Bionic successor

[ronaldheld]

I suppose that not expecting to be doing much gaming on the next handset eliminate some decision making.
I wonder about the Samsung radios, Are they uniformaly weaker than that from Motorola or HTC?
Hopefully I will be able to decide on an upgrade before the end of this year.

[jasaero]

I suppose that not expecting to be doing much gaming on the next handset eliminate some decision making.
I wonder about the Samsung radios, Are they uniformaly weaker than that from Motorola or HTC?
Hopefully I will be able to decide on an upgrade before the end of this year.

This seems to be the case, but I am not sure how much of this is in the antenna design and how much is in the radios and/or modems and such. So far LTE stuff has all come with first generation basebands, or close to it as far as I know, and not sure which products will hit with second generation stuff and whether that will make this remain true. My galaxy nexus has the same basic stuff as the Droid Charge with only the app processor and display upgraded for the most part. Whether subsequent Samsung products on VZW will continue to use these or not is hard to say? The LTE is a samsung chip and could get a new version by the time an SIII gen VZW device hits and change this standing.

HTC seems to use mostly full on Qualcomm setups for VZW. Everything I have heard about the ReZound and network stuffs is pretty good compared to the GNex and someone on here says it seems maybe better than Moto for LTE. I don't have great issues with my GNex, but reception when not in heavily covered areas is definitely not the best and probably not something I would live with if not for the fact I am in heavily covered areas 99.9% of the time.

You have Bionic so know how it and hence Moto perfrom. I had the Bionic the first week it was out and couldn't deal with the pentile display. It didn't seem to have the most reliable 4G either, but pretty sure that has been improved with updates since I had it.

Pretty sure Samsung is probably the weakest player from a reception/coverage standpoint on VZW as it stands. I'm not so sure you can count on that remaining true going forward though?? Part of the issue also seems to be the odd branded CDMA baseband they are using with their own LTE one seems to be weak compared to the more standard Qualcomm one about everyone else uses. So reception on 3G is even kinda crappy. Basically it seems some of it is in the component selection as much as it is in the more nuance propriety aspects of the designs.

This leads me to a feeling where I am not sure you can judge upcoming devices based on current ones. LTE is a GSM derivative and Samsung seems to do great with GSM stuffs, so I expect LTE performance to mature well with them. What I am not sure of is whether they are ever going to make a device that performs well on VZW's still massive CDMA network also?? To this point I don't think they have made many such devices, if any? I am not an old VZW subscriber, but haven't heard many great thing about Samsung with them, even though I never had issues with Samsung while on ATT and TMo.

[ronaldheld]

I have learned a lot, but still do not know what to do. Part of which is the secretive manner of these high end phone releases. Having 2 droids I am reluctant to give up the build quality and the decent radios. Anyone know when the next gen LTE chipsets will be in VZW phones?
Maybe the US SIII will be available this summer, but what about the HTC note like phone or the newest Moto phone which is their new top end one?

[jasaero]

This doesn't say a lot about what VZW will get, but does show how the dual core qualcomm Snapdragon S4 compares compute and GPU wise to the quadcore Tegra3. The GPU's seem pretty evenly matched. It's pretty obvious though that the S4 is dominating in single threaded CPU performance to the point it is winning in even some multithreaded tests(Linpack Multithread).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5779/h...r-att-review/4

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/01/h...or-att-review/

The HTC One S(International) is also S4 powered and in general between it and the AT&T X, the S4 pretty much dominates, even though down a couple cores on the Tegra3. The tegra3 isn't a slouch at all though as many of these tests seem multithread capable and/or GPU focused and it is toward the top.

My guess is that for CPU oriented tasks the SIII Samsung designed 4XXX Exynos chips will perform similarly to the Tegra3 as it's a pretty similar chip, but may be available in higher clock speeds since it's build on a smaller process. So clock for clock they will be similar, but the exynos will overclock better without killing battery power use.

[ronaldheld]

I suppose that I should be less concerned about the S4 based on the two reviews. In two days we should see what the SIII specs should be for the US. I wonder if it will take 6 months for the VZW version to appear?
Too bad that there is no HTC note news, but that is understandable given the One X and S release dates.
Even better if we could get something about the second half year releases ftom Verizon.

[ronaldheld]

Maybe I should add Razr HD to the previous list of awaited phones?

[jasaero]

Maybe I should add Razr HD to the previous list of awaited phones?

Definitely. It may have built in battery like HTC, but so far Moto has atleast kept the microSD card slots. After the GNex I have decided I like having an SD slot probably more than replaceable battery if the built in battery lasts long enough. And if I had to deal with 16gb of built in memory, I probably would never have got the GNex.

[ronaldheld]

I will add it to tbe list.
I almost got the Nexus, but given the Droid 1 shape, and the poorer samsung radios, I did not do so.
Not certain which I have to give up, the removable battery or removable sd card. I doubt all three will be available until tbe fall, maybe later?

[ronaldheld]

The SIII specs are out. Decent phone but not overwhelming. Time go wait until 4Q?

[jasaero]

The SIII specs are out. Decent phone but not overwhelming. Time go wait until 4Q?

You probably noticed this in a reply in the SIII thread, but figured I would post here also. As far as I know LG is the only one talking 2gb RAM and their HD screens should be really nice. Their VZW LTE phones have all included Qualcomm processors so far, but hit after Snapdragon was being beaten by A9. A VZW phone like this could be pretty nice if they can get their Android builds improved.

http://phandroid.com/2012/05/10/lg-l...splay-and-lte/

[ronaldheld]

That LG phone might be worth having. I suppose it depends on which phones are exclusive to their repspective carrier. If the only high end phone by year's end are those leaked from BGR, then the LG is not going to come to VZW? I really would like to upgrade before the end of 2012. Another concern is trading off a fixed battery and no SD card for a better screen and chipset.

[jasaero]

That LG phone might be worth having. I suppose it depends on which phones are exclusive to their repspective carrier. If the only high end phone by year's end are those leaked from BGR, then the LG is not going to come to VZW? I really would like to upgrade before the end of 2012. Another concern is trading off a fixed battery and no SD card for a better screen and chipset.

Yeah. I would take BGR's stuff with a grain of salt. Might be some truth, but doubt it's all accurate or complete. LG stuff is normally below everyone's radar as they usually don't get much attention. Seems most of the Android phones they build get bashed as being slower and choppier than they should be for the hardware they have inside. I'm sure their software development has been improving though, and honestly I would deal with a little lack of smoothness to get more memory and ability to have more things running at any one point. It's not hard to multitask in the stock browser enough to eject the homescreen from memory.

On battery and SD card it is really starting to seem Samsung and LG are going to be the only bets going forward where you get both of those. Maybe Asus will finally get serious about cellular and try to get some devices on US networks now that they are pushing a phone. That padphone is nothing special on it's own, but the concept beyond the phone is pretty nifty. Particularly as capability of the phones themselves keep improving.

[ronaldheld]

FAUguy can help out, as I recall he has said that Samsung phones have weaker radios compared to Moto and HTC. Is their problem hardware or software related?
I wonder if the poorer reception is worth the removable battery and sd card? It is another matter to pick from Sense, touch wiz and motoblur.

[jasaero]

Yep, they do. Not sure what all the reasons are. I have the GNex and although I can't say it's good enough for most people or most areas of use, it works for me. I live in the relatively flat DFW area here in TX though. It works great for me here, but wouldn't be surprised if the device would be unreliable enough in a hilly are to the point it was just not good enough to deal with. Also, I used it in FL where it's even flatter than here and found reception to be even better. Less densely populated areas with more purely geographical coverage oriented cell sites might also prove to be an issue.

Basically, point being, that I think whether it's reception is good enough or not depends a lot on where you will use it most of the time and whether you need really strong signal performance to get a reliable connection or not.

[ronaldheld]

Never owned a Samsung, so I would have to try it out past the return period to get a good idea of long term reception in my home area.
Any clue if the next Nexus phone will be out this year and appearing on VZW network?