Love it more than my iphone, March 10, 2012

Just love how fast and smooth this runs, I enjoyed my iphone 4s, but this is a better phone. The widgets and apps make it much more customizable than the iphone (for example, I love my swiftkey keyboard app; there is no way to use anything but the stock keyboard on the iphone). There are some apps that were better on the iphone, but the Droid has these and they are still useful. Glad I made the switch back to Android!

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16 GB Bionic–Thunderbolt review, March 25, 2012

By 

Z. Jinks-Fredrick “Jules” (Sacramento) – See all my reviews

  

First I will start with the Droid Bionic 16GB. When I received the mobile at first I wasn’t sure how I felt about the flimsy-er back cover and kind of hap-hazard installation area for the SIM card. But lets not make opinions without running the device, right? So after charging it fully and then powering it on first thing I notice is how quick it is, even for a 2.3 (we have a 3.0 (honeycomb) Toshiba Thrive tablet). After that I wanted to see the bloatware, which for the most part was not bad. There is a golf game that is pre-installed and the largest file, I think you can remove it but I haven’t tried since it’s kinda fun; when you are super board and want to play a i-don’t-give-a-shite game.

Some info: after all the preinstalled stuff from Verizon including Blockbuster and all the apps I installed (Facebook, Netflix, Google +, Lookout Mobile Lite, a better clock(must have), a better alarm (again must have), some live wallpapers, and a few other smaller miscalleaneous apps there was a total of 11 almost 12 GB of the 16 GB internal SD memory left. As far as rank with other devices go, this is fairly typical to the point of being almost identical in space used to our 16 GB Thrive Tablet.

I mentioned in the last paragraph that the alarm and clock were must haves, and in my opinion they are. The default alarm only has one sound (an annoying digital watch-like beep)and no option to download more. The clock, well I just don’t like the way it looks digital or analog. (Message me for what apps I like for both).

Now to compare: I bought for my wife an HTC Thunderbolt 8GB which comes installed (well technically you install it) with a 32 GB microSD (a 40-50$ value). The cameras are basically the same as far as I can tell with the photos but let me be honest my favorite camera we have is not our fancy 14mp but our 6mp 10 year old camera. So there is your qualifier. Moving on, the start-up on the Thunderbolt was much slower, most likely to the lightning storm movie that is played at start up (don’t know if it can be disabled but my wife likes it so, ehh whatev’s). There actually appears to be less bloatware on the Thunderbolt as only about 2GB of space was taken on the internal memory whereas on the Bionic it is closer to 4 (3.87 before my apps after its about 4.68) and the microSD is empty, in short much more space.

The best for last, battery!
On the Bionic I use the mobile hotspot for at least 3-4hrs per day as my home wifi, make calls, texts, social network, and photos also throughout the day which is 8:00 AM to about midnight and then leave the phone on overnight and it does not need to be charged until I wake up at 8:00 AM the next day. That is a full 24hr of medium to high use. I have also used the phone only for calls, texts, and the occasional e-mail and most of the day in standby under which the battery only dropped 15% over 24hrs. By far the best battery I have seen on a smart phone but our tablet runs for about 4-6 days before needing a charge and that use is much heavier. The Thunderbolt, not so good on battery, my wife uses it less than mine (mostly on standby) and the battery will be dead after about 36 hrs. From what I can tell if I ran my phone on airplane mode it would last the advertised length.

Finally in conclusion there are things I like about both phones; mine the speed (1ghz 1 GB dual core processor (4 times bigger than my first computer)), the battery, and the wider screen. On my wife’s I like the HTC software (clock, alarm, more home windows, etc), the heavy weight, and the mobile hotspot signal is a little stronger.

I still prefer the Bionic however in only for dual core; Thunderbolt uses the single core Snapdragon, which is fine for most things but dual is better for programming and multitasking.

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beta product, April 17, 2012

I am a long time Motorola customer. I am sure I will buy Motorola in the future but this product line has me wondering. It is fast, feature rich, and accessory rich. But very buggy and frustrating. The handset it’s self feels quality but the accessories slip in quality from the Droid x. They expanded the accessory line but they all feel cheaper and are not as stable (lots of force closes, lost pictures, spontaneous reboots etc.) The updates to the OS has helped allot but the Bionic is still a disappointment. I bought mine from Verizon along with the car dock, protection pack (that doesn’t work with the device docks very good), Web top adaptor, multimedia dock. I am less than satisfied with every item in the line up.

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