Lets me just say, I had all three phones in the last month, trying to upgrade from the old Faithful HTC Droid Incredible 1.
New Current Phone - LG Revolution.
Other smart phones I have owned or currently own-
Palm Centro, BB Storm 1, HTC Dinc1, Iphone 3G(My unlocked GSM world phone), BB Tour, LG Revo
Quick Comparative/Musings
Droid Incredible 2
Pros
World Phone (GSM/CDMA)
More RAM than Inc1 (768M)
Bigger Screen (But more washed out than AMOLED in Inc1)
Super Quadrant Scores (1800-1900)
Front Facing Camera
Cons
Worse Battery Life than Inc1
Locked Bootloader
Screen washed out look
Take Away: Returned phone to VZW, not much of an improvement over the Old Inc1, the increased RAM was nice, but for the money all I was getting was a world phone. Decided to jump into 4G world...
Samsung Droid Charge
Pros
Screen Super AMOLED Plus is beautiful
Battery Life Incredible for a 4G phone- 1-1/2 to 2 days/3G, 1 to 1-1/2 4G.
With usage, games, phone, text, surfing, moderate streaming
4G Speeds using Speakeasy on multiple servers-
Seattle 28M Down/18M Up
San Diego 15M Down/8 Up
4G Hotspot worked better than advertised, getting close to same throughput as the phone itself.
4G/CDMA switch was nice feature, did not have to reboot phone too often.
Very light phone, even with case.
Different design form factor, grows on you, even the non-capacitive buttons work well.
Nice front facing camera
Screen Shot function nice.
Cons
Glitchy Touch Wiz 3.0, replaced with Launcher Pro, fixed some lag, but still not as snappy as HTC Inc2 or LG Revo
Camera not great on close ups, not bad at distance and outdoors
No LED notification
4G in San Diego... The phone would lock up when going in doors, had to trick it by turning data on and off to get it to re-sync.
328M of RAM and RFS file system cripples what could be a great device, they advertise 512M RAM/512M ROM, but you would need to root, format with Voodoo and make into an EXT4 File system to get better Quadrant benchmarks. I averaged 900-950 on Quadrant.
Phone speaker was very crackly on higher volume.
TONS of BLOATWARE!!!
Base color scheme Brown/Orange, not very aesthetic for a high end phone
Cost $300 a little steep for market and 2 yr contract.
Take Away: I really liked this phone, battery life was amazing for the fact that this was 4G and a large AMOLED screen. I wish it had the larger memory, EXT file system out of the box, I almost rooted the phone and stuck with it, I thought the lagging issue was almost bearable. For $300 I was not willing to risk bricking the phone so I returned it for the LG Revo.
LG Revolution
Very Snappy phone, transitions are quick
Great Benchmarks (1900-2100 Average on Quadrant), I compared all three 4G LTE phones side by side in VZW, the LG blew away the HTC TB
Touch Display is very responsive, reminds me of Iphone, I think LG makes the TFT display for them as well.
Replaced Optimus UI with Launcher Pro, preference more than anything
512 RAM, no lag
3g so far is really fast
Have not gone over to Seattle to try the 4G yet.
Battery life not as good as Charge, but better than HTC TB. I get 1 to 1-1/2 day on 3G in Western Washington.
Open Bootloader is nice, considering the root to remove Bing and Bloatware.
Camera is good indoors and out, front facing camera, really sharp.
LED notification is present, even though you see nothing online or in manual for it.
VoLTE, this is the only phone with simultaneous Voice and data capability on 4G network. Don't really know if this would be a show stopper, but it is worth mentioning.
Square Form Factor, easy to get back off of phone
Supports Wireless Charging (Buy $30 back, $70 Charger)
Fast reboot time
Netflix works great!!!!
Video Playback works great
Speaker is clearer than Charge, not as loud.
Cons
4G/CDMA toggle requires reboot
Battery life better than TB, not as good as Charge
TONS of BLOATWARE!!! Bing is imbedded in Browser along with VZW crap, but I use SkyFire and Dolphin, so it is a non-issue. Same with Google maps, Google Voice, etc... Just dumpster Bing off your homescreens or root the phone, freeze the VZW Bloatware/Bing Bloatware/etc.
Take Away: I like LG, they have been putting out good products since they left the old GoldStar monicker behind years ago. I had great success with LG dumbphones in past, figured to give this phone a try. The phone does not lag on most applications, the lag worth mentioning is when adding applications to the home screen. I will stutter an extra 5 seconds... It could be the fact I am using Launcher Pro. I am probably going to stick with this phone if 4G works as advertised. Charge runs a close second, I wish they had Gingerbread out of the box... If Charge had Ext4 and more RAM, then it would win hands down. The file system piece is fixable but I do not believe we can re-partition the RAM... Maybe a developer can weigh in here and set me straight.
If I had not given my Droid Incredible to my son, then I may have waited to see if the Samsung Galaxy S II came to VZW with the same specs and 4G LTE radio. Somehow I believe it may not happen because of the size of the 4G radio fitting in the GSII Form Factor. Things to consider, VZW unlimited data is coming to an end soon, that is why I jumped to the 4G phone to get grandfathered for at least two years.
Ask me questions, I will try to answer them as best I can.
New Current Phone - LG Revolution.
Other smart phones I have owned or currently own-
Palm Centro, BB Storm 1, HTC Dinc1, Iphone 3G(My unlocked GSM world phone), BB Tour, LG Revo
Quick Comparative/Musings
Droid Incredible 2
Pros
World Phone (GSM/CDMA)
More RAM than Inc1 (768M)
Bigger Screen (But more washed out than AMOLED in Inc1)
Super Quadrant Scores (1800-1900)
Front Facing Camera
Cons
Worse Battery Life than Inc1
Locked Bootloader
Screen washed out look
Take Away: Returned phone to VZW, not much of an improvement over the Old Inc1, the increased RAM was nice, but for the money all I was getting was a world phone. Decided to jump into 4G world...
Samsung Droid Charge
Pros
Screen Super AMOLED Plus is beautiful
Battery Life Incredible for a 4G phone- 1-1/2 to 2 days/3G, 1 to 1-1/2 4G.
With usage, games, phone, text, surfing, moderate streaming
4G Speeds using Speakeasy on multiple servers-
Seattle 28M Down/18M Up
San Diego 15M Down/8 Up
4G Hotspot worked better than advertised, getting close to same throughput as the phone itself.
4G/CDMA switch was nice feature, did not have to reboot phone too often.
Very light phone, even with case.
Different design form factor, grows on you, even the non-capacitive buttons work well.
Nice front facing camera
Screen Shot function nice.
Cons
Glitchy Touch Wiz 3.0, replaced with Launcher Pro, fixed some lag, but still not as snappy as HTC Inc2 or LG Revo
Camera not great on close ups, not bad at distance and outdoors
No LED notification
4G in San Diego... The phone would lock up when going in doors, had to trick it by turning data on and off to get it to re-sync.
328M of RAM and RFS file system cripples what could be a great device, they advertise 512M RAM/512M ROM, but you would need to root, format with Voodoo and make into an EXT4 File system to get better Quadrant benchmarks. I averaged 900-950 on Quadrant.
Phone speaker was very crackly on higher volume.
TONS of BLOATWARE!!!
Base color scheme Brown/Orange, not very aesthetic for a high end phone
Cost $300 a little steep for market and 2 yr contract.
Take Away: I really liked this phone, battery life was amazing for the fact that this was 4G and a large AMOLED screen. I wish it had the larger memory, EXT file system out of the box, I almost rooted the phone and stuck with it, I thought the lagging issue was almost bearable. For $300 I was not willing to risk bricking the phone so I returned it for the LG Revo.
LG Revolution
Very Snappy phone, transitions are quick
Great Benchmarks (1900-2100 Average on Quadrant), I compared all three 4G LTE phones side by side in VZW, the LG blew away the HTC TB
Touch Display is very responsive, reminds me of Iphone, I think LG makes the TFT display for them as well.
Replaced Optimus UI with Launcher Pro, preference more than anything
512 RAM, no lag
3g so far is really fast
Have not gone over to Seattle to try the 4G yet.
Battery life not as good as Charge, but better than HTC TB. I get 1 to 1-1/2 day on 3G in Western Washington.
Open Bootloader is nice, considering the root to remove Bing and Bloatware.
Camera is good indoors and out, front facing camera, really sharp.
LED notification is present, even though you see nothing online or in manual for it.
VoLTE, this is the only phone with simultaneous Voice and data capability on 4G network. Don't really know if this would be a show stopper, but it is worth mentioning.
Square Form Factor, easy to get back off of phone
Supports Wireless Charging (Buy $30 back, $70 Charger)
Fast reboot time
Netflix works great!!!!
Video Playback works great
Speaker is clearer than Charge, not as loud.
Cons
4G/CDMA toggle requires reboot
Battery life better than TB, not as good as Charge
TONS of BLOATWARE!!! Bing is imbedded in Browser along with VZW crap, but I use SkyFire and Dolphin, so it is a non-issue. Same with Google maps, Google Voice, etc... Just dumpster Bing off your homescreens or root the phone, freeze the VZW Bloatware/Bing Bloatware/etc.
Take Away: I like LG, they have been putting out good products since they left the old GoldStar monicker behind years ago. I had great success with LG dumbphones in past, figured to give this phone a try. The phone does not lag on most applications, the lag worth mentioning is when adding applications to the home screen. I will stutter an extra 5 seconds... It could be the fact I am using Launcher Pro. I am probably going to stick with this phone if 4G works as advertised. Charge runs a close second, I wish they had Gingerbread out of the box... If Charge had Ext4 and more RAM, then it would win hands down. The file system piece is fixable but I do not believe we can re-partition the RAM... Maybe a developer can weigh in here and set me straight.
If I had not given my Droid Incredible to my son, then I may have waited to see if the Samsung Galaxy S II came to VZW with the same specs and 4G LTE radio. Somehow I believe it may not happen because of the size of the 4G radio fitting in the GSII Form Factor. Things to consider, VZW unlimited data is coming to an end soon, that is why I jumped to the 4G phone to get grandfathered for at least two years.
Ask me questions, I will try to answer them as best I can.
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