Getting a new phone in 1 month

[tennis128]

Hello All. I am a disgruntled iPhone 3G user looking to switch to Verizon at the end of this month. I am strongly leaning towards the HTC Incredible because it looks blazingly fast and is not attached to Bing. It is very hard to seperate the fanbois from the real everyday users (and some of the users are biased as well).

Given that I got the iPhone 3G so late in the product cycle (this time 2 years ago) I have concerns about getting the HTC Incredibe this long after launch, but I am admittedly not well versed in the smartphone world. I was wondering if I could get feedback and advice on a new phone. I like the Samsung phones (and Samsung in general - they made great feature phones back in the day) but I'm no fan of bing.

Any and all feedback is welcome. Thanks!

 

[takeshi]

As always with threads like this, provide your needs/wants. It's impossible to give meaningful recommendations without this info and what you will get instead are fanboys pushing what they prefer. It's what you prefer that matters.

It is very hard to seperate the fanbois from the real everyday users (and some of the users are biased as well).

It's pretty easy actually. Fanboys tend to omit the "why" behind their claims and tend to assume that everyone's needs/wants are identical to their own. Everyone has bias. Learning to read between the lines helps to see through the bias.

 

[tennis128]

What I want

I consider myself average in every way. I occasionally use my phone for GPS, always use it for e-mail, texts, some web browsing, apps etc. I appreciate good battery life, movie playback, etc. I'm mainly wondering about getting an HTC Incredible almost 1 year after it was introduced, and getting a Fascinate when it is tied to bing.

The Motorolla droids dont really wow me. I like the virtual keyboard of the iphone. Just want to hear what people do and do not like about their phones.

 

[Markmm24]

I was going to get the incredible too until I went to bestbuy.they said that if I had bought the incredible earlier when it first came out that I would have had a better phone than the fascinate.they said that it was because the htc used to be made with AMOLED screens but they switched to lcd screens.i went home and did some research and confirmed this. They said that this reduced battery life drastically on the incredible. Another thing that I like about the fascinate is the swype keyboard feature.this was probably wat got me to buy the fascinate.if the incredible had it I would gave probably bought an older one from ebay that had an AMOLED screen.

But, the choice is up to you.personally, if I had my upgrade available right now id wait for the phones coming out from verizon within the next couple of months.everything that i just said is pure opinion.and btw I'm not that phone savvy.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using DroidForums App

 

[patmw123]

The droid 2 keyboard actually does come in handy every now and then. While I use my virtual keyboard more than the physical one, its extremely nice to have the option of using either. However, I wouldn't buy a droid 2 (or droid x for that matter) and leave it stock (no root, roms, etc.). The stock comparison between htc products and motorola products is favored heavily to htc in my opinion. With this said, as a piece of hardware, there's not a phone out right now that I would choose over my droid 2, but as I said before, I wouldn't use motorola's software at all if it wasn't forced upon me with the locked bootloader. The new AOSP Cobalt rom looks intriguing, but no GPS is a deal breaker for me.

 

[tennis128]

How hard is it to root a phone? I have above basic computing skills and I am very good at following directions. I'm sure there are websites and youtube videos dedicated to it. Is the rooted fascinate better than a Stock Incredible?

What do people think of the stock Fascinate? How bad is the Verizon Bloatware?

 

[xRITE AIDEx]

If I were you I would wait. New droids(droid3, x2, INC2 and 4g droids) are right around the corner.

I personally am getting the iphone next week. Currently rocking the OG droid1 and loved it but it was only while waiting for the iphone and I am interested in the iphone enough to give it a chance granted I will miss a few things from my droid but it sounds to me like you want something pretty and fast which I think the fascinate will be your phone if you don't want to wait.

 

[sal33n]

The HTC Thunderbolt will supposedly be out very soon (This month) if you don't want to hold off on waiting for the dual core (Bionic) phones coming out. It looks like an awesome device.

 

[BlackDiamond]

Yeah i would hold off until all the Dual Core phone come out. There is no sense in getting a almost out dated Incredible. I would wait.

 

[tennis128]

The Thunderbolt is probably worth waiting for, no gains in processing speed, but the 4G is nice. Will there be an upcharge for a 4G data plan (given that its not available where I live, I wouldn't pay more for nothing).

When does the Bionic come out? I assume both phones comes with the "bing" suite of software. how do you feel about this? Can you explain how the bing would effect me, and how rooting would change this?

 

[SixStringTheory]

If you're coming from an iPhone you'll probably want a higher end Android device. Since there's a bunch of them coming out soon, your best options will probably be the HTC Thunderbolt or Bionic.

Not sure what you mean about Bing software. I guess you mean microsoft stuff? Do you mean things like Motoblur?

The main thing you need to understand about Android is that there's always an option. If you don't like something on the phone, there's a near guarantee you can use something else. If you root (which for most phones is extremely easy once the dev community nails things down) there are many more options.

The concept of being "tied down" to any software on Android doesn't really exist.

There's a lot of ups and downs to Android, pros and cons compared to iOS. You'll get by just fine using it though. And if you're really concerned maybe doing a 1yr contract and paying a bit more for the phone is a good idea.

But either way, you'll be better off waiting for the next gen stuff. Thunderbolt, Bionic, or next iPhone I guess.