UI, switch modems (those are what determine your signal strength) and obviously they can boost battery life and it gets rid of all of the carrier's bloatware crap they throw on the phone. It isn't hard to do, just if you do it you have to follow the directions carefully because if you screw something up you can mess up your phone real bad.

Think of rooting like this, aside from a new UI, modem, Blife, etc. When you have a phone it's like with a computer that isn't yours where you get to use the Guest account and have limited privileges. That's how it is when you get your phone from a carrier. With rooting, it's like you're using an Administrative account where you have full control over the device. You can change stuff like the bootup animation for your phone and basically do anything with it.

Not to mention the speed gain with rooting is insane. If you have a phone and think it's fast on stock, root it and I guarantee you it will double in speed. My phone right now is easily 3 times faster than it was on stock. Every phone is different though, you might not see such a significant gain but you will definitely see a speed boost with rooting. Usually the most significant gains come after you put a custom ROM on it.

[helix139]

Just an FYI - rooting by itself isn't going to improve your battery life or performance. You'll have to wait for S-off and an unlocked bootloader with the ability to flash cleaner ROMs with more efficient kernels or versions of android to really experience a noticeable difference.

[Colorado_Gator]

My original droid is dying as well. Almost all of the keyboard keys have come off and the top power button no longer works. Still works though. I'm trying to hold out as long as possible to see what new phones come out before getting a new one.

What's wrong with verizon's data plans?

[LeafUF]

Only thing I can tell is cost. But I have one of the older plans and a company discount so its not that bad for me. So I probably wont upgrade to a 4G plan even if I get a 4G phone. I already have a 4G hotspot that I carry with me so if I really need the speed I can always use that and connect to wifi.

[GatorFan89]

What's wrong with verizon's data plans?

Like AT&T, they cap your data at 2GB. For some people this doesn't really matter, I have AT&T but I never use that much data. Mainly it depends on how much you download stuff on your phone and how much you use the internet on it, Netflix on your phone will kill your data plan quick though.

For me it's not an issue because I barely use the web browser on it and most of the apps and stuff I do download I download them on my computer then move the file onto my phone.

But for you it might not be an issue.

It's kind of risk/reward with different companies...

Verizon has a shitty data plan like AT&T, but they have hands down the best selection of Android phones.

[Ericgraves]

I have Verizon, my data atm is unlimited. In the last three days I have dled a half a gig. Yeah, it rocks.

[ClowntownGator]

Just get an iPhone. Stable, fantastic battery life, and not fragmented like Android.

[LeafUF]

If i wanted an iPhone i would have started a thread about iPhones.

[ClowntownGator]

You said you needed a smartphone with great battery life. Was merely making a suggestion.

The Photon on Sprint and the Bionic on Verizon have the best battery lives of any Android phones to date. If you absolutely need a phone now, and want Android, Bionic is the way to go.

[LeafUF]

Thanks. Sorry for the unnecessarily harsh response I just read your post as another apple fanboy response not giving consideration to the fact that I am looking at android.

I am just not interested in the iPhone at all. Prefer android because I already have most of my stuff set up with google and i dont need to get any new accessories or use itunes.

[ClowntownGator]

It's ok bud. I myself do have, and love, an iPhone. But I understand the merits of both. I am in the wireless industry, so knowing all products is a must.

No harm, no foul.

[helix139]

Like AT&T, they cap your data at 2GB. For some people this doesn't really matter, I have AT&T but I never use that much data. Mainly it depends on how much you download stuff on your phone and how much you use the internet on it, Netflix on your phone will kill your data plan quick though.

For me it's not an issue because I barely use the web browser on it and most of the apps and stuff I do download I download them on my computer then move the file onto my phone.

But for you it might not be an issue.

It's kind of risk/reward with different companies...

Verizon has a shitty data plan like AT&T, but they have hands down the best selection of Android phones.

This only comes into play if you didn't have a data plan before July 7. If you were a Verizon customer with a data plan prior to then, you're still on unlimited.

[Colorado_Gator]

This only comes into play if you didn't have a data plan before July 7. If you were a Verizon customer with a data plan prior to then, you're still on unlimited.

Yeah I started with verizon like 10 years ago. For quite some time it was the only company that you could get nearly constant coverage from Denver to KC.

[LeafUF]

So, after debating on it for a few more days I did cave in and get the Droid Bionic. After having it for about a week now and taking it with me to Austin City Limits I am very satisfied so far. It is definitely fast and does have very good battery life. With 4G off I was able to use my phone for my normal usage from noon to 3AM and manage to still have some battery life when I got home.

That normal usage included pics, emails, lots of texts, facebook, Gator Country posts and there might have been a call or two in there.

Also, having switched over from the original Droid I had some concerns about going to the all digital keyboard however the conversion has been pretty easy. Perhaps the larger size of the phone has made it easier to type on the touch screen than it was on my previous phone.

All in all worth the purchase in my opinion and the decision was made a bit easier after a good night at Red Rock Casino.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

I'm a fairly heavy data user (Spotify, large email attachments, Netflix) and have never hit 2GB in a month (I'm grandfathered in on an unlimited high speed data plan, though).

[LeafUF]

Its really hard to go through a lot of data. I used to tether my laptop to my phone for a connection when I worked in a government building. And even using it for work and normal stuff on my laptop 40 hours a week I still never came near hitting 5gb. Of course that was over 3G so I avoided downloading some of the larger files as it just took too long. But still.

[helix139]

I regularly run through 2.5 even in light months. Just stuff running in the background updating and what not can really eat through data

[orangeblueorangeblue]

I find it extremely hard, and like I said, I'm watching Netflix, constantly syncing, downloading large attachments and even tethering when I'm out of town.