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Android Hardware Thread - 2010 Edition

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So the HTC Merge/Lexicon is apparently coming out Nov. 11th. Should I spring for that, or get the Droid 2 (Global). I am a little worried about the Merge because it has Bing, and I feel it will be less supported than Verizons flagship device, but I am unsure.
 
hermit7 said:
So the HTC Merge/Lexicon is apparently coming out Nov. 11th. Should I spring for that, or get the Droid 2 (Global). I am a little worried about the Merge because it has Bing, and I feel it will be less supported than Verizons flagship device, but I am unsure.
if the merge is indeed the same as the G2 then it's gonna get plenty of support. maybe not directly from verizon but the developer community fully support it. hopefully we see some cool uses for the keyboard.
 
hermit7 said:
So the HTC Merge/Lexicon is apparently coming out Nov. 11th. Should I spring for that, or get the Droid 2 (Global). I am a little worried about the Merge because it has Bing, and I feel it will be less supported than Verizons flagship device, but I am unsure.

Is this confirmed anywhere? My contract is up Nov 8th, and I really want to get this for my wife.

I hope the Desire HD is coming too as I really want to get that as my Iphone replacement.
 
Nostalgic Nightmare said:
Is this confirmed anywhere? My contract is up Nov 8th, and I really want to get this for my wife.

I hope the Desire HD is coming too as I really want to get that as my Iphone replacement.

Just rumors at the moment, though the Pro is coming out around the same time. I would expect them all to drop around the same time for a big marketing push.
 
Jazzy Network said:
Maybe cause the N1 had way too many problems with it and the fact that it wasn't sold in stores and people couldn't even try it? Google took a gamble with it and they failed they just won't admit it.

what you said does nothing to refute my point. If it was sold in stores or on a carrier contract, you would have bloatware. Google offered an alternative, no one bought it. I'm still using mine without issue... now if i just wasnt on a shit ass network... heres to hoping the verizon iphone comes out soon and ATT loses a ton of customers, alleviating network issues.
 
the my touch hd is a beast both in performance and in looks. t-mobile, please stop designing your own phones.

MyTouch-HD.jpg
 
I'm on Sprint and I'm eligible for an upgrade. What's the consensus: Samsung Epic or EVO 4g? I was leaning toward the EVO but my friend has one and he told me to absolutely not buy one. The battery life is awful.

I currently have a Hero and the battery life on this thing is terrible as well so I really don't want a phone where I'm going to have to leave it plugged in all day at work to ensure the battery won't die on me.

But then again, I'm not sure if the $50 premium on the Epic is really worth it.
 
LM4sure said:
I'm on Sprint and I'm eligible for an upgrade. What's the consensus: Samsung Epic or EVO 4g? I was leaning toward the EVO but my friend has one and he told me to absolutely not buy one. The battery life is awful.

I currently have a Hero and the battery life on this thing is terrible as well so I really don't want a phone where I'm going to have to leave it plugged in all day at work to ensure the battery won't die on me.

But then again, I'm not sure if the $50 premium on the Epic is really worth it.
Get the Evo. Tee support from Samsung is pretty awful. It doesn't even have Froyo yet. Through rooting and custom roms, which are easy to do now with how popular the Evo development scene has been, you can get great battery life.You can do shit like underclock your phone when the screen is off to save battery! Even then I don't think there's a huge difference between the Epic's and Evo's battery personally.

It probably boils down to if you want to have a keyboard and risk dealing with Samsung's support.
 
Awesome, thanks for the response. I was leaning toward the EVO, just looking for another opinion. I'm heading over to Sprint now. Hopefully they'll have it in stock
 
spermatic cord said:
Get the Evo. Tee support from Samsung is pretty awful. It doesn't even have Froyo yet. Through rooting and custom roms, which are easy to do now with how popular the Evo development scene has been, you can get great battery life.You can do shit like underclock your phone when the screen is off to save battery! Even then I don't think there's a huge difference between the Epic's and Evo's battery personally.

It probably boils down to if you want to have a keyboard and risk dealing with Samsung's support.

That sounds like something all phones should do.
 
AndyD said:
That sounds like something all phones should do.
Phone (and most modern) CPUs underclock automatically. It doesn't really make sense to have the users do it themselves. That's only something tech-savvy users should do...
 
spermatic cord said:
Get the Evo. Tee support from Samsung is pretty awful. It doesn't even have Froyo yet. Through rooting and custom roms, which are easy to do now with how popular the Evo development scene has been, you can get great battery life.You can do shit like underclock your phone when the screen is off to save battery! Even then I don't think there's a huge difference between the Epic's and Evo's battery personally.

It probably boils down to if you want to have a keyboard and risk dealing with Samsung's support.

Unless you have a rogue application running, the processor is never going all out when the screen is off so the need to underclock it isn't necessary.
 
nolookjones said:
ya this really should be built into stock android....

like said already, they all downclock themselves automatically even when the screen isn't off. this is common in most devices made for years.

if you have certain sync processes running in the background, there's an argument made to not capping the the clockrate when the screen is off as running some of the other hardware for long periods of time will eat up more battery just by virtue of having to have it turned on longer.

it's one of those things like how you'll use less battery if you turn on wifi to download larger files than if you let it happen over 3G which runs much slower and for longer periods. just remember to shut if off when you're done.
 
soco said:
like said already, they all downclock themselves automatically even when the screen isn't off. this is common in most devices made for years.

if you have certain sync processes running in the background, there's an argument made to not capping the the clockrate when the screen is off as running some of the other hardware for long periods of time will eat up more battery just by virtue of having to have it turned on longer.

it's one of those things like how you'll use less battery if you turn on wifi to download larger files than if you let it happen over 3G which runs much slower and for longer periods. just remember to shut if off when you're done.

well users using setcpu report substantially better battery life (source: xda forums) so it must be better implemented than the stock downclocking methods...
 
nolookjones said:
well users using setcpu report substantially better battery life (source: xda forums) so it must be better implemented than the stock downclocking methods...

People that use SetCPU also use custom kernels that undervolt.
 
Well been messing with my EPIC for the last few days and I really enjoy it. I get 5.5 mbps and peak sometimes at like 9.0mbps with 4g. Everything about the phone is nice, I like the keypad for playing alot of my old games on the emulators that they have. I just hope that samsung doesnt drop the ball with froyo. They have already released 2 updates for the phone so far so its looking good.
 
So I'm not sure which phone to get: T-Mobile Vibrant or myTouch HD. The Vibrant is at the $450 or lower price point whereas the myTouch HD is still a ways off.

Keep in mind that I live in Canada (on Wind Mobile, AWS carrier), so I have to factor in shipping costs as well. :(
 
I'm a year out of my verizon contract and I really would like to renew ASAP as I am now out in the middle of no where with not much internet access. (14.4k dial up) so.. I'm looking for a good android phone with maybe a decent screen, good for texting and internet browsing in particular. What would be the most recommended for that right now? It's hard for me to do much research right now with the lack of decent internet so hopefully someone here can help me out in deciding. thanks.
 
SRG01 said:
So I'm not sure which phone to get: T-Mobile Vibrant or myTouch HD. The Vibrant is at the $450 or lower price point whereas the myTouch HD is still a ways off.

Keep in mind that I live in Canada (on Wind Mobile, AWS carrier), so I have to factor in shipping costs as well. :(
Out of curiosity, why do you not consider the G2?

Vibrant has TouchWiz (which I hear is horrible), AFAIK, so unless you root it and take off TouchWiz, I probably wouldn't get it.
 
zoku88 said:
Out of curiosity, why do you not consider the G2?

Vibrant has TouchWiz (which I hear is horrible), AFAIK, so unless you root it and take off TouchWiz, I probably wouldn't get it.

I thought about getting the G2 for a while, but because of the rom-flashing protection and the hinge problem, I thought I would go for the keyboardless version instead.

TouchWiz may be a problem, yes. Can't I just turn it off with Launcher Pro?
 
Koshiba said:
I'm a year out of my verizon contract and I really would like to renew ASAP as I am now out in the middle of no where with not much internet access. (14.4k dial up) so.. I'm looking for a good android phone with maybe a decent screen, good for texting and internet browsing in particular. What would be the most recommended for that right now? It's hard for me to do much research right now with the lack of decent internet so hopefully someone here can help me out in deciding. thanks.

Droid X. 4.3 inch screen, Swype keyboard. It is touchscreen only though, if you would prefer a physical keyboard I would say the Droid 2 would be your best bet. Same processor as the X, a little smaller screen but it has a physical keyboard.
 
hermit7 said:
Droid X. 4.3 inch screen, Swype keyboard. It is touchscreen only though, if you would prefer a physical keyboard I would say the Droid 2 would be your best bet. Same processor as the X, a little smaller screen but it has a physical keyboard.

The X does sound appealing. I definitely don't mind the larger size since any kind of internet media stuff I do will be done on my phone.. I generally prefer hardware keyboards but that was just based on my using the IPhone once.. I've heard some say the X is laggy and buggy though and that the Inc is a better phone? Also is there any limits with like rooting and what not between the phones?
 
Koshiba said:
The X does sound appealing. I definitely don't mind the larger size since any kind of internet media stuff I do will be done on my phone.. I generally prefer hardware keyboards but that was just based on my using the IPhone once.. I've heard some say the X is laggy and buggy though and that the Inc is a better phone? Also is there any limits with like rooting and what not between the phones?

It is a little laggy, but nothing that is too annoying. Also the keyboard on the X is fantastic, the extra space provided by the larger screen is great. I am not quite sure about the Inc. I know it has similar specs both the X and 2. Honestly I would go and play with both of them, and decide if the physical keyboard is that much of a deal breaker.

As a final note, Verizon is bringing out the Droid Pro, which has a 3.1 inch screen, and the same processor as the X. They are also bringing out a Droid 2 Global which has the form factor as the Droid 2, but is clocked at 1.2 instead of 1 ghz.
 
I just want to make I check with you guys before I jump in to my captivate next week, you'd all pick the captivate over the streak right ? turns out rogers is bringing the streak up here and to be honest the 5" size interests me but on the other hand is a dell product on 1.6... :-/
 
subrock said:
I just want to make I check with you guys before I jump in to my captivate next week, you'd all pick the captivate over the streak right ? turns out rogers is bringing the streak up here and to be honest the 5" size interests me but on the other hand is a dell product on 1.6... :-/

With my experience with my Galaxy S on Bell I would be wary of Samsung products to be honest. Not sure if the Captivate is plagued with all the issues the Bell Vibrant is. Phone randomly shutting it self of, internal SD cards dieing, GPS that is useless, lag, freezing. I had mine less than a month and it died, had to be sent for repair. My buddy had to do the same, we got our phones a week apart. You just have to go browse the Galaxy Si9000M forums on XDA to see all the issues. I really like the phone, especially the screen but overall I am very disappointed in Samsung quality and do regret my purchase somewhat. Sold my Nexus one and now feel pretty stupid..

Take that for what its worth.
 
Just want to throw my two cents in regarding clocking and battery life.

I've tried many different custom roms and battery life sucks pretty much across the board. SETCPU MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.

It underclocks by a huge amount and my battery life literally doubled. I can go over 40 hours with my standard usage. If your EVO has shit battery life, absolutely get Setcpu. Custom roms alone won't cut it.
 
zedge said:
With my experience with my Galaxy S on Bell I would be wary of Samsung products to be honest. Not sure if the Captivate is plagued with all the issues the Bell Vibrant is. Phone randomly shutting it self of, internal SD cards dieing, GPS that is useless, lag, freezing. I had mine less than a month and it died, had to be sent for repair. My buddy had to do the same, we got our phones a week apart. You just have to go browse the Galaxy Si9000M forums on XDA to see all the issues. I really like the phone, especially the screen but overall I am very disappointed in Samsung quality and do regret my purchase somewhat. Sold my Nexus one and now feel pretty stupid..

Take that for what its worth.
Good to know. The vagueness regarding the manufacturing issues surrounding this launch have me wondering if some of this has been fixed (or not). The desire z is coming out soon too and I would be interested in that if it didn't have a keyboard. I'm not really sure what else there is on the horizon that won't suck in canada. Since the streak and the Z are the only other ones within the next month or two Im limited unless I want to play that eternally-waiting-for-the-next-thing game.
 
subrock said:
I just want to make I check with you guys before I jump in to my captivate next week, you'd all pick the captivate over the streak right ? turns out rogers is bringing the streak up here and to be honest the 5" size interests me but on the other hand is a dell product on 1.6... :-/

I'm in the same boat as you. I think I'm leaning towards the streak now simply due to it's screen size.
 
If there are any graphic designers who love doing spec work, you can take a stab at designing a logo for Notion Ink, maker (and I use that in the loosest sense of the term) of the Adam tablet.

http://goo.gl/N9bt

I really hope this thing comes out, man. I really want a combo tablet/e-reader. I also hope that if it comes out running Froyo, a new tablet-enhanced version of Android doesn't come out a month later and require different specs.
 
I have an Epic and I just use Juicedefender for excellent battery life. With moderate use I get between 12-15 hours. With light use about 20 hours.

SetCPU requires you to be rooted. I tried it for a while but I didn't see any appreciable difference. I higthly recommend using a task manager to close apps, many poory coded ones will wreak havoc on your battery life.
 
Girlfriend bought the Orange San Francisco today, with her council employee discount she got the phone (and an unwanted £10 top-up) for £89.

Been playing with it this afternoon and I have to say, phone is an absolute steal at that price. For those unaware of the device, its a rebranded ZTE Blade. Specs are;

Android 2.1 Eclair
Qualcomm MSM7227 600MHz processor
512MB RAM
HSDPA (3G+)
3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus
3.5" WVGA (800x480) OLED capacative touchscreen
WiFi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth
FM radio
GPS
116mm / 56.5 mm / 11.8mm
130g


Out the box the phone isn't the greatest, thanks to the Orange UI loaded onto the phone. Quickly got Launcher Pro up and running and now its flying. I'm quite tempted to chuck the Galaxy S on ebay, use this for a few months then grab a 4.3" Android when their prices come down a bit over here.

Another plus, you can get this unlocked for about £4 online.

Check out Modaco's page on the device, Clockwork Recovery is up and running and a few custom roms are already up on the site. Word is that in China 2.2 has already made an appearance on the device, so hope prevails for over here!

http://android.modaco.com/category/453/zte-blade-blade-modaco-com/
 
Hey everyone!

I'm thinking about jumping onto the smart phone boat with the Samsung Intercept that Virgin Mobile is now offering in the US. It appears to be rootable so that's not a concern. I like the keyboard, but am a bit worried about the screen quality. Does anyone have this phone? Can you comment on the whether the smaller resolution screen is a problem?

I've got an iPod touch now (2nd Gen 8Gb), is this phone roughly comparable? I've been using a really old simple phone that just has a black and white screen, tetris and a flashlight, so pretty much anything is an upgrade, but I could also wait for the next Android phone that VM comes out with if the Intercept is really limited.

Thanks!
 
Lazy vs Crazy said:
It really isn't. It isn't amazing or revolutionary or a reason to buy a phone in and of itself, but it works just fine.

Cosign. My sis picked up the Captivate and it's not as bad as I thought. :lol

But seriously. It's pretty much like what Lazy vs Crazy said. The phone is still hella faster than my Droid EphemEris
 
I have an original Droid. When I updated to 2.2, the phone itself picked up some bad habits. The screen doesn't lock when I'm in a phone call. Whenever I'm talking on it, I constantly mute and hang up the phone with my cheek. Even turning the screen off after I answer a call doesn't stop it from happening. Is there any way to prevent this from happening without having to hold my phone in an uncomfortable way?

I would ignore it if it rarely happened but I've muted 2 calls and hung up 3 others today alone. Considering I've only had two conversations, it's becoming a huge problem.
 
sionyboy said:
I'm quite tempted to chuck the Galaxy S on ebay, use this for a few months then grab a 4.3" Android when their prices come down a bit over here.

My contract runs out around christmas, and I don't know whether to get a desire/galaxy s or one of these san franciscos, they seem pretty sick for the price. How noticeable is the slower processor compared to your galaxy s?
Dropping £100 now with completely open upgrade opportunities sounds good, what 4.3" models are you referring to?
 
f0rk said:
My contract runs out around christmas, and I don't know whether to get a desire/galaxy s or one of these san franciscos, they seem pretty sick for the price. How noticeable is the slower processor compared to your galaxy s?
Dropping £100 now with completely open upgrade opportunities sounds good, what 4.3" models are you referring to?
Desire hd is out here soon (this week perhaps) but at £460 I'll wait a while.

Regarding the galaxy s, although the phone has awesome hardware the shitty file system samsung use really cripples the performance of the phone. In some ways the san fran is faster, but of course benchmark will tell you otherwise. San Fran also has more memory, ignore the specs, galaxy s does not have 512mb, 128mb of that is actually video memory. In reality you have about 304mb available, and when the phone loads up all background processes it's more like 190mb at best.

Galaxy S has been a real disappointment for me, the screen is glorious and on paper the specs blow everything else away but samsung have actually managed to fuck it all up. With support from the modding community then in time it might show it's true potential, but I'm not going to wait around for something that samsung should be sorting.

Desire is still a good bet, acer stream looks pretty handy as well, desire hd should be great as well and will hopefully drop by a few quid by Xmas as well. Or try out the San Fran and if you like it then a sim only contract will save you loads in the future
 
sionyboy said:
Girlfriend bought the Orange San Francisco today, with her council employee discount she got the phone (and an unwanted £10 top-up) for £89.

Been playing with it this afternoon and I have to say, phone is an absolute steal at that price. For those unaware of the device, its a rebranded ZTE Blade. Specs are;

Android 2.1 Eclair
Qualcomm MSM7227 600MHz processor
512MB RAM
HSDPA (3G+)
3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus
3.5" WVGA (800x480) OLED capacative touchscreen
WiFi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth
FM radio
GPS
116mm / 56.5 mm / 11.8mm
130g


Out the box the phone isn't the greatest, thanks to the Orange UI loaded onto the phone. Quickly got Launcher Pro up and running and now its flying. I'm quite tempted to chuck the Galaxy S on ebay, use this for a few months then grab a 4.3" Android when their prices come down a bit over here.

Another plus, you can get this unlocked for about £4 online.

Check out Modaco's page on the device, Clockwork Recovery is up and running and a few custom roms are already up on the site. Word is that in China 2.2 has already made an appearance on the device, so hope prevails for over here!

http://android.modaco.com/category/453/zte-blade-blade-modaco-com/

Is the GPS any good? (without A-GPS assistance) Can you check it out?
 
f0rk said:
My contract runs out around christmas, and I don't know whether to get a desire/galaxy s or one of these san franciscos, they seem pretty sick for the price. How noticeable is the slower processor compared to your galaxy s?
Dropping £100 now with completely open upgrade opportunities sounds good, what 4.3" models are you referring to?

I can't speak for how responsive the handset is in person but there's a few reasons why you shouldn't take the "600mhz ARM11" at face value.


The SF has 512MB of RAM. That's much more than early Android handsets and comparable to high end handsets. From 2.1 onwards, RAM has quickly become the major bottleneck when running Android on earlier/lower end handsets.

The SF retains the VFP unit and L2 cache of the high end Snapdragon. This isn't a "stock" ARM11.

The SF has the same Adreno 200 GPU as high end Snapdragon based handsets.


Basically its a halfway house between the early handsets like the G1 and modern "high end" handsets like the Nexus One. It won't be as fast as a Snapdragon based handset but it'll still be a decent amount "snappier" than all the early Android handsets that were based on Qualcomm's older chipset.

I've used a T mobile Pulse with the old 528mhz MSM7200A chipset (ARM11 w/ no VFPU, L2 cache or ES 2.0 GPU) and ~192MB of RAM on 2.1 and honestly haven't had any real issues with responsiveness and I know the SF will be a lot more responsive than that so I've got no qualms at all. If you use a custom rom you'll get a hardware accelerated interface even on 2.1, and that should cure any laggy interface woes, afterall you're using the exact same GPU to draw the interface as you would be on a Nexus One or similar.

I'll be getting mine in a month or two. Can't wait! :D
 
Alright thanks guys, I think I'll be going with the SF with a view to upgrading 6 months - a year after, but I guess a lot can potentially change in 2+ months :).
From what I read, it should have 2.2 by christmas yeah?
 
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