The Verizon Wireless Megathread: Tears for tiers

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The Verizon Wireless Megathread: Tears for tiers

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

tvgm2 posted:

I just ordered a Thunderbolt from Amazon Wireless, and I'm coming from T-Mobile. The delivery date is July 7. I am able to get a monthly discount through my employer, but the phone must be activated before I can register a Verizon website account to apply the discount. Will I be able to apply the discount July 7 and keep my unlimited data?

Literally came here to ask this, almost. You'll obviously be able to apply the discount, but I would speculate that you wouldn't be able to get the discount on the data plan since they're apparently taking away employer discounts on data after the 7th.

Anyone have any further insight on that, and/or know if employer discounts added before the 7th will persist on data? Losing another $6/month is a shame.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2011 12:22

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 20:29

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

e: nvm

kbar fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Oct 21, 2011

# ¿ Jul 5, 2011 08:40

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

AppleCobbler posted:

It's like they decided long term contracting opportunity wasn't worth a quick cash grab. I know of two people personally who switched from AT&T on the 6th to get unlimited data.

We did this too, but for more mercenary reasons. Our five-line plan's contract with AT&T expired last month, and we cancelled to sip on unlimited LTE while the sipping was still good. Most of us have actually been fine to consciously limit our usage to less than 200 MB, thanks to abundant Wi-Fi at home/work/restaurants. I don't really suspect that having unlimited data is going to become an indispensible part of my life since I don't stream baseball games in my car or whatever, but since we're paying Verizon prices anyway for the next two years I'm definitely going to try to get my money's worth.

I think the problem here is pretty obviously not tiers, it's the same problem we've always had with Verizon. It's that their tier pricing is a stratospherically poor value and is cheerfully out of touch with reality. The lack of a $10-15 200ish MB option means a Verizon smartphone is still a lovely value for light users even in a capped world, and asking thirty bucks for an amount of data you can blast through in a couple hours in addition to banning employer discounts from data plans is disgusting (e.g. for my company, AT&T's $25 plan is actually only $19).

Despite some otherwise sensationalist complaining, I think bull3964 has the right idea about waiting to churn until they finally revoke unlimited data. That's absolutely what we'll be doing, unless they strategically wait to do it until after the T-Mobile buyout such that data pricing is raised to the point of being identical. Churning pre-emptively is a pretty bad idea. Show them that you'll give them money until they actually take away your data.

I'm surprised that people think switching to Sprint is a good idea. They've been a poor choice since O.G. SERO was taken away. They force you to pay for messaging, they haphazardly slap you with device-specific fees (i.e. "cool phone tax"), and what good is unlimited WiMax data when it doesn't work indoors because it's on the 2500 band?

kbar fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Jul 8, 2011

# ¿ Jul 8, 2011 19:16

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Seriously? That's absurd.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2011 23:32

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

maduin posted:

Not really. Verizon would like everyone to be on tiered data plans--they're not going to bend over backwards to let people transfer around their unlimited plans forever.

It's not about new people signing up, it's about people who already signed contracts. It's universally understood that you can transfer the responsibility of a contract to someone else in the event you don't want it anymore and know somebody who does. It's loving bullshit for Verizon to decide that they'll be removing the desirable characteristics of a signed agreement while fighting tooth and nail to uphold said "agreement" if the contractholder exercises his or her contractual right to transfer liability.

Is it written in Verizon's ToS that "we will start loving with your agreement if you change financial responsibility"?

# ¿ Jul 10, 2011 01:03

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

You've got a pretty fuckin' weird definition of "loophole."

# ¿ Jul 10, 2011 01:56

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

decoy octopus posted:

Nothing I could really do for them and with my Verizon rep (The only one with any kind of power to help me in those situations) is on vacation but while she was upset she kinda just took it and thanked me for trying. It was weird

Are you a corporate rep, or do you work for an indirect?

# ¿ Jul 10, 2011 02:23

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

doctor thodt posted:

I think most people who say things like that about the physical keyboard aren't heavy texters. I burn through 5k texts a month on average and there's just no substitute for the convenience of a tactile experience (especially because I can text by feel, which you can't do with a touch screen). I'm also pretty proficient with Swype, and I'm still significantly faster with the physical keyboard. I understand that plenty of people can get along just fine without them - as it happens, I can too. But it still makes things a whole lot easier.

This should go in an OP somewhere. I don't think physical keyboards are worthwhile for the thickness they add, but if you're banging out thousands of texts a month it's pretty silly to throw the "hurp durp haev you tried swyep lol???" argument out.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2011 08:45

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

See last page, Verizon apparently jacks your unlimited data if you do a liability transfer. In short, sounds like you're hosed.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2011 23:30

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

chocolateTHUNDER posted:

Unfortunately Android phones aren't exactly known for battery life

This is actually a pretty terrible cop-out response. I also signed up with Verizon for a Droid Charge on the 6th to lock in unlimited data, and there are wild problems with this phone's battery. It's not normal: some days it's fine and other days it's dead in six hours. I dunno what the Engadget guys were doing in their review to get such high numbers, but the LTE radio just seems to toast this thing.

Previous to this, I was using an overclocked Samsung Vibrant, an overclocked HTC Glacier, an HTC Evo (with WiMax disabled because it sucks), and a Nexus One. None of them had any major battery problems and were all quite comparable to my old iPhone. Something is up with the Droid Charge and it would be nice to know what.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2011 08:05

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Yeah, but the Thunderbolt uses a TFT screen, has a smaller battery, and has well-documented problems with battery life. With the Droid Charge, things were supposed to be different:

Engadget posted:

When it comes to battery life, there's no competition. The Charge blitzed through a full day of what we'd consider typical use, coming off the charger at about 9am and not getting slotted back in again until 9pm the next night. Yes, you read that right, two working days of what we'd consider average use with GPS and WiFi on, taking pictures and videos, all powered by a single 1,600mAh battery. Granted, we weren't running our performance benchmarks at the time, but we were hammering the LTE antenna to get some speed results.

I've never experienced anything near that, and we don't even have LTE deployed in my city. On the days I've been in an LTE area, it's even worse. There's a thread with some battery calibration "tricks" on XDA that have supposedly fixed it for a lot of people, but I'm not on that list.

It's just frustrating to feel clueless.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2011 10:00

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

I (still) think the Samsung phones get too much unfair hate. Since they ditched PenTile for the Droid Charge and presumably for its keyboard variant, you're getting the best screen on the market -- that's a given. The SGS guts are last year's, but they're good enough for the Nexus S which is probably still the best all-around phone on any carrier right now (though admittedly, the Samsung-label versions of the device still need a lot of software work, which will come with time). Pretty much any game you throw at this hardware is going to run well because of the GPU on the SoC. And while I can feel your pain on the RAM issue, I don't see the 512 MB limit realistically being a crisis anytime soon. The market's virtually flooded with 512MB phones: we've had 512MB options since the Nexus One and with this high of an install base and this many phones still selling with 512, it seems safe to expect (even if it's via community ROMs) that we'll have enough memory to do what you need to do for awhile longer.

But personally, I don't care about that poo poo the most: as long as the phone's responsive and doesn't feel horribly dated next to dual core offerings (which are incidentally all trainwrecks right now), I'm happy enough. I'm apparently a tiny niche case and part of the 0.001% (or whatever) people that does actually care about the quality of the internal DAC in my smartphone. As it stands today, the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S phones running Voodoo Sound are the only smartphones I've tried that sound good with decent, high-impedance earphones. The SGS phones use a Wolfson WM8994 DAC, and apparently everyone else (Apple excepted) uses actual physical pigshit -- including Samsung itself on the SGS II, which is a real heartbreaker.

The ROM situation is pretty sparse on the Droid Charge right now and I'm bummed that it doesn't include the 16GB of internal storage along with the microSD slot like the HSPA/HSPA+ variants of the SGS, but this poo poo is still easily as good as it gets: best screen possible, best audio fidelity possible, LTE, solid gaming performance, and a decent CPU that you can push harder with an overclock.

The real crime here is that Verizon's getting away with pushing the phone for about $150 more than it's worth (given the hardware's age) simply because they're intentionally overcharging for anything LTE. Then again, these loving Verizon phones depreciate at monster speeds. You'd probably be better off waiting to sign your contract until new iPhone day and flipping an iPhone 5 to buy a QWERTY Droid Charge secondhand (which should have a market value of literally 9 dollars by then, judging historical Verizon smartphone depreciation precedent).

Current versions of Android don't really capitalize on dual-core, and there's a lot of whispering that Tegra2 isn't as great as people thought it would be. If that rumored Ice Cream Sandwich "Nexus 4G" with LTE and the supposed 720p display somehow hits Verizon in December, all the rest of this poo poo is going to look pretty fuckin' bush league anyway.

Get the lovely LTE Samsung phone, just don't blow a subsidy on it.

kbar fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Jul 20, 2011

# ¿ Jul 20, 2011 06:35

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

bull3964 posted:

Really, aside from the screen, I can't think of a compelling reason to get a GSII over the Bionic anyways. The new blur is so much better than touchwiz and Moto actually seems to know what they are doing with CDMA devices (unlike Samsung.

Who actually puts up with Blur and TouchWiz? You're basically advising folks to buy the house where the kitchen floor is "only" covered in vomit instead of the superior house where the floor's covered in diarrhea. I'll take option B and a bucket of bleach, please. Even the brand-babby-new Droid Charge already has an easy way to run the stock ROM with TouchWiz almost entirely removed and AOSP UI elements subbed in thanks to the unlocked bootloader.

I think that in the post-"good enough" performance world (e.g. all devices Nexus One and better) it's shortsighted not to apply more weight to other factors of a device. The PenTile TFTs on Moto's latest line of phones are some of the fugliest shitpiles we've seen on smartphones in recent years, while the S-AMOLED+'s on the Droid Charge and SGS II are irrefutably the nicest displays on pocketable devices today. That counts for a whole hell of a lot, even if the Moto phones were (hypothetically) running circles around the Samsungs in performance -- which they're just not.

People jumping on any of Motorola's recent devices because "lol dual core omg??" in spite of the mountain of horseshit associated with the devices are a problem for the whole market. The longer they're rewarded for churning this crap out, the longer the market will suffer through things like PenTile TFT, wishy-washy bootloader policies, and Moto loving Blur.

kbar fucked around with this message at 09:47 on Jul 23, 2011

# ¿ Jul 23, 2011 09:41

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

There's a retentions plan to get F&F onto a 700 minute family plan -- I've been trying real hard to get them to give me that, but with no luck.

F&F + GV Callback = unlimited free minutes. You can even schedule it with Tasker so that it's only enabled during peak hours.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2011 17:37

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Install "GV Callback" from Android Market and set your GV# to one of your free numbers. The app should be pretty self explanatory. Oldest trick in the (relatively young) GV book.

The routing numbers that the official GV app uses are great for connecting a call quickly but they screw you over on mobile-to-mobile and on F&F-style plans because they can change.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2011 07:09

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

A Droid Charge for a 16GB iPhone 4 is a pretty straight-up trade in terms of market value, give or take 50 bucks. You won't manage a 32GB unit.

I've got a Droid Charge and I really like it; I'm honestly surprised people are buying other phones on Verizon right now. It's basically a Nexus S with shittier software (please god let them get CM7 working on this), LTE, 32GB capacity, and the best screen in smartphones today.

The rush to "future-proof" right now is a little confounding to me. Getting something solid with LTE and a great screen seems like the better bet (especially for audio nerds, since Samsung dropped the GS1's legendary Wolfson DAC from the GS2).

By the time a dual-core processor actually matters for Android, we'll have Tegra3 options available.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2011 08:28

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

I've actually been really happy with the Droid Charge. It runs fast as hell with GummyCharged, and judging from what we've seen with the Nexus S phones (same internals) it'll really fly once the AOSP builds start trickling out.

I think the decision between Droid Charge and the hypothetical Moto Bionic isn't really cut and dry in favor of the Bionic. The Bionic's going to be a better choice if you've absolutely gotta have every last ounce of performance (potentially at the expense of battery life) which admittedly will be a lot of people, but the RGBW PenTile screens on all of Moto's products lately really are just ludicrously ugly, and the Wolfson DAC in the Charge (and all GS1 phones) offers better audio output than anything we've seen from any other Android phone. I guess what I'm saying is that it isn't a done deal: Charge vs. Bionic is a decision of wonderful display, great audio fidelity, and "good enough" performance vs. horrible display, presumably-mediocre audio fidelity, and hypothetically-"futureproof" performance. It's a game of which sacrifices will you make, basically.

One thing that's not up for debate is that LTE 700 is the motherfucking truth. Boy howdy. They just deployed it in my city this week, and I'm about 1,000% more satisfied with Verizon than I was before. I don't really care as much about LTE vs. WiMax, but when it comes to 700 MHz vs. 2500 MHz, man, Sprint's really selling people a raw deal. The 700 band is so good I'm getting decent LTE coverage in places that I was barely getting a 1x signal before. Can't wait for them to go all-LTE.

In any case, a hypothetical Nexus Prime release is legitimately worth waiting for. If the NPrime came to VZdub in its rumored form, the Charge vs. Bionic discussion is all going to seem a bit silly. At that point, there will be two Android options on Verizon: "Nexus Prime" and "sorry, you did it wrong."

# ¿ Aug 20, 2011 01:49

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

chocolateTHUNDER posted:

Eh, I think some of it is justified and some of it is just internet bandwagon hate/hype train stuff. I personally have no problem with pentile screens, I think they look great and personally only notice the pixles/patterning when i consciously look for it, which is almost never because im not a huge human being and don't constantly look for things that are wrong with my phone.

I'd make the case that the disparity in screen quality between something like the Droid Charge and all of Motorola's recent PenTile releases is far greater and more noticeable in day-to-day use than the performance disparity between a(n overclocked) Hummingbird and a dual-core Cortex A9, the latter of which won't "really" start putting some distance between itself and single-core until Android ICS and beyond. Even Droid Life hates recent Moto displays, and in my opinion those guys have an uncomfortably high tolerance for mediocre bullshit in a smartphone.

We've been over it before, but it's worth mentioning again: for text to remain legible on a WVGA PenTile display, you have to blow it up nearly as large as the text on an HVGA display (think iPhone 3GS, HTC Hero, etc.). Even with the boosted 540x960 res on recent Moto PenTile releases, you're able to fit more legible text onto a non-PenTile WVGA display. That's not "sperging" or "being a human being looking for things wrong with your phone," that's a tangible, objective advantage. And the bros at Samsung toss in Super AMOLED to boot, though I personally find the Thunderbolt's S-LCD display pretty passable as well.

Owning a Verizon smartphone isn't cheap; some of you guys are literally paying $100/month after tax to do so. Do your research, and know what you're getting.

kbar fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Aug 20, 2011

# ¿ Aug 20, 2011 07:39

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Cozmosis posted:

Yeah. I got my Charge within the 90 for the Bionic coming out, and I plan to exchange it. Not really happy about anything except the LTE and screen with it. Not trying to scam anyone, but I want a phone that isn't last years specs. I'd be really annoyed using the phone 2 years later.

Did you try GummyCharged and a lagfix kernel? Makes a big difference. The Bionic's going to be a huge step down in screen for a marginal step up in performance -- the GS1's SoC is no slouch.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2011 07:11

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

waffle iron posted:

What kind of display does the Bionic have? Is it pentile?

Topolsky reviewed it and didn't have a lot to say about the display. He mentioned getting 11 hours off the battery, which sounds same as (worse than?) the Charge:

quote:

Even though the Bionic has a larger battery than every other LTE device on Verizon, I don�t see most people getting through a full day without a recharge or a spare battery, especially if you�re making lots of calls.

I dunno, I was an Atrix hater when it dropped and I guess I'm becoming a Bionic hater. The "point" of the lovely display was supposed to be battery savings, but it's not looking like that's really the case unless the dual-core OMAP is really just hoovering that much juice. It looks like the LTE choice for now is pretty clearly raw performance (Bionic) vs. better screen (Charge).

Holding out for the Droid Prime seems prudent.

kbar fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Sep 8, 2011

# ¿ Sep 8, 2011 07:20

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Fuzzy Pipe Wrench posted:

I think its the LTE sucking on the battery. First gen LTE radios are bad enough the Iphone 5 probably still won't be 4g.

LTE devices are obviously going to be worse off on battery than 3G devices, I don't think anyone's debating that -- it's important to compare them in the context of other dual mode LTE/CDMA devices. So far it looks like the Thunderbolt's got the worst battery, the Revolution's not really worth buying anyway so who cares, and the Charge and Bionic are pretty close. Hopefully Anand's Bionic testing will help give us something more conclusive on Bionic vs. Charge battery life.

I don't think the problem is necessarily the LTE radios. I think the problem is that you have to run two radios at the same time on LTE phones since voice, SMS, and fallback data run through the other radio. I really hope these current devices support VoLTE when it's ready (and when LTE is better-deployed) so that we can shut the CDMA radios down entirely.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2011 07:26

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

^ ^ ^ EDIT: PenTile will still matter, but a practical reduction in resolution isn't as big a deal at 720p because you'll still have more usable real estate than non-PenTile 540x960 and WVGA devices. Of course, when a future non-PenTile 720p display hits, that will be the superior choice. But for now, we'll take anything.

Unaccounted posted:

So, I'm also #nthing the recommendation for anyone who's anal about pentile wait for the upcoming devices, but if you're on the fence, go check it out.

Really the only time I've got a problem with is when I'm reading text. I like keeping the text pretty small to fit more on the screen (and to actually take advantage of modern niceties like 540x960 displays), but the PenTile pattern makes it pretty impossible to read small text because it gets all janky. You basically have to zoom in further for text to be readable, and you effectively end up with less usable real estate than you'd have on a 480x800 display without PenTile.

kbar fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Sep 9, 2011

# ¿ Sep 9, 2011 00:20

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

what are you even saying here

# ¿ Sep 9, 2011 02:12

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Codiusprime posted:

Slackerbitch and ExcessBlarg!, we should start a militant pro-keyboard group or something. The infidels must be taught.

Sorry about you'are keyboard hangups.

Nah I'm just being a dick. I'd probably be interested in a keyboard too if it didn't mean an awkward form factor and a ton of added thickness.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2011 03:13

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Codiusprime posted:

Yea, I said the same thing a few times but was ignored.

Obviously if it doesn't affect or bother them then it's just goons spergin out.

My theory on the PenTile-dismissiveness is that it's a 50/50 split between usage habits and confirmation bias. To the former, you're absolutely going to find fault with PenTile if you read a lot of small text on your phone -- no two ways about it. It seems reasonable to assume that the people who aren't bothered by it just don't use their smartphones for reading text very often -- or that when they do, they keep the font size jacked up high enough that they're getting notably less utility out of the display and don't really know what they're missing.

To the latter, that seems pretty simple: a lot of people have been really, really excited about getting a dual-core LTE phone, so why would they let a little thing like an irritating truth about a component of the device hamper their enjoyment of a product they've already decided is the best? This is compounded because most folks are (understandably) coming to something like the Bionic from OG Droids with showstopping performance problems and/or LG shitboxes from '09 or whatever so of course the product's flaws "don't seem that bad" by comparison.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Charge vs. Bionic essentially boils down to whether you prefer improved performance or a good display (and for like 0.001% of us, whether you prefer a high-quality DAC). If you could get the Charge's display with the Bionic's SoC, you'd have a great phone. Right now, we have two phones that (intentionally?) leave something to be desired.

kbar fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Sep 11, 2011

# ¿ Sep 11, 2011 01:08

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

I wonder if there's a semi-arbitrary number that could be assigned to the offensiveness of PenTile on a given device -- despite some of the posts here, it really is a pretty objective thing to measure. For example, the WVGA PenTile pattern on the Nexus One's 3.7" AMOLED screen looks much less-offensive than the WVGA PenTile on any Galaxy S's 4.0" AMOLED screen. The latter simply magnified the shittiness.

I'm typically opposed to PenTile, but I'm starting to revise that stance. Like, I'm cautiously optimistic for the 720p PenTile displays that are about to hit because 720p is just a lot of motherfucking pixels in a small space, and a 720p PenTile screen could still look pretty amazing even compared to something like a non-PenTile WVGA screen. Like, what percentage of usable screen real estate does PenTile actually cost you? Is it 25%, 33%, or something else? It "seems" like a PenTile display that supplies >33% more "resolution" than the next-best non-PenTile display should be hard to complain about. This of course accentuates the utter horribleness of the X2/Droid3/Bionic's display, since they stuck you with PenTile without even giving you AMOLED. And what's worse, 540x960 non-PenTile 4.3" displays aren't even hard to come by.

The PenTile kerfuffle started when the Nexus One dropped, and it was super lovely that Google was advertising "first-ever 480x800 screen" because the usable resolution was definitely below that. But compared to its competition which was a non-PenTile iPhone 3GS with a 320x480 TFT LCD, a WVGA PenTile display looked worlds nicer -- it's just not really "true" WVGA.

I think that's going to be the case for 720p PenTile screens. You're not getting true 720p, but "720p minus some bullshit overhead" is still a step up from WVGA.

kbar fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Sep 28, 2011

# ¿ Sep 28, 2011 00:57

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

e:nvm

# ¿ Sep 28, 2011 06:10

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Droid Incredible, Droid Incredible 2.

The DroidInc1 is available super cheap secondhand and runs the poo poo out of CyanogenMod, so I like it

# ¿ Oct 1, 2011 15:46

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

JayKay posted:

I purchased the 3500 mah seidio extended battery for my thunderbolt. While it adds quite a bit of heft to the phone, its nice being able to run 4G and not be required to charge every 8 hours.

I'm currently at 9 hours off charger and at 65%. This is with 4G being active the entire time and moderate use (display has been on for over an hour). After calibrating, I should be easily pushing 24 + hours with constant 4g and heavy use according to what i've read.

Reading posts like this really makes me wish I could push fast-forward on LTE and not think about it again until mid-2013. These phones are comically gigantic already (Droid Venereal disCharge owner, checking in) and the fact that thick-rear end extended batteries even exist for them (let alone that people are purchasing them) is like some sort of terrible parody of the whole situation.

Hopefully VoLTE's introduction and the dismissal of the CDMA/Ev-DO radio from new handsets will rectify things.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2011 08:18

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Kyrosiris posted:

If the Droid Charge is "comically gigantic" to you, thickness-wise, then what in the god-fearing hell do you want? It's only 14mm at its thickest. (going off Wiki's dimensions for it)

It's not any specific dimension, these phones just feel like monsterbricks next to the non-LTE models they compete with. The Droid Charge is literally a Fascinate plus LTE and a bigger screen, and it dwarfs the Fascinate. Also, phsyically comparing an iPhone 4 or a Droid Incredible (sizewise) to any of the current crop of LTE/CDMA phones is pretty telling.

I'm not saying I don't understand it; it's a necessary growing pain. It would just be nice to see the sizes on these things go back in the other direction.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2011 11:43

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

You need to recognize the distinction between Nexus devices and "literally any other random poo poo that Google unwisely allows its hardware partners to poo poo into the marketplace." The vast majority of your complaints stem from carriers and hardware partners failing to do the operating system justice.

Since Verizon still doesn't have a Nexus device and it's unlikely that too many folks in this thread spent time with a GSM Nexus One -- a beautiful device for its time that easily trumped its iPhone competitor, was slim and made of metal, and ran fast as hell -- it only seems fair to hold back some of the venom until we have a Nexus device on Verizon.

Alternately, try a DroidInc1 running CyanogenMod. It's basically a Nexus One with a rubbery construction after you replace its horrible stock software. Unfortunately it's pretty dated now, but it was probably Verizon's most impressive phone relative to its release date.

It's really unfortunate that unemployed nerds developing software out of their parents' basements have to do the work fixing these products while lovely bottom feeders like HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile all get rich by figuratively defecating all over the industry.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2011 01:20

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

bull3964 posted:

On a personal level, you couldn't force me to go back to an EVDO device. The difference in usability of data is that pronounced on Verizon. On AT&T, it's not as big of a deal.

This is basically it. Honestly if their Ev-DO actually did hang around 2mbps around here it wouldn't be as much of a sticking point. But we routinely get 100-300kbps transfer speeds on Ev-DO unless we're standing right under a tower. I literally would have cancelled our family plan during the remorse period and gone back to AT&T if not for getting a taste of LTE when they randomly turned a tower on a month early. The difference is ridiculous.

Then again, I don't remember Ev-DO being anywhere near this bad back when I had a Touch Pro on Sprint SERO. I feel like it was pretty consistently above 1mbps. Maybe Sprint took Ev-DO and Rev. A more seriously and made up for it by completely loving up 4G while Verizon took it seriously.

The real shame here is that this iPhone is otherwise extremely impressive. I really don't get the negative sentiment other than the complaints over the LTE omission. The chassis and display were already best in breed, and now it's ludicrously powerful, 64GB, and has a camera that rubs shoulders with the best on the market. I swore I'd never go back to iOS, but that thing is an LTE radio away from being objectively near-perfect.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2011 16:01

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

I just don't see the point in signing up for Verizon right now. People with unlimited LTE plans should obviously hang onto them for dear life (as I'm doing), but at a minimum $70/month for voice and 2GB data they just represent a really poor value. If you're willing to craigslist a phone, you could literally get the same service from T-Mobie for $45/month (500 minutes + 2GB add-on).

I dunno, I just don't think LTE would be any fun if I couldn't burn as much of it as I wanted. If I'm having to micromanage a 2GB meter, HSPA+ is good enough.

I guess if T-Mobile or AT&T coverage is aggressively poor in your area it's worth doing. Verizon's likely getting a shitted-up version of the Nexus Prime anyway though, you'd might as well get an HSPA+ version straight from Google and get a better/cheaper plan elsewhere.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2011 07:25

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

e:nvm

# ¿ Oct 22, 2011 13:41

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Where did you hear that?

# ¿ Nov 1, 2011 22:18

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

After reading this bullshit yesterday, I'm really starting to get disgusted with Verizon. Turns out that having LTE on a desirable frequency makes you a real dick of a company.

I love my Droid Charge's hardware, but the lack of an even remotely-loving-usable ROM is really killing me. I came from a Galaxy S on T-Mobile that had lots of aftermarket development done and thought "how much worse can the Charge be, and how long can it take them to get CM7 going given that it works on the Fascinate?"

The answers are "a lot" and "a long time," respectively. I know that LTE poses tough challenges for devs, and Samsung sucks for not releasing driver source code, and it's totally not the devs' faults because they're an awesome bunch of chill bros working for free, but yeah, this thing is just a mess.

I'm reluctantly switching down to a CM-able Ev-DO phone and giving up the sweet nectar of LTE for awhile. If the Galaxy Nexus somehow turns out to suck, my pals and I are thinking of just eating our ETFs and going back to T-Mobile.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2011 15:37

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Aurium posted:

If it's taking this long, the Charge probably wasn't attractive enough to devs.

Yeah, this is what gets me. It's the only LTE phone with an AMOLED display, it has an unlocked bootloader, a bunch of applicable work was already done on the Fascinate, and it's a Droid-branded device. Apparently the LTE radio driver is just a huge pain in the rear end or something, and several of the higher-profile devs who were working on it sold their Charges and went to other stuff.

Obviously it's silly to count on something happening when noble volunteers with limited resources are your only helpers, I think I'm more just frustrated at Samsung for putting out another unusable clusterfuck of a product and leaving the community with a mountain to climb just to do their jobs for them (again).

# ¿ Nov 4, 2011 01:22

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

Probably S-LCD.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2011 01:39

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

serewit posted:

Ask me about my $20/mo unlimited 4G data plan.

OK, I'll bite. How do you have a $20/month unlimited plan? My unlimited plan tragically costs 30 of the dollars.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2011 01:20

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 20:29

kbar: Aug 9, 2002

TenaciousTomato posted:

Im annoyed as poo poo. I lost my Incredible 1 the other day, and since I had a contract upgrade I went to the store and decided to get an LTE phone. Picked the charge after reading some light reviews, and wanted the AMOLED.

Yeah, tough timing. I got the Charge back in July and while I love the hardware, the stock software is just incredibly broken. For what it's worth you can actually upgrade it to Samsung's Gingerbread ROM if you grab the leak off of XDA, and to its credit it improves the thing immensely. Like, from "not even loving usable" to "yeah I mean I guess I can handle this or whatever."

In any case, I ended up getting a Fascinate dirt cheap off of craigslist because it runs CyanogenMod and is otherwise pretty much a Charge underneath. I really hate giving up LTE, but Samsung's poop-and-pumpkin theme, launcher redraws, and erratic battery life just wear on you after awhile. The performance disparity between what Samsung/Verizon are shipping and what the hardware in the Fascinate/Charge is capable of is absolutely obnoxious -- the Fascinate was probably twice as disgusting at first, but with CM7 it runs circles around the Charge and pretty much any stock Android phone in Verizon's lineup, for that matter.

In a year once its been brought to its knees by the hacking community and runs some hypothetical future edition of ICS-based CyanogenMod, the Charge is actually going to be a pretty solid LTE option. Today, it kinda makes me want to throw up.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2011 14:07

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The Verizon Wireless Megathread: Tears for tiers

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