Confused Bionic or Vigor

shortie43506

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I have been having nothing but problems with my Samsung Fascinate since I bought it from a friend a month ago. After complaining to Verizon enough they have allowed me to get an upgrade for the 2 year price. ( I was already eligible for an early upgrade). I have been waiting on the Vigor, but so far no concrete release date even after the NYC event this morning. I am just getting so frustrated with all the software problems my phone is having I am considering the Bionic. Wait on the Vigor and hope it comes out soon or buy the Bionic..
Any ideas??



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magdream

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If it helps, I just posted this in the "more confusion..." thread in the news section:

Today 03:34 PM
#17

I was hoping to hold out out a bit longer, but I've essentially been without a phone since early July (wife knocked my OG off the kitchen counter and have since been dealing with a phone whose left side is unresponsive). With HTC holding an event today, and the Vigor not being mentioned, tells me that this thing isn't coming out anytime soon (relatively, anyway).

Having said that, I'll probably pick up a Bionic sometime this week. Between reviews, videos, and my on hands-on experience, it's a good phone, and It'll be a while before something is noticeably better. The Vigor and/or Prime/Nexus will NOT be any faster. Everything is instant on the Bionic. 4G LTE is 4G LTE.

The issues are the screen, camera, audio issue, future proofness.

Screen: I checked it out and it looks fine to me. If I get too close everything becomes blurry anyway.
Camera: Took some sample pics in the store (well lit) and it was fine. The camera isn't a big deal to me anyway, so it's not a deal breaker
Audio issue: Haven't had a chance to test it yet
Future proofness: For the near future (1 year?), this is not an issue.

After reading about HTC's poor battery performance and "cheap" plastic build quality, and Samsung's poor GPS performance and "cheap" build quality and slow software updates, the Bionic is as good a choice available at this time.

It may sound like I'm trying to convince myself (maybe I am), but when I break it down, it just makes sense.​
 

alboboy10

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You are convincing yourself. 4G is 4G and it's different from phone to phone. That's not the biggest deal breaker though. As far as quality build goes, I don't think it's true about htc at all. I actually think the thunderbolt feels far better than the bionic.
 

Liderc

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Have to agree, HTC's recent phones have been made out of high quality materials, if they've improved battery life with the Vigor it will be a nice device. Samsung is still in the plastic phase though.
 

gdbjr

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I have always found HTC to be pretty bad. But i think Sense is the best android skin.

I recently swpped my thunderbolt for a bionic and couldnt be happier. Moto just builds a better device in my opinion. I am guessing that the vigor will be just as poorly built and designed as every other HTC phone i have ever owned.

But that is just my opinion. Obviously not everyone will feel the same way.

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Guyver

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I have owned three HTC Android phones from the Eris to the Incredible to the Thunderbolt. The Eris was a great phone that suffered from too slow of a processor and in comparison to today's phones, too small of a screen. I loved the trackball though and the way it glowed when you had a notification. Then I got the Incredible. It was zippy enough in the processor department and well made with a screen that looked like glass candy. However, the battery life was stupid bad. Next the Thunderbolt came out. It was a great phone. Battery life was better, not great but good, and the processor was fast enough to handle Android and the apps. I started having some issues with the phone later on. It would randomly reboot, which is a known problem. The other problem I had was with the phone "losing" the SD card. Sometimes the icons for the apps on the SD card would all go to placeholder status and be replaced with generic Android icons. I would mess with shutting the phone off and turning it on, pulling the battery and other things and at some point the phone would force close UI and restart and everything would be back to normal. That could be an errant app or something. I never figured it out.

I tried the Droid X while I had the Incredible and sent it packing after two days. The lack of cut and paste was the final straw on top of the poor UI. Now I have the Droid Bionic and I am thinking of returning it and getting a replacement Thunderbolt and then getting the Vigor when it comes out. My issues aren't with the Bionic itself but with the way Motorola implemented Android yet again. HTC's Touchsense UI is so far superior that it makes the Bionic and other Motorola versions of Android look clunky and poorly constructed. Touchsense is intuitive, smooth and most of all easy to use. Let's start with the phone dialer. On an HTC Android phone you hit Phone and the dialer comes up showing the last number dialed and from there you can hit dial to recall that number or scroll through your call history. Tap an entry and have the phone dial them. It's just too easy.

On the Bionic you hit the dialer icon and get four tabs. If you are on the "Dialer" tab you have the most recent call. If you hit the call button it highlights the number and shows it in the call field. Then you have to hit call again to make the call. If you want to see your call history you have to go to the "Recent" tab. From there you can tap an entry and then another icon menu pops up and you have to tap the dialer icon to call the number or you can tap Contacts, Text or E-mail. If I wanted to do any of those things I would have fired up the appropriate app not the dialer. This is just too many steps to make a call and you can't preset the dialer to automatically dial numbers with one tap. It just seems poorly executed and inept. Another perk to HTC Android's is that they easily connect to your Facebook account and link your contacts accordingly as well as place a pic on the contacts from their Facebook profile.

Okay, aside from this you are limited to five screens on Motorola Android rather than seven on an HTC. Granted on the Bionic you do have a little more room to stuff icons on the screens as they are smaller and take up less real estate. Then there's the all apps icon on the "dock." It takes you to all of your apps. If you are loading up your screens you have to do so one app at a time and you have to scroll through all of your apps each time to get back to where you were because it doesn't just stay there where you were selecting. No, it goes back to the beginning each and every time. The other thing that I find bothersome is notifications. On an HTC phone you can set notification sounds for e-mail or texts separately, which makes it easy to tell whether you just got a text or an e-mail. With Motorola they are one and the same with no options. A final nuisance is that you cannot have one G-mail icon for more than one account. On an HTC phone you can have a G-mail icon and there is a button inside to switch from one account to another. No such luck with Motorola with them you have to use a separate icon and it's not even a G-mail icon.

On the plus side the Bionic has better battery life and being a dual-core it is much faster with apps. It also opens up my gallery of photos amazingly fast. If the Vigor has comparable battery life it's a no brainer. It will already be a faster dual core phone and come with Touchsense UI 3.5, which looks amazingly good.
 

rsurge

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I am in the same boat..... if the vigor passed through the FCC on September 09, then it would be 2-4 weeks on average after that right? The Bionic was released about a month after its pass through.

I am thinking of gambling, and waiting until the beginning of October and hoping to hear something. If not, the Bionic awaits.

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OP
shortie43506

shortie43506

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Thank you all so much for the responses. I think I will try to hold out for the Vigor. I really thought it was going to at least be announced yesterday, but I'll just contine to wait.

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rsurge

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Since it is through the FCC its only a matter of time...

I am very excited either way. Maybe with the release of the Vigor, and the somewhat slow start to the Bionic, maybe we will see a price drop on the Bionic, which will make the Bionic even more attractive.

Either way, a 4g dual core is in the sunny distant horizon, which gives us something to look forward to.
 

powerwagon

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I didn't know anyone actually bought these phones based on Sense UI vs Blur vs Touchwiz. The first thing I do is upgrade to Launcher Pro which kills all of the stock launchers combined.

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shortie43506

shortie43506

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Can someone please explain launcher pro to me?

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yiannis

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If screen appearance is more important than call quality and you don't mind the wait then you have nothing to lose by waiting.

Another factor will be community support for one or the other device. I'm guessing that the Bionic will see great community support.
 

ModestMuse

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I didn't know anyone actually bought these phones based on Sense UI vs Blur vs Touchwiz. The first thing I do is upgrade to Launcher Pro which kills all of the stock launchers combined.

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Yeah, I was confused by that long post that detailed the differences between the stock UIs. Who makes Android decisions based upon the stock UI??

I used to love Launcher Pro, but it hasn't been updated since May, and appears to be a dead product. I have since switched to Go Launcher, which is even more polished. You can uninstall apps right from the app drawer or your screen. Adding and moving screens around is very easy and intuitive. I pretty much like everything about it. If you get Android Pro Widgets, it replaces the widgets that are built into Launcher Pro.
 

EFGantry

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I'm not making any purchase until i hold both the Nexus and the Droid HD.

the Bionic will be a nice device for a while to come, but imo it is already trailing the pack in specs, and it just came out. if it would have been released 4-6 months ago it would have some bragging rights. but now, the devices coming out within just weeks (such as the Nexus and DHD) will quickly push it to the back of the pack.

The Vigor (Incredible HD) sounds like a stout device. my concern is with battery life, which is notoriously bad on HTC devices. then you add a HD screen and LTE on top of that (the 2 biggest battery hogs around), and i have some real concerns.

so, for me, it's looking like the Nexus or Droid HD (or whatever they actually get named).
 
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