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Droid Bionic versus other phones?

trparky

trparky

Android Enthusiast
I'm thinking about getting the Droid Bionic when I get some money together. I currently have a Samsung Droid Charge and needless to say, the fact that it only has 512 MB of RAM and a single core processor, the phone can really slow down a lot when multitasking.

I have a series of questions about this phone. I'm hoping that someone can answer these questions.


  • Performance. How does this phone perform when compared to some of the other newer 4G phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus? How does it perform under load when pushing the the multitasking element of the phone? I like to be able to browse the web and to stream stuff like Slacker Radio. How does it perform when doing all of that? The Droid Charge slows down quite a bit when streaming stuff, you can definitely notice it.
  • How is the CPU? RAM? GPU?
  • Third-party support. How is third-party support? How is the dev scene for this phone?
  • Notification bar functions? Are there any functions in the Notification Bar that you slide down from the top? You know, things like... turn on/off Wifi, data, audio/vibrate, etc.
  • Audio quality? How is it? I like to use my phone as a media player so audio quality is a must.
  • Battery life? How is the battery life on this phone? The Droid Charge that I have right now drinks the juice from the battery. Streaming NetFlix last night on 4G LTE for just fifteen to twenty minutes drained the battery nearly 20%. I have a charger in my car and I plug the thing in every chance I get because the phone really drains the battery.
  • Signal quality. How good is the phone at maintaining a connection to the tower?
  • GPS. GPS blows chunks on my Droid Charge. Getting GPS to work on the Droid Charge sometimes feels like you're asking the phone to move heaven and earth.
  • Bloat. How much crap does Verizon heap onto this thing? I remember when I rooted my Droid Charge that I had nearly 30 apps to remove when debloating the stock installation. I never thought that a phone could be that loaded down with such useless crap.
  • Screen. How does the screen stack up against other phones?
  • OS Updates. How is Motorola when it comes to updating their phone's OS? Samsung really fails in this department. Is it ever going to get ICS?
  • Nandroid Backup? Do you really need this? I've heard of ROM Manager before. Can you really do a full OS backup and restore with ROM Manager? Or do I have to load CWM? I've used CWM before so I have no problem using it. Do I even need CWM with ROM Manager?
  • Rooting, restoring, and backing up. How easy is it to root this phone? Restore it back to stock factory ROM? Unroot it? I've found a web site called DroidBionicRoot.com. Seems that he has put a lot of effort into making it easy to do.
  • Can the bootloader be unlocked? The Droid Charge doesn't have a locked bootloader so I can run just about anything onto including custom compiled kernels.

I hope that I didn't put too many questions down. It may be a month or two until I get the money together to buy the phone.
 
What we are talking about is a pretty powerful computer in your pocket that also makes phone calls.

The decision process for many of us is simple ...

The defacto best phone on the market for voice is Motorola. None of the others compare.

As for the computer ... the Razr is almost identical with a slightly faster CPU (1.2 vs. 1.0 MHz).

The Razr has sharp edges. You can not remove the battery without violating the warranty.

The Razr Maxx is what they were shooting for in the first place. Still no removable battery. Still sharp edges.

As far as pre-installed software. This is really irrelevant. If it is important to you, root the Bionic and freeze the apps. See the subforum here of ... Bionic - All Things Root - Android Forums ... for a list of pre-installed software that you can safely freeze.

You could simply ignore it. I do.

All the launchers now have app drawers where you can save pointers to the apps you care about. Create your own drawer and don't include the pre-installed apps you don't like.

In older devices you would use a task killer to empty out what is running. Stay away from that in the Bionic. All the task killer does is kill the tasks that are immediately restarted. They weren't doing anything in the first place. So ... you just increased the CPU usage to accomplish nothing.

The approach for diddling with the pre-installed apps is to root and install Titanium Backup Pro. You can then freeze and unfreeze to your hearts content in attition to all the other obvious maintenance tasks.

ICS will be coming to the Bionic. There is no announced date yet (big surprise).

So ... that's my attempt at a start ... keep at it.

.. Thom
 
I'm no stranger to Titanium Backup, that's how I debloated the Droid Charge when I rooted it the first time. I use it all the time to backup my apps.

As for task killers, I don't use them myself; the only thing I do is use the "Clear Memory" function under RAM right before I sit the phone down to be alone for some time.

How is this phone going to stack up against the newer phones that will be coming out soon? Everyone seems to be talking about quad-core phones. Do we really need quad-core phones?

I find that the 512 MB of RAM in my current phone to be very limiting especially in the multitasking department. Does this phone really have 1 GB of RAM? Is it enough?

Obviously there are other questions I asked in the opening post. These couple of questions just expand on them.
 
  • Performance. How does this phone perform when compared to some of the other newer 4G phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus? How does it perform under load when pushing the the multitasking element of the phone? I like to be able to browse the web and to stream stuff like Slacker Radio. How does it perform when doing all of that?

    The Bionic keeps up quite well (or beats) pretty much everything else on the Market right now. And depending on how much you want to mess with it, you can overclock to match or surpass the 1.2Ghz of the Razor. With the dual cores it can multitask quite easily, I just tested running a streaming radio app and then browsing a few websites so I could answer your question, not a single hiccup.
  • Third-party support. How is third-party support? How is the dev scene for this phone?

    Pretty good. There are 3 or 4 quality 2.3 Gingerbread ROMs to choose from, Eclipse, Liberty, Kin3tx. Most developers have shifted their focus to working on ICS ROMs, of which there are multiple flavors, CM9, AOKP, Axi0m, and these guys are pushing out almost nightly updates as they continue to work out the bugs. At this time, ICS ROMs are still missing Flash, hardware acceleration, and a few other things, but they just recently got the 4G Data connections and the camera working. There is still a lot of support for the Bionic thanks to a few key people, and we are keeping up with the Razor and Nexus thanks to these ROMs.
  • Notification bar functions? Are there any functions in the Notification Bar that you slide down from the top? You know, things like... turn on/off Wifi, data, audio/vibrate, etc.

    Depends on what ROM you run. I don't believe there are any in the stock notification bar, but I haven't been stock for a while so I can't remember. But most of the custom ROMs out there all have the feature to add your own toggles and controls to the dropdown bar.
  • Audio quality? How is it? I like to use my phone as a media player so audio quality is a must.

    No complaints from me, speaker could maybe be a tad louder, but good quality.
  • Battery life? How is the battery life on this phone? The Droid Charge that I have right now drinks the juice from the battery. Streaming NetFlix last night on 4G LTE for just fifteen to twenty minutes drained the battery nearly 20%. I have a charger in my car and I plug the thing in every chance I get because the phone really drains the battery.

    It's not great, but that's just how 4G devices are these days. Again, it depends on how exactly you have the phone setup. I've installed ROMs before where suddenly I was getting 22 hours of battery life effortlessly. But on a standard Bionic, anywhere from 4-10 hours is normal. The extended battery for this phone is nice and not *too* bulky, and I've been thinking about upgrading. But I pretty much plug in my Bionic whenever I can, so if you already do that with your current phone, you'll be used to it.
  • Signal quality. How good is the phone at maintaining a connection to the tower?

    It's been great for me but it depends on the area you live in. 4G Data connections dropping out were a big complaint for the Bionic for a long time but most people report that with the newest software updates, the problem doesn't happen anymore. If you live in a good 4G area you'll be fine, I have a full 4g signal almost all the time. If you live in a less populated area, you may encounter some issues. They are still working on the network and towers in many areas.
  • GPS. GPS blows chunks on my Droid Charge. Getting GPS to work on the Droid Charge sometimes feels like you're asking the phone to move heaven and earth.

    GPS has been great on my Bionic. My last phone was an LG Ally and I know how you feel about terrible GPS service, sometimes I'd be sitting in my car for 10 minutes waiting for it to get a connection so I could get my driving directions. And this was even with extra apps installed like "GPS Fix" that were supposed to get it working faster. The Bionic finds my location almost immediately.

  • Bloat. How much crap does Verizon heap onto this thing? I remember when I rooted my Droid Charge that I had nearly 30 apps to remove when debloating the stock installation. I never thought that a phone could be that loaded down with such useless crap.

    Verizon is Verizon, there will be a decent amount of crap on your Bionic too. Install a ROM and get rid of it. Or even if you don't, the Bionic has plenty of internal and external memory and it doesn't really slow the phone down any to leave these things installed.
  • Screen. How does the screen stack up against other phones?

    It takes a while to get used to the Pentile screen. Do some research on this if you aren't familiar with the term. It involves the way the pixels are set up on the screen, it can actually create kind of a blurry zig-zag effect when you look at the phone a certain way. I thought this was going to be a deal breaker for me, I went to look at the Bionic in the store before I ordered it, and it wasn't terrible, but I could definitely notice the "unique" look of the pentile display. But a few weeks into using the phone, it doesn't bother me a single bit anymore. Any time you change phones the little differences are going to catch your eye and you feel like it'll always bug you, but before you know it you get used to it.
  • OS Updates. How is Motorola when it comes to updating their phone's OS? Samsung really fails in this department. Is it ever going to get ICS?

    The Bionic has already had it's fair share of software updates, the most recent one being 902, so it seems like Moto supports this phone pretty well. Bionic is supposedly getting ICS, but we don't know when, probably not exactly soon. But you can use 3rd party ICS ROMs right now if you want to.
  • Nandroid Backup? Do you really need this? I've heard of ROM Manager before. Can you really do a full OS backup and restore with ROM Manager? Or do I have to load CWM? I've used CWM before so I have no problem using it. Do I even need CWM with ROM Manager?

    I don't use ROM manager on my Bionic, just Clockwork Recovery, which is actually called Bootstrap Recovery for the Bionic. Yes, you can make backups and restore them. There is a different recovery called Safestrap that actually allows you to have two ROMs loaded up at once. Just in case you run into a problem and your phone won't boot, you can go into recovery, boot the other ROM, and get into your phone.
  • Rooting, restoring, and backing up. How easy is it to root this phone? Restore it back to stock factory ROM? Unroot it? I've found a web site called DroidBionicRoot.com. Seems that he has put a lot of effort into making it easy to do.

    Rooting my Bionic took me about 60 seconds. Compared back to the first time I rooted my LG Ally with all these convoluted instructions that took 27 steps just to get it right. Check out the "Bionic - All Things Root" forum for some of the great root tools available to us. I used "tehroot v1.1" and it was done in a matter of seconds. There are tools out there for going back to stock as well but I have not needed to use them yet.
  • Can the bootloader be unlocked? The Droid Charge doesn't have a locked bootloader so I can run just about anything onto including custom compiled kernels.

    Unfortunately the bootloader is locked, but thanks to developers we still have ways to use custom recoveries, ROMs, and even ways to overclock, all without being able to mess with the kernels or anything. I don't think any 3rd party person will ever be able to crack the encryption on the bootloader by themselves, it would be up to Motorola to magically decide one day that they'll unlock the Bionic for us, which seems unlikely, but still, this has hardly hampered the development community for the phone, we still have a lot going on, like ICS months before we should even have it.



Overall I am thrilled to own a Bionic. I'm thankful this is the device I decided on. When it was time to upgrade from my Ally, first I thought I didn't care to upgrade to 4G, so I was just looking at 3G devices like the HTC Incredible 2. I was all excited to get that, then I found out I could upgrade to 4G and maintain my unlimited data. So then I was considering the HTC Thunderbolt. Then just when I was decided on that, Verizon had a big certified pre-owned device sale, and suddenly I could afford the Charge, Bionic, Revolution, etc etc. I went with the Bionic and it is amazing. As I mentioned above, the only reason I was hesitant about this phone was the pentile display. I am a picky person, I pay attention to details, and if there were anyone who would potentially own this phone for a few weeks and still be bothered by the display, it would be me. But I'm totally fine it with. For the first few days I would look at the phone and if I caught it at the wrong angle I'd see these zig zag lines on the display and I told myself I better think about returning this phone. But it's totally a non-issue now. I suggest going to look at a Bionic in the store like I did so you can get an idea of what it looks like. Frankly part of it even has to do with your own eyes, some people report that they can't even see this "pentile effect", others say it bothers them so much that they get a headache. For what it's worth, I believe Moto has used this type of display on many of the Droid Devices, Droid 2, Droid 3, Droid X, Droid X2, some of the most popular devices out there, so tons of people are using these pentile displays and most of them probably don't even realize there's anything different about it.

Dual core, HDMI port, 4.3" screen, a battery that you can still manually remove (unlike the Razors), the Bionic has a lot going for it. No it probably won't be a contender in the market a few short months from now, nor will any other phone. 4-core phones might blow this out of the water. But in terms of what's out on the market right now, I'd say the Bionic is still firmly near the top, if not at the top. I don't like many things about the Razors, and the Nexus just didn't seem all that interesting this time around.
 
Thanks for your reply, both of you.

When you say that it may not be a contender in a few months, why do you say that? Is it because it's only a dual-core phone? Do we really need quad-core phones? Is that really necessary?
 
trparky said:
Thanks for your reply, both of you.

When you say that it may not be a contender in a few months, why do you say that? Is it because it's only a dual-core phone? Do we really need quad-core phones? Is that really necessary?
Click to expand...

It's just the nature of the phone market. No phone that is currently available will really stack up against whatever is on the shelves in a few months.

But it depends on your definition of a phone being "a contender". Am I saying a Droid Bionic is going to be totally useless a few months down the road? No. I'm just speaking in terms of the specs that you will see on paper, the phones are going to keep getting faster, thinner, better screens, battery life for 4G devices will keep improving, etc, so if you compare a Bionic to something that might come out later this year, no the Bionic is not going to look like a winner.

And debating what is really "necessary" is a subjective thing. Everyone is different. I probably hardly even used my old LG Ally at anywhere near it's full potential. Even with a Bionic, I still mainly talk, text, and browse, all things that I could do with any phone that came out in the last few years. Do I need dual core? No. When the quad cores come out, am I going to feel like my Bionic is terrible? No. I'm sure there are power users out there who need all the new features they can get their hands on. Pretty soon these phones will practically be operating at the level of desktop computers.

Basically, since you say it'll be a month or two until you're ready to upgrade anyway, would I still recommend getting a Bionic in May? Maybe not, it depends on what other phones come out until then. And then it depends on your price range, when I got my Bionic, the Razr and the Nexus were already available, but they were close to $200 with a contract, while the Bionic was a free upgrade. Neither of those other phones offered anything to justify paying $200 more than I needed to for a Bionic. So when you're finally ready to upgrade, the Bionic may still be an option for you if you aren't looking to spend a lot. It's hard to plan your upgrade ahead of time. I started researching which phone I wanted just a few weeks in advance and I still changed my mind a million times. If you're trying to get a good idea which device you'll have in your hands two months from now, that's really hard to do, prices will change, new stuff will come out, and you'll have to decide all over again.

The Bionic will not be "obsolete" by any means this year, but there will be newer, quicker devices on the shelves. Whether or not you need one of those more expensive devices depends on your usage habits.
 
I don't have an upgrade available to me yet, it isn't until February of next year. So I'd be paying full price for the Bionic which is $499. As of right now it's the cheapest phone that I can get at a non-upgrade price.

I figure that it will tide me over for quite a long time, probably for another year or two. The biggest limitation of my current phone is the limited RAM and the single core CPU. Dual core and double the RAM would help a hell of a lot.

But it will be a month or two until I can get the money together for it.
 
I have been very pleased with the Bionic. Yes, there were some issues a few months ago with what appeared to be bad sims cards causing BSOD (black screen of death) but the 893 and 902 updates seemed to have taken care of all the problems phone side.

For a few days starting a couple of weeks ago, there seemed to be some data issues where I live, but people with other phones said they saw the same thing. Apparently it was tower work because I am getting a full 4 bars nearly everywhere and signal is strong and fast.

Personally, I love this phone. As many people have stated, this is essentially a compter in your pocket that can make phone calls. The voice quality is very good and the speaker sounds good to for taking calls on speaker, which I am doing a lot more often than I ever did before.

I don't think I will be upgrading even in a year and a half when I can. I know there will be more powerful phones, but until apps pass by the current hardware inside the Bionic (such as needing faster CPU and needing more than 1GB of RAM) I don't think it's neccessary, at least for myself. And of course the major selling point for me, I can replace the battery myself. Sealed battery compartments are absolutely ridiculous and unneccessary.
 
My phones up for renewal in a month. I had just installed a Verizon 4G LTE whole house antenna/amp setup to get high speed internet (no other available options). So before upgrading I shopped around for a good deal on current 4G phones and finally settled on the Bionic. My main criteria were good and reliable 4G speeds, dual core, higher res screen (coming from Droid x) with good quality and good overall reliability. I find right now Bionics are priced (ebay/craiglist) in the 170-220 range depending on condition and they offer what I really wanted without getting into the Razr/GNexus/Rezound price range (generally over 325). I wanted to keep my upgrade status until the Tegra 3 phones come out, and the way the Bionic is working for me I just may take my upgrade phones and sell them, then use my Bionic for another 9 mos and wait for the prices to drop on the Tegra 3's. The premium people pay for the latest phone is substantial and to be honest other than the 4G + dual core speed improvement I don't really feel compelled to upgrade to a quad core phone. I think my main motivation for selling my Bionics will be more a function of seeing the prices start to dip than because they are no longer doing the job for me.
 
I am a bionic owner and Verizon finally lit up 4G (LTE) in my area, Suffolk Cnty NY, this past week so I may also be in the market for my wife to get a 4g LTE phone. I was also wondering if the Bionic is still a good worthwhile phone to get. Seems so. I also have no upgrade to use.

And I hope this isn't too much of a hijack, but SPKAY, I also have no other broadband option (remarkably) and am on the edge of the LTE I mentioned above, just 1 bar at best. How did your antenna system work out? I am considering a LTE rated Yagi with wilson booster (repeater) system. Not cheap though, for Yagi, amp, coax's, mount, inside dome antenna, it is over $500.
 
trparky said:
Thanks for your reply, both of you.

When you say that it may not be a contender in a few months, why do you say that? Is it because it's only a dual-core phone? Do we really need quad-core phones? Is that really necessary?
Click to expand...

I don't see it as necessary now nor to necessary in the near future. The way I see it our phones are using 1 core the vast majority of its time. The other cores are just setting there unused. From time to time they might kick on. What could we possibly do on a phone that would need quad core as it stands now. Hell the new ipad is only going to be quad gpu not cpu.
 
Well well, tparky looking at Bionics!

Your all-in-one guide helped me immensely when my wife and I owned Droid Charge's for a few weeks! Just generally speaking, I'm much happier with the Bionic than I was with the Charge. For me, it was simply about the dual-core processor, increased RAM and increased on-board storage space. This phone does perform faster than the Charge.

The biggest complaint I have would be the not-so-great handoffs between 4G and 3G.

Good luck in your search for your next phone. Just as a suggestion, what I did was purchase two Bionics while we still had the Charges (I know - up front cash outlay drove me nuts!) then listed the Charges on E-Bay, Swappa, or right here in the Classifieds. They sold in a matter of days.
 
I find that the 512 MB of RAM in my current phone to be very limiting especially in the multitasking department. Does this phone really have 1 GB of RAM? Is it enough?
 
If you are in to rom'ing on the samsung you'll want to stay far away from a moto phone. The locked bootloader makes everything many times more problematic than a samsung phone. That is my experience having both. The bionic has as good of battery life as the 3g fascinate. Yes they call it the charge for a reason. It is tough to slow the dual core down too. The hardware is the best quality of android phones. Samsung being second and htc third imo. Not sure where lg and such fall. The iphone is the best hardware.
 
The Bionic has 1GB RAM, but only about 675 MB addressable for running programs. I have not had any memory issues as I did with the original Droid (256MB).
 
I'm bidding on a used Galaxy Nexus right now on eBay. I have my maximum bid up to $300 as of right now, I really don't feel that I should have to pay more than $350 to $400 for a used phone. If I can't get a Nexus at a decent price I'm going to try and get a used Bionic on eBay.
 
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