Got an Esteem today after playing with my cousin's, and overall I think I made a smart move upgrading from the Indulge. With the money I got for my Indulge and the rebate, I've basically paid $150 for an Esteem, which is a fair upgrade fee from the Indulge in my opinion.
Display, camera, interface, and navigating through the phone is much better on the Esteem. More features too. Also I had a bunch of games that wouldn't work on the Indulge...so far the Esteem hasn't had a problem loading or running any of them. And it even has its own built in call block feature (there's a setting that lets you have incoming calls for certain contacts go directly to voicemail if you want).
I always thought the slideout keyboard on the Indulge was useless so I don't feel like I'm missing anything in that department, plus the onscreen keyboard is so much larger on the Esteem that texting and typing on this phone is significantly easier. I'd also be lying if I said I miss having the MetroPCS logo on the top of my phone.
But anyway...I do think this phone is much better than the Indulge, however, since the only threads I've been seeing people post on this forum so far are nothing but praise and compliments, I'm going to play devil's advocate. Here are several annoyances/drawbacks I have noticed with the Esteem (this is coming from someone who used an Indulge for the past 7 months):
-I'm confused about why exactly the Esteem needed to be so bulky. If it weren't for the slideout keyboard on the Indulge, that phone would have been much thinner. What's the extra space being used for with the Esteem? Chip space for the HDMI converter?
-I have not noticed significantly improved 4G/LTE reception with this phone (running into the same trouble spots that I had with the Indulge), but it seems like the battery use is slightly better than it is with the Indulge. However, charging up the battery seems to take much longer on the Esteem. I don't know how to turn 4G off on this phone yet (Any Cut didn't find a good LTE menu like it did with the Indulge), but I still remember being able to charge the Indulge while 4G was on faster than this phone charges with 4G on.
-No camera button. Definitely miss that from the Indulge even though I don't use cameras very often...was still nice to be able to just tap the side of the phone and go straight to camera instead of having to press on an icon. Seems like there was more than enough space somewhere for a camera button on the left side of the phone above the usb/charger port too.
-Boot up time has gone up considerably after putting in my 16gb external sd card. It's just as bad as the boot up on my Indulge was. Hopefully I don't have to turn the phone off too often. And speaking of sdcards, the whole 4gb internal sdcard concept is awkward to me. When I go to Settings-->Applications-->Storage Use, it only shows SD card storage on the internal card. I hope this doesn't mean you can't move apps onto your larger external card. If this is the case, that means my external card will only serve as storage for media and apps that aren't installed, and that we're limited to a maximum of 4gb worth of apps. Hopefully I'm wrong about this
-The Indulge allowed you to adjust the brightness on your phone simply by swiping your finger along the top status bar to the left or right but that doesn't work with the Esteem. You could also enable GPS from the drop down menu...but that setting is missing from the Esteem's drop down. The only quick remedy I have found for these two things on the Esteem is to use the power control widget...which has both settings there. EDIT: Was wrong about the GPS button not being on the drop down menu. Don't know why I didn't notice it
-Would like to disable the zoom out/zoom in button that always appears on the bottom right of the browser. What's the point of having that crap on every webpage when your phone has pinch zoom? And no, I don't want another browser app.
-The calendar on the Esteem doesn't seem to let you set reminders on the calendar events to go off at the exact time of the event. Can only be set to minutes/hours before the event. On the Indulge, for the 'reminder' setting, you could select 'on time' so that if wanted to be alerted about something at the exact time, for example, 10:30, you could set it to alert you at exactly 10:30 by choosing the 'on time' setting. On the Esteem it only allows you to choose 1 minute before..2 minutes before..etc. Also the Indulge actually allowed you to customize an exact time with x amount of minutes or x amount of hours, if you wanted to, which is something not present here I believe. This isn't that big of a deal...just a minor inconvenience.
-Was a pain in the ass getting the Esteem to let me select custom sound clips/ringtones for alarms, notifications, and ringtones. Had to navigate to the _ExternalSD folder (my external sd card) and inside of the media/audio directory I had to create three folders (alarms, notifications, ringtones) and dump the sound files into all 3 folders in order to get them to be selectable on all 3 menu. I don't remember it being this difficult to be able to select your custom tones on the Indulge. Wasn't that the point of media scanner?
-The calculator app on the Esteem is lousy. No way to display your history or anything. Wonder if I can get the calculator from the Indulge on here somehow cause I kind of miss that. And I need to get Write & Go on this phone (from the Indulge too)
-If you use the Email app and put it on your homescreen, it doesn't look like the icon changes to show you the number of new message you have like it did on the Indulge. Meh.
-Just like the Indulge, when the screen goes off, you can only get it back on by hitting the standby button. And no AMOLED display either!! (LOL j/k I really don't care about this...when the phone is on full brightness the display is nice looking).
Alright that's enough bad mouthing for now.
Display, camera, interface, and navigating through the phone is much better on the Esteem. More features too. Also I had a bunch of games that wouldn't work on the Indulge...so far the Esteem hasn't had a problem loading or running any of them. And it even has its own built in call block feature (there's a setting that lets you have incoming calls for certain contacts go directly to voicemail if you want).
I always thought the slideout keyboard on the Indulge was useless so I don't feel like I'm missing anything in that department, plus the onscreen keyboard is so much larger on the Esteem that texting and typing on this phone is significantly easier. I'd also be lying if I said I miss having the MetroPCS logo on the top of my phone.
But anyway...I do think this phone is much better than the Indulge, however, since the only threads I've been seeing people post on this forum so far are nothing but praise and compliments, I'm going to play devil's advocate. Here are several annoyances/drawbacks I have noticed with the Esteem (this is coming from someone who used an Indulge for the past 7 months):
-I'm confused about why exactly the Esteem needed to be so bulky. If it weren't for the slideout keyboard on the Indulge, that phone would have been much thinner. What's the extra space being used for with the Esteem? Chip space for the HDMI converter?
-I have not noticed significantly improved 4G/LTE reception with this phone (running into the same trouble spots that I had with the Indulge), but it seems like the battery use is slightly better than it is with the Indulge. However, charging up the battery seems to take much longer on the Esteem. I don't know how to turn 4G off on this phone yet (Any Cut didn't find a good LTE menu like it did with the Indulge), but I still remember being able to charge the Indulge while 4G was on faster than this phone charges with 4G on.
-No camera button. Definitely miss that from the Indulge even though I don't use cameras very often...was still nice to be able to just tap the side of the phone and go straight to camera instead of having to press on an icon. Seems like there was more than enough space somewhere for a camera button on the left side of the phone above the usb/charger port too.
-Boot up time has gone up considerably after putting in my 16gb external sd card. It's just as bad as the boot up on my Indulge was. Hopefully I don't have to turn the phone off too often. And speaking of sdcards, the whole 4gb internal sdcard concept is awkward to me. When I go to Settings-->Applications-->Storage Use, it only shows SD card storage on the internal card. I hope this doesn't mean you can't move apps onto your larger external card. If this is the case, that means my external card will only serve as storage for media and apps that aren't installed, and that we're limited to a maximum of 4gb worth of apps. Hopefully I'm wrong about this
-The Indulge allowed you to adjust the brightness on your phone simply by swiping your finger along the top status bar to the left or right but that doesn't work with the Esteem. You could also enable GPS from the drop down menu...but that setting is missing from the Esteem's drop down. The only quick remedy I have found for these two things on the Esteem is to use the power control widget...which has both settings there. EDIT: Was wrong about the GPS button not being on the drop down menu. Don't know why I didn't notice it
-Would like to disable the zoom out/zoom in button that always appears on the bottom right of the browser. What's the point of having that crap on every webpage when your phone has pinch zoom? And no, I don't want another browser app.
-The calendar on the Esteem doesn't seem to let you set reminders on the calendar events to go off at the exact time of the event. Can only be set to minutes/hours before the event. On the Indulge, for the 'reminder' setting, you could select 'on time' so that if wanted to be alerted about something at the exact time, for example, 10:30, you could set it to alert you at exactly 10:30 by choosing the 'on time' setting. On the Esteem it only allows you to choose 1 minute before..2 minutes before..etc. Also the Indulge actually allowed you to customize an exact time with x amount of minutes or x amount of hours, if you wanted to, which is something not present here I believe. This isn't that big of a deal...just a minor inconvenience.
-Was a pain in the ass getting the Esteem to let me select custom sound clips/ringtones for alarms, notifications, and ringtones. Had to navigate to the _ExternalSD folder (my external sd card) and inside of the media/audio directory I had to create three folders (alarms, notifications, ringtones) and dump the sound files into all 3 folders in order to get them to be selectable on all 3 menu. I don't remember it being this difficult to be able to select your custom tones on the Indulge. Wasn't that the point of media scanner?
-The calculator app on the Esteem is lousy. No way to display your history or anything. Wonder if I can get the calculator from the Indulge on here somehow cause I kind of miss that. And I need to get Write & Go on this phone (from the Indulge too)
-If you use the Email app and put it on your homescreen, it doesn't look like the icon changes to show you the number of new message you have like it did on the Indulge. Meh.
-Just like the Indulge, when the screen goes off, you can only get it back on by hitting the standby button. And no AMOLED display either!! (LOL j/k I really don't care about this...when the phone is on full brightness the display is nice looking).
Alright that's enough bad mouthing for now.
Otherwise why mention it? 
