Which Droid should I get on Verizon?

[Ejh28]

I also have the Galaxy S line on AT&T (Fascinate for Verizon), and while I like the phone, Samsung is terrible about updates. Go with the HTC Incredible, or the Droid X.

I hate having to hack my phone to update it to what other people have been using for 6 months - almost a year.

PS.
Design Gears makes great ROMS. Cognition 2.2 (version 8) here.

[Palmguy]

Which ROM are you running?



That's my point. If you buy now you risk taking it in the ass by summer with iPhone 5 or have to wait till the next apple show in 2012 for an LTE model.

CyanogenMod 6.1. My wife is still using it currently on her phone, I just bought an Evo and put CM on it as well. In the case of the Hero, I'm unaware of any lost functionality (and plenty of added functionality).

I did use the Sprint 2.1 OTA release for a short time and you are absolutely right; it sucked and it is the end of the line for official releases on that phone. I will submit that there is a large element of truth in what you say inasmuch as most users will never root their phone or mess around with flashing new ROMs...and as such are stuck in the official release cycle.

The Hero does see a speed and usability improvement from doing away with HTC's Sense and going with a custom ROM. I wouldn't have used that phone for as long as I did if I was constrained to the OE software. The hardware improvements of the newer phones mitigates that a whole hell of a lot though; my Evo was perfectly usable and fast in stock condition...the extra horsepower of the 1GHz processors and the increase in on board memory really help it out a lot.

[d90king]

I think it is utterly retarded that the Verizon iPhone isn't LTE capable.

So either there will be an iPhone5 this year, meaning iPhone4 users will be screwed. Or iPhone four users will be waiting a year for an LTE model while all the android users will be rolling along on LTE.

There is no way in hell I would buy an iPhone on Verizon until they get their LTE situation figured out.

I did find that very strange also... It really makes no sense to bring a new product such as this to market, when that product loses one of its strongest features compared to their competitor. If they have a fix (lets assume iphone 5) thats coming down the road, why not simply roll it out then when its ready to shine...

Not sure how 4's will be screwed though as they will continue to be able to enjoy the features that they enjoy now which IMHO are very good. I have owned each gen iphone and feel that I have gotten my moneys worth each time I have invested in one.

I know I'm the odd man out liking Apple products but I'm okay with that.


Back to the Droid hunt...

[mnoe82]

You switched from VZW to Sprint and back to VZW in a relatively short period of time...what were your problems with the Evo?

I typed Evo and meant Eris. Oops. No I've been with Verizon since 1997 when it was called Cellular One.

The iPhones were work provided phones.

[chadbag]

I think it is utterly retarded that the Verizon iPhone isn't LTE capable.

So either there will be an iPhone5 this year, meaning iPhone4 users will be screwed. Or iPhone four users will be waiting a year for an LTE model while all the android users will be rolling along on LTE.

Not to hijack this or get away from the original question and make it an iPhone topic. (But this needs to be explained)


Anyone who THOUGHT that the Verizon iPhone would be LTE has no clue of the market and how Apple works.

Apple will come out with an LTE phone when LTE is ready for mainstream use. Apple sells iPhones all over the world and does not make a different handset for each carrier that sells the iPhone. Up until now, there was just one iPhone 4 and the previous gen iPhone 3GS available. For everyone (not including China where they had a modified version with wifi disabled, but otherwise the same, due to governmental pressure). LTE is not ready for prime time yet on a worldwide or even US wide scale.

Verizon has just started rolling it out. AT&T is starting this year. Neither will be totally up and running this year.

LTE chipsets are immature and probably very power hungry compared to 3G chipsets. The original iPhone was 2G (EDGE) only even though 3G phones had started to ship from other manufacturers. It took a year for Apple to catch up to 3G. And those early 3G phones from other manufacturers had abysmal battery life. Not acceptable for the Apple user experience.

Apple modified the current iPhone 4 for CDMA, which they can also sell in China and India and elsewhere in the world. This started last Spring 2010 from an engineering standpoint when LTE was still a future goal for the carriers and no-one had LTE running except in small scale tests. An LTE phone would require a total re-engineering and design which they have already publicly stated that they were not ready to do yet when this project kicked off last year. The iPhone 4 could be modified to change the radio and some SW programming to make it work. It covers 99% of Verizon customers with 3G.

Apple will come out with LTE phones when they can get an LTE phone to fit their form factor with their battery life requirements and when the LTE market is big enough for Apple to worry about.

I actually doubt we'll see one this year. I bet the iPhone 5 or whatever they call this years iPhone is not LTE. The market is not ready for an LTE iPhone (meaning LTE is not widespread enough across the US or the world to make it worth Apple's effort to come out with one and LTE chipsets are probably not mature enough to fit their form factor and battery life requirements). Apple would have to come out with at least two different versions if it were to come out this year -- a UMTS(GSM)/LTE dual radio and a CDMA/LTE dual radio version. They wait until 2012 they can probably just come out with an LTE version only (or a UMTS/LTE version only since Verizon can use the LTE part and the rest of the world can use UMTS and LTE).

Most Android phones Verizon sells this year will probably not be LTE either, I would bet. That will probably change in 2012 when it is more widespread and ubiquitous. When Verizon first announced LTE a month or two ago it was only the data dongles for laptops. No phones. LTE is an early adopter stage now for the geeks and wannabe geeks, not for mass market.

[HES]

I came from a BB and went with the DroidX when it came out. I love the functionality and the huge screen.

All the Droid phones have mucked around with the interface. Droid has their Sense and Motorola has Motoblur. People generally like or dislike Sense. Nearly everyone thinks that the Motoblur UI sucks.

However if I were you I would hold off unjtil the 4G phones are released. In the mean time head on over to androidcentral and do some research. Here is a list of some of the upcoming phones.

As for keyboard Vs. no keyboard, I made the transition to no keyboard pretty eaisly and now I love the screen real estate.

Stick with Motorola, HTC and you can't go wrong. Samsung might be worth checking out too.

[variablebinary]

I did find that very strange also... It really makes no sense to bring a new product such as this to market, when that product loses one of its strongest features compared to their competitor. If they have a fix (lets assume iphone 5) thats coming down the road, why not simply roll it out then when its ready to shine...

Not sure how 4's will be screwed though as they will continue to be able to enjoy the features that they enjoy now which IMHO are very good. I have owned each gen iphone and feel that I have gotten my moneys worth each time I have invested in one.

I know I'm the odd man out liking Apple products but I'm okay with that.


Back to the Droid hunt...

I would be livid if I got a 3G iPhone 4 and 6 months later there was an LTE iPhone 5.

It's pretty much the same reason I won't get a Sprint Evo to replace my current phone; I know a better successor is just around the corner.

Either way, there is no way in hell I would get a none 4G phone.

If I were on Verizon, I'd wait for the Thunderbolt. No iPhone or Droid for me. I think the Droid X is a kick ass phone, but it too is midway through its life cycle, and the Thunderbolt is too close to release.

Edit: There is a large rumor brewing that Sprint is going to unveil their 4G iPhone on February 7th. We'll see...anyone notice that Sprint was super quiet at CES

[chadbag]

Edit: There is a large rumor brewing that Sprint is going to unveil their 4G iPhone on February 7th. We'll see...anyone notice that Sprint was super quiet at CES

I would bet real money that it won't be an iPhone unless it is the same 3G CDMA one that Verizon has. Apple wouldn't do a special one for Sprint. Trust me on this.

[David Thomas]

My experience with the incredible has led me to believe that it lives up to its name. It really is tough. I like everything about it except its battery life.

[subzero]

I came from a BB and went with the DroidX when it came out. I love the functionality and the huge screen.

All the Droid phones have mucked around with the interface. Droid has their Sense and Motorola has Motoblur. People generally like or dislike Sense. Nearly everyone thinks that the Motoblur UI sucks.

However if I were you I would hold off unjtil the 4G phones are released. In the mean time head on over to androidcentral and do some research. Here is a list of some of the upcoming phones.

As for keyboard Vs. no keyboard, I made the transition to no keyboard pretty eaisly and now I love the screen real estate.

Stick with Motorola, HTC and you can't go wrong. Samsung might be worth checking out too.

Great post, and worthy of a re-read.

Of the current phones on Verizon I'd go with the Droid Incredible as the Sense UI is generally better regarded than what Motorola and Samsung use to skin Android. I firmly believe it's software that makes the experience worthwhile when it comes to these things, so it's more important to me than an extra half inch of screen or something like that. Especially when everything's fairly even in terms of hardware.

That having been said, now is a lousy time to buy as everything is in mid-cycle.

The good thing about buying midcycle is you can usually get a decent price on the phone. I think the Incredible are buy one get one free right now, which blows my mind. They were so popular when they came out that there were nationwide shortages.