Time For a New Phone...

[cprice12]

The wife needs a new smart phone. She wants my HTC One M7...so that means I get a new phone. Woot!
She'll actually be getting the new phone on her line, then I'll be switching it to my line so as to keep my unlimited data...then she'll get the M7 on her line. Her line isn't unlimited.

I absolutely love the M7...and my first thought was to just get the M8.
But I love researching new phones, reading up on the specs, reviews and whatnot...so I've been doing that for the past couple weeks.

I had it narrowed down to the HTC One M8, the new Droid Turbo, and the LG G3...and the Moto X kept creeping into the conversation.
(I'm not a fan of the iPhone...never have been...so I wasn't considering it. Don't get me wrong, it's a very well built and sharp looking phone, but I can't stand the OS and I don't like the apple ecosystem at all...so it's just not for me.)

After a lot of time (too much time) agonizing over details and going back and forth a couple times, I decided on the Droid Turbo.
I went out and bought it today...$99 with a 2 year contract. I hate contracts, but I love Verizon's speed and my unlimited data, so I'm not going anywhere.

All of the beefy specs were just too much to pass up...and the 64bit architecture that can take better advantage of Android L is just a bonus and should make the phone last a lot longer. Some aren't happy with the camera, but I want to try it out for myself. I can always take it back before January 15th and exchange it if it is a deal breaker. I tested it out in the store and it seemed ok. I also want to see how the camera performs using Android L. I plan on using a different camera app for it anyway...others have said the lag does not happen on other camera apps, so the gripes about the camera may mainly and simply be software related...which is fixable (if there is a real issue at all).

I think after initially reading the specs and seeing the reviews of the Droid Turbo, I found myself wanting to talk myself out of the HTC One M8, which, a week ago, I thought I was going to get.

Anyone else get a new phone recently? Or considering a new phone?

[glen a richter]

I still use a flip phone that makes calls and is unable to connect to the internet. Smart phones seem to me to be a huge waste of money and I've been resisting upgrading even though I'm overdue for one because I know verizon will make me get a data plan even though I'll nevr use it.

I remember when the smaller the phone, the better. Now people walk around with these freaking huge all purpose phones. Can they even be used to make phone calls anymore?

[cardsfan04]

I've heard really good things about the Turbo. The only downside I've heard is that it's loaded with bloatware. But, that's really not the end of the world.

I have an S4 and love it. Some of its features are really gimmicky and I don't use them. But, the phone is thin, light and extremely reliable. I'm past the 18 month mark though. It's still very reliable, but battery life isn't what it used to be. I also have periodic connection problems, but I think that's Sprint as much as anything.

[cprice12]

I still use a flip phone that makes calls and is unable to connect to the internet. Smart phones seem to me to be a huge waste of money and I've been resisting upgrading even though I'm overdue for one because I know verizon will make me get a data plan even though I'll nevr use it.

I remember when the smaller the phone, the better. Now people walk around with these freaking huge all purpose phones. Can they even be used to make phone calls anymore?

Smart phones can be significantly more money than a "dumb" phone. But like anything else, if you use it, it is well worth the money.

My wife used to say what you are saying. But over time, I think she began to see how useful they could be and finally caved into trying one out.

Last year for her birthday, I bought her a used Droid Bionic to try out. (she would have killed me if I had bought a new one outright or subsidized one on a 2 year contract...so used was the best choice for her to try out a smart phone) After a month or so, if she truly didn't like it, I'd just put it on ebay and cancel her data plan. Once I explained to her how to use it, she loved it. She couldn't stop talking about how great it was. And my response every time was, "Told you so." She RARELY admits to me that I am right about anything...so this was a score for me.
And now she wants a better/faster phone...and quite honestly, I'm surprised it took her this long. The Bionic is pretty old in terms of smart phones...it's almost 4 years old now. The new versions of apps just require too many resources and power...it really struggles now. Think of them in terms of computers 10 years ago. You really needed to upgrade your computer every 2-3 years to keep up. But now, you can hold on to a computer for 5 or 6 years and it should be ok. Computer processing power has outpaced the need for that power, at least in home use...so computers last longer nowadays. Same thing with smartphones.

After having a smart phone, I can't imagine not having one...it is so convenient and useful. It's like a DVR now...I would be depressed if I didn't have a DVR now that I have had one. Having quick access to, well, everything, is so nice and so convenient.

But anyone will tell you that the best part about smart phones is really the vast array of Apps you can install. Just about anything you want to do, you can find an app for in Google Play or the App Store. It's really quite amazing. Tons of apps are free...but ones that cost $ are a few bucks or less most of the time.

I always hated the idea of phones getting smaller and smaller. I didn't understand that. I didn't want to make a call on a dinky phone with a tiny little screen.
Granted, a phone can be too big. If it doesn't fit into your pocket, what's the point? I think now though, companies have found a sweet spot.
I haven't warmed up to the phablet phones yet. A 6" phone just seems a little too big for me...but those who have them, love them...so.... Right now I'm a fan of a 5" - 5 1/2" phone, which most phones seem to be.

Buy a used or new phone outright on ebay, upgrade your line to a data plan and activate that phone on that line. You won't have to sign a 2 year contract or anything...that is only if you subsidize a new phone at a discounted price through Verizon. If you don't like the smartphone after a month, sell the phone and cancel your data plan. You really don't have that much to lose since you won't be under contract and you'd recoup most of your money by selling the phone.

[cprice12]

I've heard really good things about the Turbo. The only downside I've heard is that it's loaded with bloatware. But, that's really not the end of the world.

I plan on removing the bloatware that I can, and disabling the rest. So I'll never see it.
I skin my phone with Nova Prime anyway. But I have heard that aside from the bloatware, the Droid Turbo doesn't change a whole lot with the OS, so it's pretty close to a pure Android experience. I'll try that out, but if I prefer the Nova Prime Launcher, I'll just install that...I really like it.

I have an S4 and love it. Some of its features are really gimmicky and I don't use them. But, the phone is thin, light and extremely reliable. I'm past the 18 month mark though. It's still very reliable, but battery life isn't what it used to be. I also have periodic connection problems, but I think that's Sprint as much as anything.

A lot of the customized features that the provider throws on there are gimmicky, no matter what phone you have that isn't called Nexus. I always get rid of those gimmicky provider specific widgets and extra crap. I use a few different widgets, but nothing that Verizon has on there.
But I am sure they appeal to a lot of people as they try to simplify things and make things easy to see and get to. But the main reason they do it is to get people used to their version of Android so they will upgrade to their next model since they are more familiar with it.
But like I said, I use Nova Prime Launcher...and I set it up how I want it to be.

The battery of the Turbo was a big draw for me. I consider myself a power user, so easily getting a full day of use on one charge would be nice. My HTC One M7 doesn't make it through a day on heavy use if I don't plug it in for part of the day. I do usually plug it in while I am at my desk at work and in the car, so it's not really an issue unless I forget to plug it in. And when the Turbo is low on battery, it is supposed to give you 8 hours of life on a 15 minute charge. Which is crazy cool if it works...and folks say it does, but the battery has to be low when you plug it in to get that result.

[cprice12]

New phone arrived yesterday.

We had to jump through a couple hoops as my current HTC One (which my wife was getting) and the new Droid Turbo have different size SIM cards, so we couldn't just swap them out like I was planning on doing.
I called Verizon's customer care line and they were able to change them on their end without physically switching them. It took a few minutes after making the change and a couple reboots for each phone, but it worked just fine.

I spent a few hours setting it up...which oddly, I really enjoy doing. I could have just backed it up and restored it all...but I like setting it up manually for some reason.

So far, the camera works just fine...there is no real lag in taking photos. And the photos are good (as far as camera phones go)...but I just took a few shots of the room...nothing fancy or things that were moving.

The bloatware is a complete non-issue...as expected. I just disabled a few of them, kept a few others since they are Verizon specific about my account and I will use...and that's it. There really wasn't much bloatware. No golf or racing games pre-installed or anything like that...just about 6 or 7 Verizon apps that involved my account or finding a lost phone...stuff like that. That was it.

When the phone is idle, and I get a notification, I can waive my hand over it and it will go to a pre-lock screen where if I just touch the screen, it shows the notification...then I untouch the screen and it goes blank again. That's a neat feature that I knew about before, and it's pretty cool in real world use so far. But I may end up disabling that, as I might prefer to just look at the phone when a notification pops up instead of touching it to see it. I have heads up notification app installed, so it pops up with texts and other things.

GPS & location finding services work great in the basement of my work...which had been an issue with my phone a couple phones ago (and is an issue with a co-worker's Galaxy S5)...so that's something I am anxious to check out. But it gets a good lock on me.

Oh yeah...as expected, this phone is pretty damn fast.

The ballistic nylon backing is pretty cool. I don't think I'll be getting a case for this phone.

So yeah... thumbs up for the Droid Turbo so far.

[Portland Blues]

Haven't read all of the posts yet but it looks like you've gotten the new phone.

For anyone else I wanted to mention I've had the LG G3 for about 6 weeks now and it's amazing. I upgraded from an old iPhone 3G so it feels like moving from a Pinto to a new Porsche. Love the Android system way more than Apple. I do use a Mac but never took to the Apple phone.

[cprice12]

Haven't read all of the posts yet but it looks like you've gotten the new phone.

For anyone else I wanted to mention I've had the LG G3 for about 6 weeks now and it's amazing. I upgraded from an old iPhone 3G so it feels like moving from a Pinto to a new Porsche. Love the Android system way more than Apple. I do use a Mac but never took to the Apple phone.

I really considered the LG G3. If this one has to go back for any reason...I may get that one.

The screen on that phone is great...it pretty much extends from edge to edge if I recall.

[Portland Blues]

Haven't read all of the posts yet but it looks like you've gotten the new phone.

For anyone else I wanted to mention I've had the LG G3 for about 6 weeks now and it's amazing. I upgraded from an old iPhone 3G so it feels like moving from a Pinto to a new Porsche. Love the Android system way more than Apple. I do use a Mac but never took to the Apple phone.

I really considered the LG G3. If this one has to go back for any reason...I may get that one.

The screen on that phone is great...it pretty much extends from edge to edge if I recall.

It does have a tiny bezel around the screen so with a case it's pretty much edge to edge. Light use I'm getting 3 days on the battery - heavy use still lasting over a day. Resolution is amazing. I was worried it would feel too large, but after a day or so no issues. Still fits in pockets and contact numbers are way easier to read than on my old iphone. So far nothing I don't like about it.

[cprice12]

I'll get the advertised 48 hours on the Droid Turbo battery with light use. With heavy use, I still easily get a day with about 30% on the charger when I go to bed...and that is a pretty heavy use day.
Not having to worry about recharging the battery midway through a heavy use day is awesome.

[SteveO]

Verizon plans pretty much plain old suck. Being grandfathered into the unlimited data plan as well, so does paying full retail for a new phone (which Verizon now makes you do in order to retain your unlimited data.)

Right now we both need/want a new phone so we can't play switcharoo like you did.

We're currently on a More Everything plan. Share "1200" minutes, unlimited text, she has 2g data, I have unlimited. She wants to drop off my plan and do her own, get another phone. I'll see what my bill looks like when her line's removed and go from there. I may just fork out the $$ for an S5 on ebay and pay the upgrade fee to avoid a new contract and keep my unlimited data.

[cprice12]

Verizon plans pretty much plain old suck. Being grandfathered into the unlimited data plan as well, so does paying full retail for a new phone (which Verizon now makes you do in order to retain your unlimited data.)

Right now we both need/want a new phone so we can't play switcharoo like you did.

We're currently on a More Everything plan. Share "1200" minutes, unlimited text, she has 2g data, I have unlimited. She wants to drop off my plan and do her own, get another phone. I'll see what my bill looks like when her line's removed and go from there. I may just fork out the $$ for an S5 on ebay and pay the upgrade fee to avoid a new contract and keep my unlimited data.

Verizon's new plans aren't quite as bad as they were a year ago...but yeah, they still suck. They give you a little more data now. It seems like the various providers really cut back on the data offerings for a while when everyone did away with unlimited data...but now they are giving folks some of that data back.

I don't believe you can remove a line and still keep your unlimited data...at least we couldn't when I asked about it. Maybe we are on different type plans though...dunno. We share 700 minutes and she also has 2gb data. But she doesn't have unlimited texts. I don't pay for texting at all. I use Hangouts and Google Voice.

My last phone was an HTC One M7 that I bought used on Ebay. And there are no upgrade fees if you just switch out a phone. The only issue you may run into is different size SIM cards if you switch brands of phone.

[SteveO]

Verizon plans pretty much plain old suck. Being grandfathered into the unlimited data plan as well, so does paying full retail for a new phone (which Verizon now makes you do in order to retain your unlimited data.)

Right now we both need/want a new phone so we can't play switcharoo like you did.

We're currently on a More Everything plan. Share "1200" minutes, unlimited text, she has 2g data, I have unlimited. She wants to drop off my plan and do her own, get another phone. I'll see what my bill looks like when her line's removed and go from there. I may just fork out the $$ for an S5 on ebay and pay the upgrade fee to avoid a new contract and keep my unlimited data.

Verizon's new plans aren't quite as bad as they were a year ago...but yeah, they still suck. They give you a little more data now. It seems like the various providers really cut back on the data offerings for a while when everyone did away with unlimited data...but now they are giving folks some of that data back.

I don't believe you can remove a line and still keep your unlimited data...at least we couldn't when I asked about it. Maybe we are on different type plans though...dunno. We share 700 minutes and she also has 2gb data. But she doesn't have unlimited texts. I don't pay for texting at all. I use Hangouts and Google Voice.

My last phone was an HTC One M7 that I bought used on Ebay. And there are no upgrade fees if you just switch out a phone. The only issue you may run into is different size SIM cards if you switch brands of phone.

I'm pretty sure they get you no matter what when you get a new phone whether they charge you an "activation fee" or an "upgrade fee" you're likely going to pay 30/35 no matter what. At least that's what I'm seeing on their website. I still think we're going to be paying more after our "split" no matter what. It's ~160 the way it is now.

[cprice12]

Verizon plans pretty much plain old suck. Being grandfathered into the unlimited data plan as well, so does paying full retail for a new phone (which Verizon now makes you do in order to retain your unlimited data.)

Right now we both need/want a new phone so we can't play switcharoo like you did.

We're currently on a More Everything plan. Share "1200" minutes, unlimited text, she has 2g data, I have unlimited. She wants to drop off my plan and do her own, get another phone. I'll see what my bill looks like when her line's removed and go from there. I may just fork out the $$ for an S5 on ebay and pay the upgrade fee to avoid a new contract and keep my unlimited data.

Verizon's new plans aren't quite as bad as they were a year ago...but yeah, they still suck. They give you a little more data now. It seems like the various providers really cut back on the data offerings for a while when everyone did away with unlimited data...but now they are giving folks some of that data back.

I don't believe you can remove a line and still keep your unlimited data...at least we couldn't when I asked about it. Maybe we are on different type plans though...dunno. We share 700 minutes and she also has 2gb data. But she doesn't have unlimited texts. I don't pay for texting at all. I use Hangouts and Google Voice.

My last phone was an HTC One M7 that I bought used on Ebay. And there are no upgrade fees if you just switch out a phone. The only issue you may run into is different size SIM cards if you switch brands of phone.

I'm pretty sure they get you no matter what when you get a new phone whether they charge you an "activation fee" or an "upgrade fee" you're likely going to pay 30/35 no matter what. At least that's what I'm seeing on their website. I still think we're going to be paying more after our "split" no matter what. It's ~160 the way it is now.

Where do you see that?
Buying a phone on ebay or wherever and putting your SIM card in it and activating it yourself? There is no charge for that.

I think what you are talking about is when you buy a subsidized phone with a new 2-year contract. Then there is a BS $30 "activation" fee. But if you buy it outright new or used with no contract, there is no activation fee for switching to that phone.

They actually waived my activation fee for the Droid Turbo. It was a new, subsidized phone and on contract and everything, but they had some Black Friday promotion going on.

[cardsfan04]

S6 was announced today. It looks pretty slick, but I don't like that they got rid of the removable battery.

We're switching from Sprint to Verizon, but not sure if the current promotion (that got us to switch) will be available long enough to get this. Fingers crossed.

[glen a richter]

Over the Christmas break I went to upgrade my phone as my old one wasn't holding charge anymore. I asked for the same one I had and the guy told me that I would have to pay for it but I could get one of the "smart phones" for free. I know a thing or two about economics so I got the whole concept of them not buying the older phones in bulk making them more expensive, on the overall. So I relented and got a smart phone because I didn't want to pay anything out of pocket.

Can't stand it. Why does a phone have to double as a computer? It has so many unnecessary features, all I need is talk&text and an alarm clock. And I'm not wild about texting either, the only reason I do is because it's the easiest way to communicate with my wife when I'm not home. If I could go back to the phone I had without having to pay for it, I would in an instant. I figured I'd make the most of it and download a couple of games to play in my idle time, I ate through more than half my available data just downloading the updates for it. It's crazy.

[Portland Blues]

Over the Christmas break I went to upgrade my phone as my old one wasn't holding charge anymore. I asked for the same one I had and the guy told me that I would have to pay for it but I could get one of the "smart phones" for free. I know a thing or two about economics so I got the whole concept of them not buying the older phones in bulk making them more expensive, on the overall. So I relented and got a smart phone because I didn't want to pay anything out of pocket.

Can't stand it. Why does a phone have to double as a computer? It has so many unnecessary features, all I need is talk&text and an alarm clock. And I'm not wild about texting either, the only reason I do is because it's the easiest way to communicate with my wife when I'm not home. If I could go back to the phone I had without having to pay for it, I would in an instant. I figured I'd make the most of it and download a couple of games to play in my idle time, I ate through more than half my available data just downloading the updates for it. It's crazy.

Do you have your updates set to only update when on wifi? I've got mine set to never update when on the carrier network. Like you, it burns me to think that I'm using any of my "paid" data to update some stupid app they installed on the phone.